News & Announcements
Key Takeaways from Industry Talk with Megan Staake: Insights for Strategic Design Students
The conversation with Megan Staake, a Principal at Boston Consulting Group’s design and technology division, offers valuable insights into the practical application of strategic design in enterprise environments. Her journey from graduate school to leading complex product development initiatives provides a roadmap for students navigating the intersection of design thinking, business strategy, and technological implementation. Understanding Strategic Design in Practice Strategic design extends far beyond the conceptual frameworks taught in academic settings. Megan’s experience reveals that successful strategic design requires thinking about scalability from the very beginning, not just creating compelling prototypes or minimum viable products. The difference between academic…
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From SDM to Adobe: Tanvi’s path, portfolio strategy, and job search playbook
Tanvi returned to share what her job in experience research looks like, how she structured a portfolio that got attention, and the habits that kept her job search moving. It was honest, specific, and very usable for anyone aiming at product teams. Five takeaways to act on this week Apply fast on the company website. Use LinkedIn to find roles, not to hit Easy Apply. Treat your portfolio like a set of short books. Make each project easy to pick up and hard to put down. Prepare real stories for behavioral interviews. Memorize points, not scripts. Curate 4 to 6…
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Insights from Soumil Panwar: Navigating UX, Strategy, and Career Growth
We recently hosted Soumil Panwar, Senior UX Designer at Optum in Dallas, for an engaging alumni talk. Soumil, a Parsons SDM graduate (Class of 2023), shared his career journey, portfolio strategies, and reflections on navigating the UX and product design industry. Below are the key highlights and insights. Career Journey into UX Soumil’s design path began in India, where he ran his own design agency before moving into UX through client projects in software. At Optum, he started with execution-focused UX tasks but gradually expanded into leading UX research, managing teams, and bridging product strategy with technical feasibility. His journey…
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About
The MS in Strategic Design & Management challenges students to understand business as an inherently creative human undertaking uniquely suited to confront the massive societal and economic shifts of the 21st century. The MS SDM program is situated at the cutting edge of historic changes in how value is understood and created at large through business management, and aims to continue to set the pace in an uncertain world.
Students learn to utilize Design Thinking (DT) methods within applied and contextual ethnographic/design research projects to develop strategies which can be articulated through business models, organizational innovations, and the redesign of both collective and individual cultures and mindsets.