I combine the rigour of strategy & analytics with design methods and mindsets to solve complex challenges

I love helping teams, leaders, and organizations see and think differently about the future to achieve the outcomes they desire. Experience has taught me that the real challenge for doing anything new isn't coming up with ideas and solutions for where to go, it's enacting the systematic change needed to bridge the gap between new capabilities and the greater organizational ecosystem.

In 2013 I earned my MBA from the Rotman School at the University of Toronto and wanted to enter the innovation industry, and what better place than Silicon Valley. Rather than joining a design firm, I wanted to understand how new products, teams and capabilities were realized from inside an organization, so I joined Citrix as a Business Designer. My team and I led human-centered design workshops for product teams and as training for staff. This grew into an internal innovation incubator, which generated lots of fanfare, but its outcomes mostly gathered dust on the shelf. After speaking with all the business functions along the path to development and launch, it was clear that the organizational processes and governance for product decision-making and communications had not changed alongside the changes we implemented. The aha that something new can only be realized when the organization understands, desires, and has the ability to adopt the change, was pivotal in my career focusing on organization design.

From that learning in 2015, I rethought my approach to problem-solving to keep business strategy at the forefront, integrate with organizational structures and navigate the waves of change. The incubator program was reformatted to solve business unit challenges, layer in business fundamentals, and prepare for transition early and often. The changes bore fruit with 4 market launches and a patent in the next cohort. In 2016, I joined Cisco as an Implementation Lead for their internal innovation lab that partnered with other organizations to explore industry level challenges, such as the future of retail with Nike, Lowes, Visa and Costco. This role further honed my capabilities, because I had to integrate with not just one organization, but multiple.

My role at Cisco was unfortunately short-lived as my partner and I decided to return to Canada and at the beginning of 2017, I took all the experience I had gathered and started a boutique consulting practice focused on helping organizations develop new capabilities and rethink how they approached innovation. I had the pleasure of working with Nestle, The Globe and Mail, TELUS, Manulife, Canadian Tire, and Fairfax Financial Group to realize their aspirational goals. The pandemic hit quite hard as exploring new possibilities was no longer the focus for organizations. However, it was a blessing in disguise because I got to take a break from work and focus on family.

That only lasted for so long and rather fortuitously in 2021, I joined AECOM’s internal design-led management consulting studio Strategy+ to start and build the practice in Canada. The role combines my love for business transformation, organization design, and place strategies, which I didn’t realize I had a passion for. Since then, the team has grown from just me to 7, double-revenues year over year and touched every business line in the organization.

When I’m not driving new ways of thinking and working, I can typically be found reading comic books, tinkering with anything that has an engine and wheels or knee deep in LEGO.