ARGODSGN.COM - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Managing Partner
- Member of the Leadership Team
Alec Cooper has over 25 years of experience in technology leadership roles. In the first dot com wave, Alec was a co-founder of dell.com, one of the original e-commerce pioneers. Alec spent ten years in leadership roles at Microsoft, including leading Microsoft's Genuine Software initiatives in the People's Republic of China. After serving as Chief Customer Officer for frog design, Alec joined Amazon where he spent six years as a Director of Strategic Business in Seattle and Luxembourg. Alec is based remotely in Seattle, where he lives with his wife, three daughters, two dogs, and a cat.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Head of Programs
Optimist. Organizer. Complete Finisher. As the head of programs at argodesign, Arlene and her team of program managers are responsible for creating the structure and environment teams need to deliver great design.
Arlene studied MIS at the University of Texas and she has worn many hats throughout her 20+ year career, including consultant, developer, sales engineer, project manager, and mother. She has a deep knowledge of digital and understands how to connect disparate systems. She loves to talk organizational change, methodology, and how to work with multi-disciplinary teams.
Prior to argo, Arlene was VP of Project Management for SapientRazorfish where she was awarded the global client impact award for architecting group agency models focused on digital business transformation. In her free time, she can be found going for a walk, playing games, and eating tacos.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Head of Creative, Austin
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Head of Creative, Munich
David Cleaves is Head of Creative, Munich at argodesign, helming the effort to build a leading design consultancy in Germany.
David moved to Europe in 2013 to work at frogdesign in its German home studio. While Executive Creative Director at frog, he established long-term client relationships with a range of European companies, including Porsche, Volkswagen, Audi, and Montblanc.He left frog to join BMW Group Design, where he led the department responsible for Advanced User Experience Design, including concept cars, apps, series vehicles, and BMW's in-car intelligent agent.
For the first ten years of his career, he worked as a user experience designer on websites, software applications, mobile apps, and digital strategies for clients in North and South America, including six years with Razorfish, where he led the UX team on the complete redesign of Delta Airlines's digital ecosystem as well as a six-country digital strategy and redesign for Nextel Latin America.
In the year between his BA and MFA at the University of Texas at Austin, David taught American language and literature in Germany on a Fulbright fellowship. In his spare time, David enjoys writing fiction and learning European languages. He speaks German, Spanish, and French and is learning Italian.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Managing Director, North America
An entrepreneurial design leader building next-generation products, David has created and led design organizations that bring customer-centric creativity, rigor, and business impact.
He co-founded Method, one of the first integrated brand, product, and tech, UX design firms, where he led design projects with clients including: AOL, Barnes & Noble, Comcast, Google, McDonalds, MTV, NBA, PBS, Time Warner Cable, and many more.
He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters in an ongoing project of an 1870s brownstone.
Job Titles:
- Industrial Designer, Aspiring Jewel Thief, and Dead Serious about Design
Job Titles:
- Head of Technology
- Member of the Leadership Team
With both a Robotics degree and an MBA, Ian has worked as a development engineer, project manager, and director at companies including frog design, Emerson Process Management, and Whole Foods Market.
His career spans more than 25 years driving user experience research and product optimization in industries such as retail, finance, technology, and manufacturing.
Ian lives in Austin and attempts to entertain two kids and two dogs.
Job Titles:
- Designer
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Technologist
- Chief Creative Technologist & Founding Partner
Jared Ficklin is a designer and technologist with two decades of experience creating products and visions for major companies. An innovator by nature, he is always exploring new means for technological interaction and has a passion for unique interaction models - especially those involving interesting inputs and outputs like touch, multi-touch, voice, gesture, sensing, and projection. His philosophy is "Think by Making, Deliver by Demo", and he employs user experience simulation as a method for quickly bringing products to life.
Jared spent 14 years of his career at frog design contributing to the visions, strategy, intellectual property, and products of clients including HP, Microsoft, AT&T, LG, SanDisk, and Motorola. His work integrating technology into the design process at frog led him to be named one of 4 frog fellows.
