DESIGN INNOVATION GLOBAL - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Designer
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Lead Product Designer, Global Conversion & Monetization
Alphonso Morris is an entrepreneur and self-taught designer, born in Brooklyn and now based in San Jose. He has worked in tech and design on both coasts of the United States, in Philadelphia, New York, Atlanta, Washington D.C., and California. His belief in the importance of self-driven education continued through his travels through Europe, Central and South America, and South East Asia.
Since 2020, Fonz Morris has been the Lead Product Designer at Netflix. Prior to joining Netflix, he led a design team at Coursera. Fonz has worked with some of the world's biggest companies, collaborated with hip hop producers and entrepreneurs, and led his own start up teams. He secured angel funding for start ups, including working with the Lomax family, one of the few Black venture capitalist families in the USA.
As a fierce advocate for the self-taught designer and entrepreneur, he is involved in mentoring design students through a a range of organizations including California College of the Arts, and General Assembly's UX Design Bootcamp. Fonz has contributed his knowledge to conferences including AfroTech, UX Fest, UXDX, Rethink, Made In the Future, and State of Black Design.
He is involved as an advising partner or consulting with venture capital firms First Round, Floodgate, and Signalfire, helping guide the next young designers and self starters.
Andrea Courtin is known as a user experience designer who likes to solve gnarly problems through human-centered design. She works with stakeholders who want to deliver on their company's vision by creating experiences that go above and beyond customer expectations and provide immediate value.
As an experience designer, Andrea brings a wide variety of people together, engage them in design research, and use their input to develop insightful solutions. She has used this process to redesign the internal call routing system for a Fortune 100 insurance company. As a result, call times fell by several minutes and the number of unnecessary transfers was cut in half.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Vice President of Experience and Design / M & T Bank
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Head of Design, Client Experience
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Head of Discover Design
Andrew Ohm leads the Discover+Design team at Starbucks, which is a specialized design research group that applies human-centered design into Starbucks digital product development strategy. Previously, he worked as the Group Manager for Starbuck's Global Whitespace Innovation group.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Executive Vice President of Design at Rocket Companies
- Executive Vice President, Design
Andy Vitale is the Executive Vice President of Design at Rocket Companies, the nation's #1 mortgage lender, where he leads a team focused on transforming the mortgage lending experience for millions of people who want to buy or refinance a home, as well as professional partners across the lending and real estate spectrum.
Throughout his career, Andy has built, scaled and led world-class design teams that elevate the role of design as an organizational competence and a competitive advantage. His experience ranges from startups to Fortune 500 companies spanning the fintech, health, technology and eCommerce industries. Andy inspires and empowers teams to solve problems with a human-centered approach and create meaningful products and experiences that drive successful outcomes.
Andy is passionate about educating and inspiring the next generation of designers and leaders. As a member of Adobe's Design Circle, he works with other design leaders to drive positive impact across the design community and society at large. He serves as an adjunct professor for Kent State University's User Experience Design graduate program. He also serves on the advisory board for several professional organizations and educational institutions. His design expertise can be seen in publications like Fast Company and featured by Adobe and other industry blogs. He also co-hosts the Surfacing Podcast, which explores the societal change spurred by digital platforms.
An international keynote speaker, Andy is known for authentic, inspiring talks on design leadership, design maturity and responsible design.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Head of Engineering for GCP Cloud Console
- Head of Engineering, Google Cloud Consumer Experience
- Strategic Leader
Bryan Jacquot is a strategic leader with a demonstrated ability to develop organizations and deliver world-class, award winning products and services.
Currently, Bryan is the Head of Engineering for GCP Cloud Console consumer experience responsible for dashboard, navigation, search, onboarding, and active assist. He is responsible for hiring and developing the engineering organization. Bryan's team works to build reliable and performant solutions including backend services and frontend experiences and manage on-call rotations, operations, SLOs, latency, and defect SLOs.
His team builds the capabilities that enable millions of prospective GCP customers to evaluate and perform proofs-of-concept to accelerate evaluation of the platforms capabilities. They are simplifying and automating the onboarding of new enterprise customers to convert the $30B commit backlog into customer value and enabling customers to create secure cloud foundations aligned with their business needs.
