Meet Your Mentors

Andrew began working in tech when internet modems operated at 11kb per second and made that funny noise while dialing up. Most recently he has been working in stealth mode on a disruptive startup that aims to safely give every human being on earth their own artificially intelligent super powers - Simby.

Prior to Simby, Andrew was leading a UX design team at Google in Mountain View California, focusing on deep tech and the products of the future. He was responsible for envisioning, prototyping, and building product solutions that affect the daily lives of billions of human beings. He is a TEDx speaker and has worked as a technology advisor in customer experience for a number of high profile multinational organisations in New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Berlin and Sydney. With a wealth of real world experience, Andrew loves to help fellow UX designers to reach their personal or project related goals while being able to remain true to themselves, and the needs of their customers.

Elizabeth (Liz) is a versatile, strategic and pragmatic UX professional with 20+ years experience in designing, developing and transforming market-leading digital products and customer experiences for B2C, B2B and B2B2C businesses in both start-ups and enterprise settings. She has held many Head of UX roles in Financial Services, Telecommunications, Media, and Health and Wellness industries, working on award winning products and helping these companies build their design teams and capabilities.

Liz is passionate about creating experiences that deliver WIN-WIN for business and customer, by combining UX with agile, lean-startup and Human-Centred-Design (HCD) approaches. She enjoys working on the full customer experience life cycle from ideation, strategy & vision through to development, execution and delivery. She also loves coaching individuals and teams towards high performance, and supporting them to achieve the best versions of themselves.

Ken has over 17 years experience in UX design, most of which has focused on mobile strategy and design. As Head of UX at Fairfax Media, Ken received multiple Australian Mobile awards for his user centred, mobile led contribution to iconic Australian brands such as the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), Domain, Good Food Guide and Realestate.com.au. Throughout his tenure, Ken’s leadership saw Fairfax double its UX capability and he was instrumental in the launch of key flagship products including the Domain mobile app, which many of us use every day.

Ken has a passion for tackling complex design challenges and turning these into experiences that feel second nature to consumers and it’s this drive that gets him out of bed every morning. This project is a unique opportunity to be mentored by one of Australia’s leading UX designers and we’re so excited to welcome Ken to the Harness Projects mentor team.

Andrew has been designing for over 18 years – starting out as a graphic designer before moving across into digital. He’s worked on projects for household names for both agency-side and client-side.

Moving up the design ladder, Andrew now focuses his energies on user experience as the UX Manager for Vodafone Australia. Andrew relishes a challenge and with solid experience leading UX teams on complex, large scale projects he’s seen his fair share of action. Andrew is a passionate customer advocate and derives his own personal satisfaction from creating experiences that make customer’s lives easier whilst adding value to the products he works on.

Mike has been leading product and design teams for over 20 years. Starting in the madness of the dot com bubble, Mike's career has taken him from fast-growing startups to multinational corporations in Sydney, London and Tokyo and on to some of the biggest tech brands in Australia.

Mike is currently Head of Product at Mad Paws. He was previously Head of Product & Design at Gumtree, part of the eBay Classifieds Group, and Head of Experience at Hipages, Australia's largest two-sided marketplace for home services. Before that, Mike led design and product management for mobile innovation on the CommBank app.

Driven by the belief that the best customer experiences are made by passionate, empowered people, Mike is committed to coaching individuals to success and guiding organisations to new levels of product and design maturity.

Sue-Lin has 15 + years of experience working in various industries, from finance to media, building meaningful customer experiences. She started her career as a web developer and business analyst. Along the way, she has acquired an MBA and two children, in that order.

Sue-Lin works at the intersection of technology and business and is passionate about delivering products with a clear strategic vision. She is innately curious about the customer experience, thinking about the big picture of the product and how each detail can contribute. Currently, she leads digital solutions & innovation for a commercial real estate company, always asking the question ‘what’s the problem you are trying to solve?” With various real-life experiences across many projects, Sue-Lin is keen to share this knowledge and work with up and coming designers.

