Professional Bio
Sarah has a background in business development and strategy, with progressive responsibility leading and influencing brand, marketing, product development, and commercialization strategy for over $400M in enterprise tech solutions. Those solutions have crossed the spectrum of platform technologies, flexible APIs, raw data exchange, SaaS data science tools, and artificial intelligence in the supply chain, sustainability, and the financial services industries.
In each of these roles, her passion has been fostering systemic cultures of innovation and humanizing the challenges being solved by big data. In her work, she has helped build out and introduce rigor around product innovation programs, championed design thinking to solve business challenges, and fully redesigned how a globally matrixed team collaborates across the full go-to-market process to embrace innovation.
Now, complemented by a Master of Design + Innovation (MDI) degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a focus on design strategy, Sarah's work as an interdisciplinary designer is helping flexibly bring the right user-centered solutions to the right markets to drive meaningful change.
Education
2023
M.S. Design + Innovation
University of Wisconsin-Madison
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Master of Science in Design + Innovation (MD+I) is an accelerated masters program that equips students with the skills and knowledge necessary to design, develop and implement innovative products, services and systems. With a foundation in human- and life-centered design, MD+I students have the opportunity to work on real-world projects in collaboration with industry, community and academic partners.
Highlights:
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Gain exposure to design thinking ideologies across from five of UW-Madison’s Schools and Colleges including: Engineering, Human Ecology, Business, Information School, and Art
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Work within interdisciplinary teams to complete real-world projects in conjunction with industry partners including a major U.S. airline, local artists and professors, and large credit union, and a host of industry experts.
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Independent studies that explored novel applications of design thinking in business model development, innovation, and corporate strategy
2017
B.S. Life Sciences Communication & Environmental Studies
Certificates in Digital Studies & Entrepreneurship
University of Wisconsin-Madison
The Department of Life Sciences Communication (LSC) is one of the world’s leading science communication programs, working at the intersection of science, media and society. The LSC major teaches students how to understand the way we all make sense of increasingly complex scientific breakthroughs. This theoretical background is a foundation to effectively communicate about controversial science topics in areas such as the environment and natural resources, health, agriculture and new science technologies like gene editing and artificial intelligence.
At the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, students pursuing an Environmental Studies degree not only learn about current environmental issues, they also learn how to link environmental science, policy, and humanistic approaches to another chosen field of study.
About
an uncertain description of me
I’m not really sure how I would describe myself because I like to do so many things.
Most would start by saying I have a Master’s degree in design; the thinking kind more than anything. An ever-growing student that used to study the inner workings of life, and nature, and science, and how we tell stories about them all. One that studies businesses, and learns new industries, works in the digital world but prefers the analog, and still isn’t quite sure how all of that adds up to some sort of succint description of me.
Sometimes I'll say something about how I like to connect people and things and processes. In the past I've grown revenue, launched campaigns, led projects and ran meetings. I used to try and label it. The personal tags and identifiers ranged from digital marketing to analytics, research and thought leadership, to global product marketing, go-to-market strategy, and product development. But I'm not sure what that "is," and I'm not quite sure it describes me.
But I am a rock climber; a yoga teacher; a craft beer drinker; a coach. I'm a writer. Deep thinker, collaborator, and wannabe artist. I'm curious and creative and insatiably hungry to learn about the next thing, it never really matters what.
Some days I feel like a scientist with a keen interest in understanding what makes good ideas tick. I like to dive into research and to read things I don’t understand. I like circling things on white boards. I get excited by infusing my enthusiasm into others, and making progress systemic. Meticulous, day-dreamy, specific, and energetically attuned.
I found out that all of this means I might be a designer, so I think I’d like to be that.
