design thinking story
Nicole Dessain
Why Talent Tales?
Why Talent Tales?

design thinking story

Scaling Capability – A Conversation with IBM’s Damon Deaner

Scaling Capability – A Conversation with IBM’s Damon Deaner

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Damon Deaner, the Director of Employee Experience & Design at IBM.

Damon’s superpower is blending design and technology. He now applies his superpower by using design and tech to enable people experience.

Damon started his journey in design thinking in 2012 when IBM announced that they would bring design back and build a culture of design thinking. Damon joined the newly formed design organization and helped bring developers, engineers, and designers together to use design thinking. From there, he ended up leading all design talent at IBM and conducted several employee lifecycle projects. That caught the attention of the CHRO and eventually Damon was asked to join the HR team to build an employee experience practice.

Acting Agile – A Conversation with Dr. Oetker’s Maike Kueper

Acting Agile – A Conversation with Dr. Oetker’s Maike Kueper

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Maike Kueper, an Agile Culture Development Coach at Dr. Oetker.

Maike’s superpower is curating evidence-based HR approaches which in her mind provide a better way of designing HR programs and processes rather than using a “we’ve always done it this way” approach. An example she shares is how there is research that supports the fact that if performance management only focuses on using extrinsic motivators it can discourage those employees who are mainly motivated intrinsically.

Maike has a humanities background which affords her with a unique point of view around culture and organizational development in her role as Agile coach.

Maike’s focus is on fostering a human-centered and agile mindset at Dr. Oetker rather than just following rigid methods. One way that manifests is in a relentless focus on defining the problem space well before jumping to solutions and iterating small experiments.

Navigating Through Crisis – A Conversation with UChicago Medicine’s Tyler Carroll

Navigating Through Crisis – A Conversation with UChicago Medicine’s Tyler Carroll

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Tyler Carroll, Executive Director of Organizational Climate at UChicago Medicine.

Tyler’s current superpower is (or at least she aspires to it) to stay awake for 24 hours to get everything done that needs to be completed – both a work and at home. BAM! I think many of us wish they had that superpower right about now…

Tyler’s career story is marked by progressing in the field of change management across various functions and organizations. She joined UChicago Medicine six years ago leading a team that is responsible for making this purpose-driven healthcare organization an even better place to work.

Tyler was first exposed to human-centered design when she realized that HR communications were very functional and not so much crafted with the user in mind. She realized that the greatest HR programs can be ineffective if the message is lost because it was not tied to the employees’ experiences.

Blueprinting Service – A Conversation with Intel’s Shira Ben Cohen

Blueprinting Service – A Conversation with Intel’s Shira Ben Cohen

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Shira Ben Cohen, Global Experience Designer at Intel.

Shira’s creative superpower is service blueprinting. A service blueprint is a diagram that visualizes the relationships between different service components — people, props (physical or digital evidence), and processes — that are directly tied to touchpoints in a specific customer journey.

Shira is not only spearheading experience design at Intel, she also writes and speaks about it externally and has built a local community of service designers in Tel Aviv.

Building Belonging – A Conversation with Corgan’s Halima McWilliams

Building Belonging – A Conversation with Corgan’s Halima McWilliams

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Halima McWilliams, People Operations and Culture Leader at Corgan.

Halima’s creative superpower is being strategically creative - connecting the dots with an out of the box approach.

Halima describes herself as a “family reunion aficionado” making family tradition and legacy particularly important to her. She aims to create that same level of connection and belonging in the workplace.