Hi, I’m Laura. With over 25 years’ experience as an innovation partner for global brands, I help organizational leaders successfully drive innovation, navigate change, and achieve their goals.

But things didn’t start out that way.

I was a professionally licensed architect who became increasingly interested in the human side of the design process - specifically how architects worked with their clients and other stakeholders, and the impact those relationships had on the design of the built environment. This interaction design was missing from my formal education so I intuitively began to prototype alternative career paths long before this approach was acknowledged as a way to craft one’s own professional life. I eventually returned to graduate school and shifted my focus towards the broader world of product and service design.

Everything changed after that.

I spent a decade as an Associate Partner at world-renowned design consultancy IDEO where I helped launch two practice areas and was responsible for the creation and delivery of highly collaborative, discovery-driven innovation programs for numerous Fortune 500 companies.

But an insatiable curiosity about why some innovations succeeded and many others did not led to an important discovery – successful change efforts are the result of relationship-driven leadership, not simply the introduction of a new technology or the application of a novel business model.

A new professional chapter was launched.

I shifted my focus once again to support the growth of innovation leaders, created a graduate seminar in Design Leadership at the Yale School of Architecture, and served as a Principal in Korn Ferry’s Leadership and Professional Development practice. Today I lead my own practice as an ICF-certified coach, professional mediator, and designer-facilitator of leadership development programs.

I am inspired by all who dream of making the world a better place, and it’s my passion to help them realize their true creative power.

CHALLENGE YOURSELF