About me

I am a sounding board and creative partner to the world’s most ambitious leaders. I also augment existing teams to advance high-stakes creative work and to elevate critical in-person gatherings.

For the last decade, I’ve worked as a senior creative leader at IDEO, where I became the firm’s principal storytelling expert and Executive Design Director, delivering design and innovation for some of the world’s greatest organizations and their leaders. I’m also the co-creator and lead instructor of the acclaimed online course, Impactful Presentations, from IDEO U. Recent speaking engagements include keynotes at SXSW and Design Korea.

I’m British by birth, American by love, and global by curiosity and wonder. My early years were split between singing in an English cathedral choir and expat life in Saudi Arabia. Later, I graduated from Oxford in philosophy & theology, then trained in classical acting at LAMDA in London. I acted in and composed music for West End plays, before following my nose into journalism at the BBC. There I wrote and produced documentaries about arts and ideas, and eventually morphed into an award-winning, continent-jumping global news correspondent for the World Service and US public radio. I play jazz. I cook. I hoard books.