Jared is an evangelist and co-creator of the cable car-based mass transport vision known as The Wire, and was the first to bring live fire to the TED stage. He speaks internationally as a creative technologist and futurist.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- General Manager, New York
Jim has a diverse background in innovation strategy, business management and design operations. In his role as argodesign's NY studio General Manager, Jim works closely with Mehera and the team in New York to create an exceptional client experience.
Jim has previously held management positions at Red Antler, Huge and frog design, leading design operations and cultivating partnerships with organizations focusing on product innovation and the impact product design can have in the world around us.
Outside the studio, he enjoys life at home with his husband, Charlie, and sweet Rhodesian Ridgeback/Boxer mix, Murphy.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Head of Creative, Austin
Drawing on over 20 years of industry experience from within product teams and while at design agencies, Marcus has led teams to create and deliver on an array of design initiatives for Fortune 100 companies. At argo, Marcus plays a leadership role in the studio, helping to deliver on the overall mission, and leading design teams through client engagements.
Previous to argo, Marcus was Senior Creative Director at Under Armour, where he provided product strategy, design and brand direction across a suite of hardware and software products in Connected Fitness. While Creative Director at frog design, he led the redesign of Intuit Quickbooks, and helped Bridgewater Associates build its foundations in digital.
Before moving to Austin, Marcus was based in Seattle, where he spent 7 years at Microsoft leading teams as Creative Director for MSN Entertainment properties, before transitioning to Zune.
Mark has been involved in product development for over 25 years. Trained as a mechanical designer at Stanford University, Mark has experience in all aspects of bringing a product to market. He is passionate about the role of great design as an element and a facilitator of corporate strategy, and he consults regularly with leaders on how to transform their businesses through design.
Prior to founding argodesign with his longtime colleague Mark Rolston, Mark was the President and Chief Business Officer for Globant, an emerging market leader in software innovation out of Latin America.
From 2002 to 2012, Mark held various roles inside of frog design, ultimately taking over as the Chief Development Officer in 2007, where he oversaw frog's entry into the world of first-party application development, among other duties. It is the business of design that Mark enjoys most, which is his focus area at argo-helping clients find competitive advantage by embracing the world of product innovation.
Job Titles:
- Chief Creative Officer
- Founder
Chances are good that at least one piece of technology in your life has a piece of Mark Rolston thinking behind it. Former Chief Creative Officer of frogdesign, and a renowned designer for over 30 years, Mark was one of the earliest design pioneers in software, helping forge the disciplines around user interface design and mobile platforms. He has worked with the world's leading companies- Disney, Magic Leap, DreamWorks, Salesforce, GE, Microsoft, and AT&T.
While leading the design of early large systems such as SAP's enterprise platform and the Dell.com website in the late 1990s, Mark developed the earliest expression of Atomic Design, translating the building of component libraries for app development to design problems. In the early 2000s, Mark helped define multiple mobile interface platforms for Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Microsoft, Sprint and many others. Combined, the resulting design work produced many of the key UX methods now used daily by billions around the world on iOS and Android.
During 20 years at frogdesign, he founded its software design capability, transforming the company into a powerhouse in this new field. In 2005, Mark took over as Global Chief Creative Officer, continuing to drive frog's success and explosive growth.
In 2014, Mark founded argodesign with an ethos of "think by making"-meaning that the materiality of the craft itself informs the output. Eight years later, argo has grown from 4 people to over 100, with studios in Austin, Amsterdam, Munich, and New York. Mark and his team at argo continue to define new paradigms including interfaces for AI, mixed reality, enterprise services, and interactive light.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Head of People
Meg focuses on creating a culture of support that is transparent, open, and flexible; an employee experience that attracts and grows the best and brightest talent. Passionate about helping businesses find success through the growth, empowerment, and retention of their best assets - their people - Meg believes in HR as a true strategic partner to the business that creates organizational connective tissue.