Ultimately, he is working to improve the customer experience for millions of monthly users as they use the GCP console everyday including navigation, dashboard, search, and active assist.
Previously, Bryan has worked as a executive and key thought leader at HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Principal Professional Services Consultant for Lucid Software
Christopher Bailey, currently Principal Professional Services Consultant for Lucid Software helps people see and build the future using a combination of the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite and his experience in developing innovation pipelines, transforming teams to Agile systems of delivery, and developing new products that customers love. Christopher has a Masters of Information Systems management from Brigham Young University and a crazy, geeky family with a brilliant wife, 3 silly boys, and a firecracker of a daughter.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Executive Creative Director, National Product and Experience Design Lead
Job Titles:
- Lead Product Designer at Netflix
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Director, Experience Strategy & Program Management
- Strategist
Guy Felder is a strategist. His expertise includes designing, planning and operationalizing solutions-based initiatives from concept through implementation on projects ranging from small to enterprise level deployments, integrating technology, and creating buy-in and cohesion amongst all institutional stakeholders.
Guy's work spans higher education, finance, and mental health. He frequently writes and speaks on timely issues related to design strategy and on matters relevant to the role of technology in marketing and customer relationship development, as well as changing consumer behaviors.
In his current role, Guy is Director of Experience Strategy and Program Management with Mad*Pow. He is a proven customer experience, marketing, and technology strategist with demonstrated ability to combine technology and design thinking to create world class customer experiences. Guy has a long track record of developing and deploying successful strategies to build strong brands that exceed expectations in both B2B and B2C organizations. He has 15+ years of successfully managing diverse product design, marketing strategy, and customer experience teams in B2B and B2C companies and universities.
Job Titles:
- Chief Design Officer
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Chief Design Officer at Comcast Business
John Guillaume is the Chief Design Officer at Comcast Business. Through the use of modern design and development approaches, John and his team of software developers, product managers, operators, and designers set out to discover customer friction points that can lead to compelling, innovative solutions.
John is passionate about creating products and services that deliver remarkable user experiences. He believes the best products and services start with user insights and discovering what problems and challenges they face. Once we understand customer friction points, we prototype, test, develop and bring products to market at scale. He is fortunate to be part of a fantastic team of UX designers, product managers, developers, and operators. Through modern, human-centered product design and development approaches, his team consistently delivers remarkable experiences and products for their customers.
John has been passionately developing and managing technology and telecom solutions for 25-years. Outside of work, he is active with my family, enjoying most things outdoors, including mountain biking, trail running, golf, and photography.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- XDA Group Leader, EXperience Design & Analytics
Jose de Francisco is currently an Experience Design & Analytics Group Leader with EY's executive team, tasked with the launch and development of their new XDA group (eXperience Design & Analtytics) at EY Technology.
Previously, Jose spent 25 years with Nokia, most recently as Chief Designer at Nokia CNS (Cloud & Network Services) a global software leader in the telecommunications sector. He performs dual responsibilities as a Head of Nokia CIC, Chicago Innovation Center, an interdisciplinary R&D facility.
His work involves initiatives ranging from ideation and new product incubation to lifecycle management. Jose is an award-winning designer and a Distinguished Member (DMTS) of Bell Labs for work on next generation mobile platforms and applications. Jose is the lead inventor behind an extensive design portfolio. He has launched pioneering solutions in digital operations, cloud computing and communication systems at the world's most impactful events such as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and Mobile World Congress (MWC).
Jose has served with the Advisory Boards at MIT's Institute of Data, Systems and Society (IDSS) and Illinois Tech's Entrepreneurship Center. He is currently engaged with the Board at Design & Innovation Global of the International Quality & Productivity Center (IQPC), which is the think tank behind the premier Design Thinking conference series in the US. He is a technology evangelist featured in 50+ public speaking events and industry analyst interviews. His endeavors can be followed on innovarista.org.
Job Titles:
- Designer
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Vice President, Global Head of Design
- VP and Head of Design and Research at Amazon Prime Video
Kamyar Keshmiri is an award-winning designer and innovation leader with more than 20 years experience imagining, launching, and scaling products with the world's leading consumer brands. He is passionate about humanizing technology by combining deep insight to consumer needs and desires and developing systems with holistic solutions that harness the best of technology. Under Keshmiri's leadership, his multidisciplinary teams create career-defining work that harnesses the designer's toolset to bring form to the future - deriving strategic advantage through design.
Kamyar is currently the VP and head of Design and Research at Amazon Prime Video. Previously he was the Senior Vice President, Product Design for the Direct-To-Consumer team at Warner Bros. Discovery where he led a team of 130 designers across North America and Europe, spanning UI/UX, motion, writing, creative services, advanced prototyping, production design automation and AI-enabled personalization. He oversaw the rapid ascent of HBO Max design and UX across every country and language, while defining the long-term strategic vision for future consumer streaming products. He strives to create immersive, engaging experiences that accelerate emotional connection between viewers and iconic programming, from whichever available device they prefer.
Prior to Warner Media and WBD, Kam spent 7 years as a senior leader at IDEO where he had the privilege to work closely with his clients to translate business ambition into strategic innovation programs, holding the vision while overseeing the detailed execution of associated work streams for clients including DirecTV (AT&T), Facebook, News UK, Adobe, Daimler, Logitech, Fremantle Media, Vodafone, Kohl's, Envision Energy, Western Union and dozens of fast-moving startups.
Keshmiri's first venture was founding FriendsOfOurs, a London-based boutique digital agency established in the 2000s, which served ambitious technology startups, fashion and media brands and hospitality clients.
He currently resides in sunny Los Angeles after several years in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Vice President, Digital & Technology
Laura works as the leader of a global product development, UX, user research, and front-end engineering team focused on commercial real estate advisory technologies, socializing modern user-centered product development practices, facilitating cross-functional collaborations and co-designing with business stakeholders and end users.
Previously, Laura worked as the Head of Design at Priceline.com, where she defined all product design strategy and communicated to sprint teams and executive leadership. She specialized in advancing design system tooling and establishing better cross-functional processes, assessing resourcing and skills gaps and hiring and onboarding new designers, all while leading and training a 12-person team of product designers, visual designers, researchers, and content strategists.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Member of the Advisory Board
- President
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Member of the Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Principal Analyst and Head of Product Development for IQPC 's Customer Management Practice
Michael DeJager is Principal Analyst and Head of Product Development for IQPC's Customer Management Practice. Design & Innovation represents a portfolio of content and events within the Customer Management Practice. He brings 10+ years of experience in market research and event production across industries and regions. He originated Design & Innovation's annual Design Thinking and Service Design programs in 2017. His responsibilities now include management across Customer Management Practice content and events and serves as a contributor across portfolios.
Job Titles:
- Leader
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Vice President of Design & UX / East West Bank
Mindy Duong is a passionate, innovative, and multilingual Creative Director respected for 15+ years pioneering dynamic marketing campaigns, visual content, and consumer engagement strategies for industry leaders (including East West Bank and BCBGMAXAZRIA Group). Her track record demonstrates continued success in cultivating brand identity and loyalty in competitive markets through multimedia advertising, photo and graphic design, and video production. She is experienced in directing comprehensive project lifecycles, overseeing operations from concept through development, execution, and tracking.
Clients and colleagues know Mindy as an exceptional leader who guides team members in realizing all objectives through a collaborative, people-focused approach, and she thrives in building and maintaining positive relationships with key stakeholders and managers. As an out-of-the-box thinker, she is committed to delivering exceptional results in visual storytelling, corporate messaging, and artistic direction to enable growth.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Executive Vice President of Innovation at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport
Paul Puopolo serves as Executive Vice President of Innovation at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. He leads DFW's Innovation function to identify, assess, and drive the collaborative development of new solutions and business models to create new growth and competitive advantage. Mr. Puopolo joined the DFW Airport team in August 2018.
Mr. Puopolo is an experienced "intrapreneur" with multi-industry innovation, emerging technology, and direct to consumer background. Throughout his career he has built and led corporate innovation teams within large, complex organizations. Prior to joining DFW Airport, he served as Vice President of Innovation at MetLife Inc., Vice President of Business Innovation & Development at Highmark, Inc., and Director of Consumer Innovation at Humana Inc. In these roles, he was accountable for developing business innovation strategies and portfolios and their strategic implementation to increase profitable growth, improve the consumer experience, and champion an innovative culture.
Mr. Puopolo served as an active duty officer and as a pilot in the United States Navy, and retired from the Navy after 22 years of service. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Comprehensive Science from Villanova University and a Master's degree in National Security Affairs from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Vice President, Digital Experience
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Vice President, Global Head of Design
Roger Rohatgi is a forward-thinking creative leader with 20+ years of experience successfully leading and managing projects and teams to develop and create compelling user interfaces (UI), dynamic marketing and advertising campaigns, and engaging user experiences (UX) on SaaS enterprise software products, websites, mobile apps, interactive cable and broadcast TV shows, digital and social media platforms for top brands, media outlets and agencies such as Verizon, Motorola Solutions, Hyundai, CBS, NBC Universal, FOX, Univision, Oxygen, MTV, Telemundo, T-Mobile, World Cup, Chicos, White House Black Market, Conill, IPG, and more.
Previously, he led a national experience design team for a billion dollar SAAS enterprise company providing best-in-class web and mobile user experiences for 40+ brands, a myriad of enterprise software products, 65,000 customers, and hundreds of thousands of users. Most recently, "Creative Director On Loan" to several B2B, B2C, and B2B2C, multi-billion dollar customers and spearheaded efforts for their digital transformation, digital/creative strategy and customer engagement initiatives.
Currently, Roger is building and leading the design discipline within bp to harness human experience design to help reimagine energy for people and our planet. He is launching the latest initiative at bp called #NetZeroUX which empowers the bphxd team to decarbonize designs and design for decarbonization.
Job Titles:
- Executive
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Global Leader
Shawn Johnson is an Emmy® Award winning Executive, Speaker, Innovator, Entrepreneur & Futurist - Shawn is the Group Vice President Product & Design for Discovery Communications. He is responsible for Strategy, Product, Design, User Experience, Brand Creative, Operations & Delivery - Shawn sets the Product Strategy, Vision and Go-to-Market Approach through Product & Design Thinking and Customer Centered strategies for all TV, OTT, and Direct to Consumer products, platforms, services and experiences.
Combining an award-winning product portfolio with strategy, technology and business acumen - Shawn is a proven global leader who builds synergies between cross functional teams through Product & Design Leadership. His teams deliver engaging user journeys that create positive, memorable & lasting consumer relationships within evolving product and technology ecosystems.
Prior to Discovery, Shawn served as VP of Experience Design for NBCUniversal where he built an industry leading team through design strategy, user and brand experience to produce some of the best products, applications and channels with billions of passionate fans.
Earlier, Shawn served as Senior UX Lead & Creative Director for Microsoft - working across the entire Microsoft ecosystem of products & services. He led business groups/partners towards a unified global brand vision and customer experience.
Over the past three decades, Shawn has remained at the forefront of innovation - building, leading and cultivating teams globally. An entrepreneur and founder of several successful west coast agencies, Shawn has had the pleasure to with a broad range of clients including, Nike, Unilever, Sony, Budweiser, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Coca-Cola, Nissan, DreamWorks and Walt Disney Imagineering.
Blurring the lines between impossible and possible, Shawn thrives at the intersection of product design, technology and the imagination of the human spirit. He attended Otis Parsons School of Art & Design, and at age 24 became one of the youngest instructors at the prestigious west coast design school.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Chief Customer Innovation Officer / American Dental Association
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Director of Experience Research
Job Titles:
- Marketing Assistant for IQPC 's Customer Management Practice
Teresa Lee is the Marketing Assistant for IQPC's Customer Management Practice. Design & Innovation represents a portfolio of content and events within the Customer Management Practice. She brings experience in social media, and creative graphics to the team. Her responsibilities now include designing content pieces and activating email campaigns across Customer Management Practice's digital portal and live events and serves as a contributor across blogs.
Fun Fact: Teresa has a slight scar on her upper right lip from an intense snowball fight with her brother.