Design Leadership
I help organizations become customer obsessed through strategic design leadership & by scaling design thinking across teams.
I work at the intersection of User Experience, Innovation, Product & Strategy. And have experience managing Product, Design and cross-functional teams, across different industries, from start-ups to large multinationals and cross-cultural interdisciplinary teams. I can deal with the politics of a matrix organisation and spot the gaps that are easier to see with fresh eyes and an external perspective.
But most of all, I’m a connector and bridge builder and love solving hard problems, working with people and getting into action mode.
My deepest expertise is in Fintech and Payments but I’ve worked across many fields and consistently find that creative problem solving & Collaboration are required across industries, in B2B or B2C contexts, and even more so in globally dispersed teams.
LEADERSHIP EXAMPLE PAYPAL
PayPal Credit
Developing the 1st European credit solutions for PayPal
I led a great team interdisciplinary Design team to build the credit solutions for the various EMEA markets that met the different legal, risk and compliance criteria while delivering a simple UX, from revolving lines to rate payments and pay in 3. The first challenge was to build the UK revolving line, followed by market-relevant value propositions for Germany, France, Italy & Spain.
PayPal Credit UK got voted Best Retail Finance Provider at the 2024 Smart Money People’s Consumer Credit Awards - for the third year in a row.
My role in building relevant solutions for different markets
Across the wider product team my role was to facilitate requirements gathering and lead workshops with multiple stakeholders, from legal to risk, business, marketing, compliance and with the product teams in particular, especially during the discovery stages. After initial global meetings with the US credit teams and Billmelater, the main task was to get the right European stakeholders on board, and work with the regional legal and compliance requirements.
This was particularly important as PayPal was applying for a banking license at the same time, for it’s European operations.
Throughout this time from discovery through to launch and beyond, I led the European Credit Design team and eventually the Global Credit Design team to develop concepts, flows and work with UXR to plan in-market usability testing, design work and execution.
Outcomes & Learnings
// The core value of Design teams lies way before things get pixel perfect - in challenging assumptions, testing use cases, prototyping options and thereby de-risking the entire build.
// Doing early requirements gathering and discovery work with the core team on-site/in the same space builds crucial trust relationships and creates real team culture.
// Building for different market requirements and legal environments is where complex problems become truly interesting, especially aligning user needs with legal and compliance.
PRODUCT DESIGN LEADERSHIP FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION
Developing new products or simplifying legacy portfolios, setting up Design Operations, COACHING or leading Product Design teams…. let’s talk!
My approach to life, work & design
I’ve worked in many areas of UX and Product Design and started my carrier in UX Research. I’ve worked in the product-model and closely collaborated with Product & Engineering for many years. And led design teams and interdisciplinary teams, across time zones and continents.
My focus is always people first - whether that’s users, customers or employees, but I clearly see the need to balance customer & business value. You can’t serve anyone without revenue.
The product community is my tribe - but my strength lies in getting teams to work together, solve complex problems, map out logic and collaborate across silos.
I’m a systems thinker and generalist, with interests in many different fields. I like taking things apart and putting them back together as team so complexity becomes easier to grasp and everyone can get into action mode.
Being able to zoom in and out to operate at different flight heights, depending on the people in the room is what others say I do well. And a skill I’m constantly iterating on - because I appreciate it very much in others too.
Free resources
What?
This template is a team activity for joint self-reflection. The activity is called "Talk to the hand." It provides time to reflect on the learnings and moods of the past week as a team.
Helps you to achieve
Team collaboration, trust building, getting to know each other better, and taking time to reflect (mindful leadership).
Who would benefit
Hybrid & remote teams, especially globally dispersed teams and leaders/team leads who want to lead with empathy and mindfulness.
Don’t just believe me.
“I worked closely with Talke on some complex operational projects that affected both of our teams (content and design) here at PayPal. Talke has the unique ability and deep experience that allow her to see the big picture of a process and still understand the intricacies and details that are the most difficult to resolve. She is organized, incredibly productive, and empathetic at the same time. While crafting a process and putting in place guidelines she uses the same UX skills that have made her a successful designer: she never loses sight of the individuals that need to use that process while bringing efficiency and clarity to the experience.
Apart from her competence, Talke is also a much beloved colleague.”
— Ulrike Irmler, Senior Director Product | Content | Internationalization
”Talke developed and facilitated a Discovery & Requirements Gathering offsite for us. These two days really kicked off cross-team collaboration and product/design thinking and provided the momentum we needed to drive action internally....”
— Maxfield Weiss, CEO CDP Europe
“Talke identified processes and values that needed to be embedded into the ‘DNA’ of our organisation in order to be able to implement purpose-led strategic change at pace.
— Hilary Laing, CFO Steady
"Talke truly stands out in a global product design organization as a leader in every sense of the word. She has built a solid reputation across continents and organizational groups to do what’s best for the customer and her teams. She brings brilliant strategic thought, a meticulous attention to detail, and a deep sense of empathy to everything she does.”