This portfolio showcases select brand experience, innovation, culture transformation, and brand strategy projects I’ve helped shape and led across industries, using diverse research and concept-development methods to drive meaningful innovation.
See projects below.
Experience Innovation | Service Design
Redefining the dealership experience.
Developed a future-forward customer experience and new service model to help Audi break from industry norms and establish a more premium, customer-centric, and differentiated retail experience across its global dealerships.
Served as the day-to-day project lead while at Lippincott, a global creative consultancy, collaborating with teams around the world, including Audi AG and local market leaders. The concept, now being piloted in 5+ global markets, included defining new staff roles and creating detailed, emotionally intelligent service guides.
Innovation and Growth Strategy
Expanding a beloved franchise.
Developed a comprehensive, long-term growth strategy for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, grounded in actionable principles. The strategy balanced short and long-term initiatives, combining ‘safe’ and disruptive tactics with a mix of pilot tests, bold investments, and strategic optimizations.
It included a suite of signature experiences and supporting elements across both physical and digital brand touchpoints to enhance engagement and expand the franchise reach.
Experience Innovation
Making beauty a top destination.
Partnered with the leadership team of Woolworths, South Africa’s largest department store to reimagine its beauty department experience, aiming to drive growth and establish the brand as a top destination for beauty.
Conducted cross-departmental interviews, multiple store audits (within the brand and competitors), and trends forecasting to identify current needs, challenges, and opportunity areas. Insights informed a series of innovative recommendations for a cohesive, end-to-end experience, co-created with clients through creative workshops.
Final recommendations were presented as a detailed customer journey map from the perspective of key shopper personas, highlighting distinctive, ‘signature’ ideas that set the experience apart.
Developed a comprehensive, long-term growth strategy for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, grounded in actionable principles. The strategy balanced short and long-term initiatives, combining ‘safe’ and disruptive tactics with a mix of pilot tests, bold investments, and strategic optimizations.
It included a suite of signature experiences and supporting elements across both physical and digital brand touchpoints to enhance engagement and expand the franchise reach.
Brand Strategy | New
Launching an athleisure movement.
Co-led the brand and positioning strategy for Hering Sports, a sustainability-focused athleisure brand launched in 2022 by Cia Hering, Brazil’s largest fashion retailer.
In partnership with Bain and Company, conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative research — including AI-enabled panels, customer segmentation, and expert interviews— to identify and size whitespace opportunities.
Aligned on a direction tied to KPIs and business goals, then developed and tested multiple value propositions. The final recommendation included digital and offline engagement strategies, e-commerce and in-store experience elements, and design guidelines for the collection.
Refreshing the brand experience.
As part of a broader brand and visual identity refresh led by Hale Design, I helped reimagine Papa John’s new restaurant experience for dine-in and carryout customers. Drawing on shopper insights, store audits, franchisee interviews, trend forecasts, and business directions, I co-led the development of a comprehensive customer experience vision.
The new CX vision mapped recommended ideas across key guest journeys, giving architecture partners clear guidance for creating a cohesive, multi-touchpoint experience. The new restaurant design began rolling out in 2023.
Conquering a new segment.
Collaborated with creative agency Collins' strategy team to develop a new brand strategy for the unicorn fintech Brex.
Originally positioned as a corporate credit card for tech companies, the brand quickly expanded to offer a broader range of services to a larger audience. To appeal to this wider client base, it was essential to enhance brand perception. Our strategy provided the brand with a clear value proposition and a cohesive messaging platform.
A new cruising experience.
At Lippincott, developed a differentiated, premium guest experience for one of America’s largest cruise lines, while quantifying potential ROI impact. The project involved extensive quantitative and qualitative research, including onboard ethnographies that revealed surprising insights and inspired unique brand territories and innovations.
The presentation of findings included a detailed, visual current-state journey map, enriched with images and videos. The final future experience was crafted as an ideal vacation narrative, presented through the lens of two guest personas and brought to life with illustrative storytelling.