With over 14 years professional experience transforming business challenges into customer benefits and commercial impact, Alexis knows her way to unify disparate teams through a UX vision and build design capabilities from the ground up. She is passionate about service design and has a holistic approach to customer experience and designing digital products. Having worked with global and national brands in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, automobile, and food conglomerates across various roles in UX Design, Analytics, Digital Sales, Marketing and Advertising, Alexis has a wealth of real-world knowledge and learnings to share with our new generation of designers. In her current capacity as Head of UX and Design in HSBC Australia, she leads a team of designers and enjoys spending her time educating and coaching people in applying design thinking concepts in their work. She also strongly encourages the adoption of experimentation and measuring UX effectiveness in digital journeys.

Laura is a Lead UX Designer and Mentor from Paris. While her background is in Art Direction, it’s no surprise that she naturally ended up in UX, a career that blends her passion for design with her interest in human behaviors, technology and business.

She is a hardcore problem solver and brings over 10 years of extensive industry experience across B2C and B2B companies (within agencies, startups, and consultancy), and remote teams. Part pragmatist, part aesthete, she specialises in solving problems with seamlessly intuitive yet beautifully executed UX solutions. She is a big picture thinker, and delivers digital products with a clear strategic vision, down to the details.

As a mentor, you can expect her to share many industry insights, tips about career growth, and technical support. She will make sure you leave the program with as much UX knowledge as possible and some strong confidence about your newly acquired skills.

When not at work, you’ll find Laura hiking in nature, observing creatures deep in the ocean, improving her photography skills, or doing yoga.

With 15+ years of Product, Design and UX experience including numerous start-up and enterprise successes with global brands, some say Nima knows a thing or two about designing products that people want.

After a decade of mastering his craft, in 2017 Nima co-founded 'We Discover' a customer-centric digital agency focused on creating meaningful experiences and after creating a multimillion-dollar business in under 3 years he took his next big challenge, becoming the Chief Product Officer in 2020 at an emerging prop-tech company. He aimed to prove that a 100% customer-centred approach will deliver the most desired and profitable product to market irrespective of how "old and resistant to change" the industry is.

Nima has extensive experience and skill in business and product strategy, understanding human behaviours and desires and knowing how to merge it all to find the best product-market fit.

 

Having worked with design since 2005, Renan is a generalist Designer who navigated through many different settings, was the first Designer brought into a few teams to scale design internally and worked closely with developers for many years. In 2021, Renan joined Helium Creative as their Head of UX / Design Director.

Starting his career in Brazil as a Graphic Designer, then specialising in User Experience (UX) and working in Canada for five years, Renan migrated to Australia and has been working in Sydney since 2016. During this round-the-world life, Renan had businesses, participated in many failed and successful projects, learned a lot about people, design methodologies, and even learned a bit about development. He considers himself a world citizen, entrepreneur, user advocate, passionate about life, and he strives to make the world a tiny bit better every day.

Oliver is a Product Manager at Prezzee, one of Australia's fastest growing tech companies (#15 on Deloitte Fast 50, 2020) where he leads New Product Development. He previously founded his own fintech start-up, Moneycado, which used open banking rails to co-ordinate and settle debts in groups. Moneycado is an alumni of Founders Factory accelerator programme.

Oliver believes that product managers should be creative as much as they are logistical. They are story-tellers, whether the medium is mock-ups, memos or presentations, and the anchoring voice in matters of strategy and decisions. He loves to use jobs-to-be-done to understand customers deeply, then draw on design tools to bring ideas to life quickly and effectively.

Working for start-ups, enterprise and B2B, Damien’s UX experience spans eCommerce, search aggregation, journalism and weather. Blending UX with service design, Damien thrives on creating simple solutions from complex challenges by seeking that sweet balance between desirability, feasibility and viability. He is currently a Senior UX designer and UX Research SME for Vodafone Australia, leading mobile, app and web projects from research to launch.

Damien holds a Masters in Digital Media and continues his own learning by studying various aspects of design—from gamification and speculative design to UX writing—allowing him to bring an explorative approach to nurture students' curiosity.