Career
Highlights and Roles
Overview
I believe that organisations who design customer led experiences to enhance peoples lives, whilst delivering business results, leave a positive impact for future generations.
As a creative thinker with a high level of commercial acumen, I have partnered with a broad range of brands and businesses, using the methodologies of customer experience and design thinking, to develop and deliver engaging brands, communications, products and experiences that connect with the hearts, minds and wallets of consumers.
With a strong belief that designing great customer experiences is about:
- Understanding customers in context, aligning unmet needs to business objectives
- Validating customer insights over internal inclinations for fast feedback loops
- Data & insights that enable effective prioritisation, accelerating business outcomes
- Measuring customer experiences with a cumulative lens across the moments that matter
- Increasing customer LTV, reducing risk and driving revenue
- Useful and beautiful experiences that are human where they matter, digital where it counts
I am able to lead and direct teams to design and deliver customer experiences that are useful, beautiful and deliver commercial results.
Roles
Chief Experience Officer
2023 - 2024
As part of the Executive Leadership team responsible for establishing a company wide customer-centric culture based on measurable outcomes. Leading a team of designers and marketers to design and deliver customer-centric experiences and ensure that our brands, services and products meet and exceed customer expectations at every touchpoint.
IMPACT AND OUTCOMES
Executive leadership: Contributing to overall company strategy (OKRs) and aligning customer experience objectives with broader business goals. Evaluating the impact of customer-centric initiatives on financial performance, growth, and market competitiveness.
Team development: Building and mentoring SLT, Design chapter and cross-functional revenue teams across CX, Product and Marketing. Cultivating a culture of collaboration, creativity, customer centricity and accountability within teams, ensuring resource and efforts are aligned to business goals.
Design thinking leadership: Driving customer centred design thinking methodologies to solve customer pain points and enhance user satisfaction. Leading and directing the CX, Service Design, Product Design and Marketing teams to design relevant, intuitive experiences that meet customer needs and deliver business outcomes.
Voice of customer metrics: Establishing measurable customer experience metrics to track progress and enable fast feedback loops. Championing the integration of customer feedback into strategic decision-making at the leadership level. Using VOC data to influence product, service, and experience enhancements, ensuring the brand resonates with customer needs. Oversee customer research initiatives to uncover actionable insights, driving informed and strategic decision-making.
Brand and marketing: Shaping and guiding the brand strategy and ecosystem to ensure utility, elegance and consistency in the end to end journey and experience. Developing marketing and conference strategies and campaigns that drive new leads and nurture journeys for existing customers in database.
Risk and compliance: Ensuring that customer experience initiatives comply with relevant regulations and standards. Managing risk associated with balancing customer pain points and need states and business and regulatory compliance.
General Manager
2021 - 2023
Strategic and operational management of the Auckland business unit, managing CX, Service Design, and UX/UI projects for clients like ASB Bank, Spark, and Tourism NZ. Transformation of the KidsCan Food Programme through human-centred design and creating the experience framework and prototypes for ASB Bank’s reimagined digital banking experience.
IMPACT AND OUTCOMES
Senior leadership and commercial acumen: Managing the Auckland office portfolio, building strong client relationships while driving and converting new business opportunities. Optimising revenue and costs to achieve targets and drive growth. Lead and develop design and account management teams to enhance deign thinking process and capabilities.
Design thinking leadership: Applying human-centred design thinking to create customer-centric experiences with a focus on digital platforms. Customer research and design of journeys, service blueprints, prototypes and digital experiences for clients such as TourismNZ, KidsCan, Spark, GoSee and ASB Bank.
ASB Bank experience design: leading the design team to create customer journeys and prototypes for home loans, business banking, a new value proposition and prototypes for youth banking and a reimagined future-state digital mobile app experience across personal banking.
Design management: Leading and managing design teams and projects, ensuring project and process efficiencies to design and deliver high-quality customer experiences and outcomes aligned to client objectives and budgets.
Chief Communications Officer
2019
Reporting directly to the CEO, leading the development and execution of the brand and communications strategy, positioning the business as a Māori-led medical cannabis company committed to delivering social impact in an emerging global market.
IMPACT AND OUTCOMES
Senior leadership and business strategy: Leading the brand and communications strategy aligned to the overall business purpose and objectives, within an evolving medical cannabis industry.
Regulatory compliance: Navigating communications within a pre-regulation industry, ensuring adherence to emerging standards while fostering PR strategies in the evolving cannabis sector.
Brand strategy and development: Building and defining the brand identity for a Māori-led medical cannabis company, focussed on social impact, positioning it for success in a global market.
Public relations and communications: Developing and executing public relations campaigns to promote the brand, influence stakeholders, and manage media relations to enhance the brand's reputation as a Maori led business with a strong focus on social impact.
Innovation: Driving creative and forward-thinking approaches to brand, communications, public relations and novelty medicinal cannabis products.
General Manager
2014 - 2017
Responsible for building a high performance creative culture and multidisciplinary design teams. Driving operational effectiveness and business growth. Embedding and improving design thinking methodologies. Leading design teams to create exceptional brand identities and experiences for clients such as Optus, Commonwealth Bank, Uniting, Menulog and NRMA.
IMPACT AND OUTCOMES
Strategic leadership: Senior leadership, team development and fostering a high-performance creative culture that delivers commercial results. Designing strategic frameworks for brands and experiences for clients to drive impactful outcomes.
Brand and design leadership: Expertise in design thinking, brand strategy, communications, and designing customer and employee experiences for clients such as Uniting, Commonwealth Bank, Optus, Menulog, and NRMA. Skilled in managing clients, design teams, budgets, and projects to deliver cohesive brand strategies, identities, experiences, and touchpoints aligned to meet clients objectives and key results.
Commercial acumen and operational excellence: Expertise in client and new business development and optimising agency processes. Fostering a culture of creativity and continuous improvement. Partnering with SLT to grow client revenue and profitability, implementing systems to increase productivity and efficiency, achieving a 139% revenue growth and 40% increase in new business.
Agency operations: Developing the business, financial and resource model for the internal creative agency at Optus - Yes Agency, delivering operational effectiveness for Optus and projected to deliver additional revenue of $3.8m to Re / M&C Saatchi Group.
Team development: Built and managed high-performing multidisciplinary teams, enhancing design thinking, creativity and efficiency, scaling the team from 22 to 65 members.
Consultant
2013
Reporting to the Executive Team, development of a 5 year innovation growth strategy for McDonalds Australia, driven by market analysis, customer insight, future trending and commercial analytics. Delivering innovation through customer experience platforms and a business case that sizes the opportunity, defines the innovation platforms and calculates the investment required.
IMPACT AND OUTCOMES
Strategic leadership: Executive engagement and innovation-driven strategic planning and prototyping.
Innovation and experience design: Expertise in designing innovation platforms leveraging market analysis, customer insights, future trends and qual and quant research.
Analytical expertise: Financial modelling, market analysis, and commercial analytics to calculate investment required to determine size of prize
Director
1999 - 2010
Collaborate with the Board to define and execute a business strategy that ensures consistent creativity, profitability, and revenue growth. Provide leadership and mentorship to the Account Management team, fostering creativity, commercial acumen, operational efficiency and enduring client relationships. Demonstrating strong business acumen with expertise in budgeting, revenue management, reporting, and analysis.
IMPACT AND OUTCOMES
Leadership and management: Company Director, executive leadership, team development, design management, and fostering high-performance creative culture through organisational capability-building.
Business acumen: Commercial expertise, client development, new business generation, and refining processes to generate revenue opportunities.
Strategic expertise: Strategic relationship management across diverse portfolio of clients and industries to deliver impactful brand strategies, identities, products and experiences.
Creative excellence: Design thinking, brand strategy, brand development, communications, packaging design, and experience design.
Air New Zealand brand and customer experience design: Core member of the Designworks and Air New Zealand innovation team, managing the design of all physical, human and digital touchpoints across the brand identity, customer experience journey, cabin interiors and experiences, the innovative Skycouch, Inflight Entertainment experience, self service check-in experience and staff engagement, resulting in numerous customer, staff, airline and design awards.
Brand and design development: Development and management of client, design team, budgets and programmes of work to design and deliver brand strategies, identities, experiences and touchpoints for a broad range of industry leading local and global brands such as Air New Zealand, Westpac, Carter Holt Harvey, IAG, Vodafone, DB Breweries, Coca-Cola, Comvita and more.
Highlights
Chief Experience Officer of Medenterprises, Australasia's largest Doctor Locum recruitment agency, responsible for customer-centric strategies designed to ensure that all Medenterprises products, services and experiences work better together, enhancing utility, relevancy, customer satisfaction and commercial results
General Manager at DNA Design, managing the team across a range of CX, Service Design, UX and UI projects for clients such as ASB Bank, Spark, Tourism NZ, The transformation of the KidsCan Food Programme using a human centred design thinking approach and the design of the experience framework and prototypes for the re-imagined digital banking experience for ASB Bank.
Chief Communications Officer at Rua Bioscience, Working within the evolving requirements of start-up business in a pre-regulation industry and an emerging global market to establish the brand, market position, public relations and communications for a Maori led medical cannabis, with an explicit focus on delivering social impact.
General Manager of Re Brand Consultancy, creating and implementing strategic frameworks and design thinking for clients; enhancing agency processes and efficiencies; developing high performance multidisciplinary teams and cultures. Working alongside the SLT to deliver a 40% increase in new business, growing the team from 22 to 65 and an 139% increase in revenue during my tenure.
Developing the business, financial and resource model for the internal creative agency at Optus - Yes Agency, delivering operational effectiveness for Optus and projected to deliver an additional revenue of $3.8m to Re Brand Consultancy and the M&C Saatchi Group.
Experience Consultant for McDonalds Australia, delivering innovation and experience growth platforms by building a robust business case that sizes the opportunity, defines the innovation platforms, food offerings and in-store experiences and calculates the investment required,
Core member of the Designworks and Air New Zealand innovation team, managing the design of all physical, human and digital touchpoints across the customer experience journey, including the brand identity, the innovative Skycouch, Inflight Entertainment Experience, Self Service Check-in experience and staff engagement, resulting in numerous Customer, Staff, Airline and Design awards.