USA-Brazil
Co-designed, planned, and co-led a 2-week design sprint (in partnership with a digital marketing agency) with the senior leadership of Boticário—the second-largest beauty brand in Brazil—to develop a U.S. market entry and product assortment strategy for one of its product lines.
Facilitated at-home consumer ethnographies, in-person focus groups, and day-to-day co-creation sessions to gather insights, test, and refine concepts from initial ideas to a finalized concept. This included preparing discussion guides and designing the methodology and approach for creative exercises.
USA
Identified new and forward-thinking innovation opportunities and business models for Bank of America within a 10+ year time horizon through extensive market, trends, and consumer research.
As part of the consumer insights workstream, led multiple qualitative studies using both established and innovative methodologies, such as ongoing consumer panels and group discussions with ‘frontier’ Gen Z consumers to explore new territories for the bank. Developed hypothetical future personas to facilitate idea generation and foster empathy within the organization.
South Africa
Partnered with the leadership team of South Africa’s largest department store to reimagine its beauty department experience, aiming to drive growth and establish the brand as a top destination for beauty.
Conducted cross-departmental interviews, multiple store audits (within the brand and competitors), and trends forecasting to identify current needs, challenges, and opportunity areas. Insights informed a series of innovative recommendations for a cohesive, end-to-end experience, co-created with clients through creative workshops.
Final recommendations were presented as a detailed customer journey map from the perspective of key shopper personas, highlighting distinctive, ‘signature’ ideas that set the experience apart.
Australia
Created an end-to-end experience map and vision that led to a complete transformation of Australia’s largest retirement fund, including a modernized brand visual and verbal expression as well as a new model for member engagement.
As a follow-up project, I led a "train the trainer" program for employees on how to apply customer experience (CX) tools, such as member personas and principles, to help the organization continuously drive innovation. Part of the training included a design sprint with a team of seven leaders that took a concept from inception to a physical prototype in just five days.
USA
In collaboration with Sterling Brands and emaz, co-developed a new merchandising strategy for newly re-branded Burger King. Recommended holistic merchandising ideas across the guest journey, prioritizing quick wins as well as mid and long-term initiatives.
Created a merchandising toolkit with recommended materials for both exterior and interior applications, including inside the restaurant and drive-thru based consumer ethnography research, market trends and shopper insights.
USA-Brazil
Co-led the development and marketing strategy for a new sustainability-focused athleisure brand launched in 2022 by Cia Hering, Brazil’s largest fashion retailer.
In partnership with one of the world's top-3 management consulting firms, conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative research—including AI-based panels, customer segmentation, and expert interviews—to identify and size whitespace opportunities.
After prioritizing a direction aligned with KPIs and business goals, developed multiple brand value propositions for consumer testing. The final recommended concept included digital and offline engagement strategies, e-commerce and in-store experience elements, and design guidelines for the collection.
USA
Developed a uniquely differentiated broker experience vision and solution, including a fully functional digital platform prototype for Axa, one of the world's largest insurance companies.
Collaborated closely with AXA’s Marketing, Product, and Digital teams to develop the platform’s user interface and information architecture, which was later tested and refined through in-depth co-creation and concept validation sessions with brokers.
USA
Developed a comprehensive, long-term growth strategy for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, grounded in actionable principles. The strategy balanced short- and long-term initiatives, combining ‘safe’ and disruptive tactics with a mix of pilot tests, bold investments, and strategic optimizations.
It included a suite of signature experiences and supporting elements across both physical and digital brand touchpoints to enhance engagement and expand brand reach.
USA
Developed a new brand strategy, experience, and communication design for Synovus, focusing on the mass affluent segment—an untapped, high-potential customer demographic—that evoked the warm service for which Georgia’s largest regional bank is known, while empowering it to build deep bonds with both current and potential customers.
Co-led various co-creation workshops to establish brand platform directions and later facilitated consumer sessions to test and refine the strategy throughout a four-month engagement. The work included developing detailed mass affluent consumer personas, customer journey maps for each persona, a compelling value proposition, and a robust brand architecture.
Other clients include:
