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I was exceptionally lucky to work with Kazumi several times over her time at McKinsey. She is an excellent designer with a knack for leading teams to the best answer while untying the most tangled of organizational knots. She's also an incredibly valuable and active community member who gives so much back to every single person she touches, both through her mentorship and her volunteer work. I personally cannot wait for the day when we work together again!

Megan Blocker, McKinsey & Co.

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Kazumi was part of my Design leadership team at McKinsey & Company. We worked together on few strategic initiatives. What struck me during those initiatives was her balance of strategy and operational execution. She was equally at ease in discussing 3-5 year strategy with senior leaders and then translating that into a pragmatic roadmap for the teams. Kazumi also has a strong base in design thinking and that allows her to ensure digital products eventually solve the most important customer pain points. I strongly endorse Kazumi for design leadership roles.

Suraj Sharma, McKinsey & Co.

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I had the privilege of working with Kazumi as my design lead on a high-impact, high-priority McKinsey project. She skillfully planned, strategized, and laid the foundation for design work, advocating for users without compromising business goals. Kazumi removed roadblocks and addressed technical and strategic challenges, enabling our team to concentrate on priority objectives while embracing a design-led problem-solving approach. This facilitated the successful launch of a complex product from inception, making the process more fluid and enjoyable for the team. Kazumi is a great design leader, expertly navigating strategy and execution in complex scenarios.

Bernardo Horta, McKinsey & Co.

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Kazumi showed excellent design management skills while being the main contact window with Panasonic HQ in Japan, and our two US offices. She guided both teams and demonstrated a high degree of expertise in the project despite communication barriers. Her translation skills were always spot on as she was an effective communicator allowing the team to generate project deliverables. Kazumi doesn't hesitate to roll up her sleeves to get the work done. On numerous occasions during our workshops she provided invaluable design direction to the team and project.

Eric Zhu, Industrial & UI Designer

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I worked with Kazumi on a number of issues related to international search. Her background in design and her attention to detail made her the ideal person to help us fix our Japanese search, which has measurably improved by leaps and bounds thanks almost entirely to her. She has also been a source of many excellent ideas on how to improve search relevance, localized results, and user experience. Finally, she's always a pleasure to work with and is able to get along with even the most abrasive engineers.

James Wilson, Senior Software Engineer at Google

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In 2002, we began volunteering together, and one year later, the volunteer group was incorporated as a non-profit organization. She provides the organization with a US perspective and helps establish connections to the local community, when most of the organization staff are Japanese. In the past decade that I’ve known her, she has gone through various challenges in life, and through these difficulties, she is stronger and more resilient. She is not phased by most anything...In this day and age, it is very hard to find any stability or continuity. She has the skill to gather the information and resources needed to calmly make decisions on how to overcome various challenges.

Noriko Hino, co-founder and former ED of NY de Volunteer, ex-Googler

Design Leadership

As a Director or Head of Product Design, I can:

• Grow a design organization through hiring designers and researchers and assigning them to proper projects.

• Educate various functions in business about the value and impact of design so that they will collaborate with designers and implement the solutions for better outcomes.

• Improve design team morale and efficiency by:
-- Enhancing communication between design and other functions.
-- Raising the design literacy/maturity of the entire organization.
-- Removing obstacles.
-- Mentoring designers on how to collaborate effectively and discovering what energizes them.

• Sell and negotiate design consulting services to prospective clients by discovering the clients’ needs, pain-points and objections, and supporting the sales team to close the deal.

McKinsey & Company

Promoted twice in 6+ year tenure, from Senior Product Designer to Senior Product Design Manager based on success in executing high-profile, urgent, firm-wide DX (digital transformation) initiatives.

• Managed, hired, coached and mentored other designers and researchers.

• Directed designing of a firm-wide engagement document archiving system, which launched in unprecedented time frame of three months, reaching 100% adoption within one year.

• Innovated and streamlined engagement risk case management process to automate due diligence and risk assessment triage to drastically decrease litigation risk. Resolved friction and pain-points in risk management, and mediated conflicts of interest between partners and risk/compliance managers. Increased partner completion rate of the engagement risk assessment survey from 20% to +90%.

• Designed and launched a streamlined, browser-based search engine for engagement data collected since the 1950’s. Improved protection of data assets through role-based access and usage tracking.

• Digitized and automated new shareholder and managing partner election process.

