Photograph by Verónica González Mayoral (2018)
I am equal parts design and engineering. I am a Six Sigma Black Belt. I have spent the last two decades working with people from a wide range of disciplines and industries to create award-winning experiences in the world of banking, insurance, healthcare, telco, publishing, and retail. I run a tight ship and have zero tolerance for bad behavior, convoluted architecture, sloppy writing, or dead weight. I have dedicated myself to building healthy environments and healthy habits, en masse. Happy, healthy teams lead to the very best work of our lives — it is what makes or breaks us. Read my writeup on Medium.
My individual sales target for 2020 was $5,000,000. My actual sales were $674,000,000. I became the top-ranked salesperson for design in North America in 2020. I believe in overachieving and striving for greatness. For any given deal, I begin by spending time with business visionaries and subject matter experts, understanding in great depth what we’re trying to sell, the mindset of our buyers, and why they would want to choose us over someone else. Every buyer needs to hear the story in a way that will resonate for them — while there are buyer archetypes, no two buyers are alike. There is no cookie-cutter approach to shaping and selling a deal. By getting creative, putting in some strategic thinking up front, and assembling an elite team, I create compelling, inarguable pitch decks for mega deals.
Step one is to sell. Step two is to deliver. I take tremendous pride in building out incredibly diverse teams, comprised of ethnographic researchers, business designers, service designers, interaction designers, visual designers, data scientists, database engineers, front-end engineers, back-end engineers, and QA engineers. Having a tight-knit, cross-disciplinary team from day one is key to designing and building award-winning experiences. Talent is important, and so is inclusion and diversity. Greatness cannot be achieved in a bubble.
At Stanford University, I majored in cognitive science and human behavior. Little did I know, I would spend the next two decades of my career reframing problems and designing for maximum impact across a wide range of industries and organizations. Stay humble, stay hungry, make good things happen.
Banks are slowly embracing the digital revolution. By defining new ways to connect with customers — meeting them where they are — we can help humanize and harmonize the banking relationship.
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One in four Americans will have to take time off from work when they have a major life event. We can ease the burden of proof and paperwork by humanizing the process via simplified web interactions and thoughtful conversation design.
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Intelligent and easy to use, the My Verizon app meets the needs of 100 million subscribers, providing complete self-service through its intuitive, instantaneous design and conversational interface.
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Stigma still abounds in the world of sexual and reproductive health. By making access significantly more accessible, next-generation care can become a reality for the millions of men and women who need it.
VIEW CASE STUDYI teach in the MFA program for Interaction Design at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). Specifically, I teach courses on leadership, ethics, conversation design, pitch decks, and running design programs at scale. I serve as a board member for three separate organizations that are near and dear to my heart. In 2018, I began volunteering at a prison in Dilley, TX to help the women and children seeking asylum from the extreme violence in their home countries. It is both heartbreaking and haunting, and we must find ways to do more. I believe in giving back, every day.
Andy Madsen, Head of Technology, Planned Parenthood