Her leadership roles over the past decade have included VP of People at Serenova, VP of Human Resources at uShip, and Director of HR at frog design.
She also serves on the board of directors at Talent Robot, a mentor at Capital Factory in Austin, Texas, and serves as an advisor for People Tech Partners.
Job Titles:
- Head
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Head of Creative, New York
Job Titles:
- Head of Finance
- Member of the Leadership Team
Rachel has a 20-year track record of strong communication, detailed analysis, and critical thinking skills.
Before argo, Rachel served as VP of Group Reporting and Accounting at Butterfield Bank, where she was responsible for the consolidation of all financial results for eight local companies and eight overseas jurisdictions.
She previously worked in analyst and manager roles at Marsh Management Services and Citibank in Trinidad and Tobago.
Job Titles:
- CMO
- COO
- Founding Partner
- Member of the Leadership Team
Renae runs company operations, ensures a strong and healthy company culture, and oversees all marketing functions. She delights in working with the product design world's biggest thinkers, enjoying their energy and optimism, and paving the way for their ideas to blossom.
Renae has spent more than 20 years helping innovative companies reach their aspirations through effective leadership, business management, and marketing expertise. Her work with companies large and small in the tech arena includes nearly ten years at Dell Computer, where she developed new models of demand generation and brand management through thoughtful customer segmentation.
As a non-profit leader, she has expanded the reach of community organizations with a welcoming approach to volunteer recruitment, fundraising, and program development.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Managing Director, EMEA
Sebastian is Managing Director, EMEAI in argodesign's Munich studio. He has worked in client relations and sales across industries for 20 years, starting in private and investment banking and later at globally renowned design firms. He has strong business acumen, consulting customers on the challenging journeys of transformational experience design projects.
Before joining argo, Sebastian worked as Executive Director at frog design and later Capgemini Invent. Consulting industry-independent, his focus was mostly on large-scale experience platforms, organizational change, and projects combining the spatial and digital realms across the globe. During this time, he built strong relationships with leading companies in the European Market like Adidas, Allianz, Bosch, IKEA and Siemens.
In the last 5 years Sebastian helped expand the organization's footprint by focusing on client relations in the Middle East, Turkey, India, and Southeast Asia. Working closely with global teams across disciplines, Sebastian focuses on strong collaboration between clients and client partners to enable true change that has lasting results while providing seamless experiences.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- General Manager, EMEA
Servé is responsible for operations, finance and creative management in Amsterdam. With his mixed background of computer science and industrial design engineering, Servé leverages his knowledge of technology to construct design solutions that work from a user's business and technology perspectives.
His sector expertise includes public transportation, aviation, finance, retail, technology infrastructure, telecommunication and travel.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- General Manager, Austin
- Innovation Consultant
Sonia is an accomplished innovation consultant and experienced design leader. She enjoys working with clients to craft partnerships through which argodesign can deliver high impact design services to meet business objectives as nimbly as possible.
Sonia's background managing projects across the full product design life cycle gives her hands-on experience with all aspects of the process. Sonia helped establish and build the PMO at argodesign. She now manages argo's largest studio, with a focus on client partnerships, studio operations, and bridging design delivery with backend operations.
Sonia was previously with frog design and Gensler. When she's not in the studio, she is playing tennis, skiing, and fussing over her bungalow and Jack Russell Terrier, Georgie Best.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Head of Creative, Amsterdam
Tjeerd provides design leadership, client account and business development, and strategic directions and future vision for clients. He brings 25+ years in the design and development of experiences for digital services and technology-amplified products, across the US, Europe, and Asia.
Tjeerd was involved in creative leadership at frog design for over a decade. After starting their Seattle studio, Tjeerd took on a global leadership role in frog's software realization practice as Vice President of Creative, where he worked with clients including Volkswagen, IKEA, Ahold, Nokia, and Siemens.
He was previously Director of Design for Windows at Microsoft, where he spent 13 years designing user interfaces for some of the most widely used software products and platforms in the world.