My Expertise:
As the Head of International Design, I was brought in to lead the complete strategic and organisational overhaul. My role encompassed intense leadership, strategic planning, and hands-on cultural change:
- Strategic Transformation:
Planned and led the design strategy, including creating a North Star Vision and defining six core OKR streams to align design excellence with critical business and customer needs. - Maturity Uplift:
Led a comprehensive programme to uplift design maturity and embed a collaborative, customer-centric culture across the large International delivery team. - Team Empowerment:
Recruited, coached, and mentored the International Design Team, elevating their confidence, visibility, and expertise (e.g., mentoring success led to one designer transitioning to a dedicated Design System role at a major company). - Friction Removal & Process Improvement:
Systematically removed foundational delivery blockers, such as securing a dedicated research budget and creating a generic GDPR/NDA process, which eliminated a 3-day approval delay per session.
The challenge:
The large International delivery team, despite shipping products, lacked a unified design direction, strategic vision, and a cohesive, respected design function. Design was often an afterthought, resulting in:
Low Maturity:
A significant gap in HCD principles, communication, and continuous feedback loops.
Siloed Function:
A demoralised UX team that lacked influence and was unable to contribute strategically to product decisions.
Delivery Friction:
Organisational bureaucracy (e.g., lengthy research approvals) and technical debt (components built from scratch) severely hampered speed and quality.
"I am extremely impressed with how Emma took immediate control of the design function, identified key uplift areas, and put a strong plan in place. She doggedly secured the resources needed and followed up to ensure success. Her business case documentation was above par and very convincing" .
Purnima Fernando
GM International Delivery, PEXA


























