AI4 · Strategy & prototyping · 2025-26

From strategy to product and back

I helped a founder-led team working at the intersection of AI research and restorative justice sharpen their value proposition for volunteer conflict mediators in high-crime US neighbourhoods. We aligned their academic research, product research, and theory of change into a cohesive strategy, then built a prototype to test whether a tool grounded in trauma-informed and positive-computing principles could support the mediators.

Design decisions followed from the sensitivity of the work: a trauma-informed framework, privacy-first throughout, and a community-owned, democratically governed RAG model called Olive to assist facilitators without attempting to interpret or change their state. The result was a prototype both community-testable and funder-ready, enabling further research and fundraising.

European Investment Bank · Programme design · 2024-25

Scaling circular practice across forty cities

A four-year programme to move forty European cities toward circularity, designed as a workshop suite intended to run at scale without me. Round one taught us three things: local facilitators needed more tools to champion the cause internally and move their stakeholders along; the prospect of funding was a major motivator for many cities, more than that of sustainable outcomes; and city readiness to actually implement circular projects varied wildly.

Three moves got us to upticks in both city satisfaction and project fundability. We cut some of the deeper content in favor of a more focused flow. I added handrails in the form of a blueprint letting each city pick their own path, to balance standardisation and flexibility. And we shifted some the content focus toward enabling the champion to do the relational work of building their internal network of influence.

Circle Economy with C40 & ICLEI · Digital products · 2021-25

Ganbatte & the Knowledge Hub

Online products for cities to benchmark their circularity and find solutions to act on it. Ganbatte launched with emissions, materials and jobs data for 6,000 cities - developed with ICLEI, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, UNEP and Metabolic - while the Knowledge Hub grew into the largest online library of circular case studies with over 5,000 cases from around the world.

As head of design, I led the product design team, owned the brands and design systems, and shaped the product visions. Our bet was to skew towards action, linking static data with dynamic recommendations via a 'solutions explorer', delivering tailored suggestions based on the city's data. Giving each city an actionable starting point is what gave the products their pull.

"We find Ganbatte a very important and interesting tool to guide new strategies for circular economy and sustainability."

— Maria San Martin, Municipal Secretary of Environment, Brazil