• Led workshops and user research efforts to create a service blueprint and get holistic picture of cross-functional user journeys for entire engagement process from beginning to end.

Entrepreneurship

• Co-founded a design firm and ran it for 5 years, learning many hard lessons along the way on how to sustain a business—Basic concepts learned (they're cliches for a reason): Givers gain. You can't change other people but I can change myself. Delegate work that is not the best use of my time. Unique value proposition. Teamwork. Listening to customers. Cashflow. Biggest lesson: Well-defined structures and procedures, duplicatable with everyone involved, can turn "self-employment" into a sustainable, scalable business 'system'.

• At Panasonic, I learned that companies create people first, then products. Panasonic was founded by a legendary entrepreneur, Konosuke Matsushita, who only graduated from elementary school, but went on to create his company from his garage, initially making 2-headed lightbulb sockets, a product that his former employer refused to make. [photo caption: vintage Panasonic radio, original Nintendo Family Computer, and a vintage camera.]

• At Shutterstock.com, I learned to be Agile and be 'lean & scrappy.'

Non-Profit Boards

• Co-founded NY de Volunteer (nydevolunteer.org), a non-profit that is still running for over 20 years during which 1000+ volunteer events were facilitated with 10,000+ participants.

• Treasurer of Mahayogi Yoga Mission for over 20 years.

• Passion and clear vision motivate people. Board and staff alignment is key to making sure this happens.

• Everyone is a leader—Leaders make other leaders. When you empower people, they turn into self-organizing teams.

Design leader with 15+ years of wisdom in uncovering actionable insights to solve problems, mediate/resolve conflicts, and transform obsolete practices and behaviors:

• Solves problems by listening to various points of view across all levels in an organization, and brining them to light, getting alignment with stakeholders for resolution and implementation of appropriate solutions.

• Leads workshops and user research efforts to create service blueprints, get holistic pictures of cross-functionaluser journeys, identify recurring issues and pain-points, and provide actionable insights for product strategy and priorities. Disseminate Design Thinking and Agile methodology to teams and groups which may be antagonistic or unfamiliar with these processes.

• Mentors UX designers/researchers across various geographies, on mediating conflicts between users, product managers, developers, and business stakeholders to improve morale and efficiency.

Read Resume for more details
To receive a password-protected potfolio of the problems I've solved and the outcomes I produced in my past work, contact me.

Experience Highlights

What People have said

Three Pillars of My Design Leadership

1. Servant Leadership

I aim to lead by serving others - through active listening, empathy, and being agenda-free. True service, to me, means to serve without any expectation of results, approval or anything in return. (Easier said than done.) I exist to remove obstacles, mentor others, and lead by doing my best to serve.

2. Intersectional Point of View

Being atypical (Asian, non-binary, neurodivergent) means I see things from a unique, intersectional point-of-view. Wherever I go, I create a sense of safety for others to be authentic and vulnerable at work, which allows the team to take calculated yet bold risks, fail fast, and succeed.
Read my article, "Designing for neurodivergent users and users with disabilities is good for all users" published in Bootcamp on Medium.com

3. Power of the Collective Wisdom

I have experienced that the best solutions often come from everyone coming together (regardless of role or function) and listening to one another, without attachment. This active and detached listening creates an opening, a silent space for innovative and amazing solutions to emerge.

What can I do for You?

Based on the 20+ years of experience in design and leadership, these are the three main things I have excelled at in various organizations.

1. Cross Functional Leadership

With experience in starting both a for-profit business and a non-profit organization, as well as working for startups and multi-national corporations, Through Design Thinking & problem-solving workshops, I can lead groups of people from various roles, levels and functions who may have conflicting interests, to align on a shared vision and implement it.

2. Stakeholder Management

I am great at managing stakeholders with varying expectations and levels of comfort with design and technology. I aim to be as objective, neutral and diplomatic as possible, without the need to prove anything or add my own agenda. I exist to break apart the silos and factions within an organization for a more transparent, open dialogue, innovation, collaboration and progress.

3. User Centered Design in tune with Business and Technology

As a designer, I aim to be a fierce advocate for users, and at the same time, deliver within budget on time. Business and Technology have their priorities and limitations, and Design needs to learn to compromise and negotiate, while still advocating for a seat at the table and never forgetting the users. I play well with senior stakeholders and engineers, and speak their languages.

Experience Highlights

What People have said

What can I do for You?

Kazumi Terada | Product Design Leader