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︎jadforthepeople@gmail.com
︎jadforthepeople@gmail.com
Folio ‘26
︎Download CV
Jad has built his career at the intersection of human-centered design and enterprise strategy — most recently leading AI GTM for Salesforce's Financial Services vertical, where he invented PRISM, built the Experience Strategy Group, and co-architected the JV structures connecting premier financial institutions to pre-market AI. He's drawn to organizations where safety and ambition aren't in tension — where building carefully is the competitive advantage.
When I'm at my best, I feel like I'm continuing the work of the people who shaped how I think: Dave Gray, who taught me to make complexity visible. Bruce Mau, who showed me that design is the act of changing the world. Peter Schwartz, who taught me to see the future as something you architect, not something that happens to you.
#ai_gtm
#prism
#financial_services
#hcd
#research
#salesforce
#2024
#prism
#financial_services
#hcd
#research
#salesforce
#2024
A top 3 bank in North America wanted to be first. They came to Salesforce and Microsoft with the same ask: design a pilot that would produce insights, results, an innovation architecture, and a three-year roadmap. We ran Human-Centered Design workshops across 26 user groups and 12 cities. And then the problem arrived — every line of business had completely different needs. No shared center. No obvious universal play.
We couldn't win the fight that was in front of us. So we built an agent to find the one we could win.
The result was PRISM — now Salesforce's official AI prioritization framework across every industry. And a $64M TCV deal. We beat Microsoft.
How we found what every banker actually needed
We couldn't win the fight that was in front of us. So we built an agent to find the one we could win.
The result was PRISM — now Salesforce's official AI prioritization framework across every industry. And a $64M TCV deal. We beat Microsoft.
How we found what every banker actually needed
Media
#ai_gtm
#joint_venture
#innovation_architecture
#financial_services
#research
#salesforce
#2024
#innovation_architecture
#financial_services
#research
#salesforce
#2024
The world's largest banks are under enormous pressure to lead on AI. The risk of getting it wrong — regulatory exposure, data governance failure, reputational damage at institutional scale — is equally enormous. In that environment, a demo doesn't close a deal. Trust does.
The Joint Venture model is built for exactly that tension. It starts with a senior leader whose charter is to accelerate the business through AI, and it ends with a blended Innovation Factory running a continuous engine from proof of concept to enterprise capability. Along the way, the bank gets pre-market access to AI functionality that doesn't exist yet. Salesforce's AI Research team gets something equally rare: real-world production data from the most regulated environments on earth.
How we structure the deal nobody else can offer
The Joint Venture model is built for exactly that tension. It starts with a senior leader whose charter is to accelerate the business through AI, and it ends with a blended Innovation Factory running a continuous engine from proof of concept to enterprise capability. Along the way, the bank gets pre-market access to AI functionality that doesn't exist yet. Salesforce's AI Research team gets something equally rare: real-world production data from the most regulated environments on earth.
How we structure the deal nobody else can offer
Media
#ai_gtm
#innovation_architecture
#platform_strategy
#financial_services
#enterprise_ai
#salesforce
#2023
#innovation_architecture
#platform_strategy
#financial_services
#enterprise_ai
#salesforce
#2023
Genie. CDP. Salesforce GPT. Agentforce. Four names. One product. Three years. The platform story was incoherent, the sales teams were cannibalizing each other's mindshare, and customers — understandably — had no idea what they were buying or why it would change their business.
AI isn't a feature you turn on. It's the emergent capability of your data and your experience, working together. That meant the platform story had to start above the product layer entirely — with a picture of what the business could become, structured around four cases every C-suite needs to believe before they commit.
The result is Innovation Architecture: The reason pilots become platforms.
The four cases that turn confusion into conviction
AI isn't a feature you turn on. It's the emergent capability of your data and your experience, working together. That meant the platform story had to start above the product layer entirely — with a picture of what the business could become, structured around four cases every C-suite needs to believe before they commit.
The result is Innovation Architecture: The reason pilots become platforms.
The four cases that turn confusion into conviction
Media
#innovation_architecture
#experience_strategy #financial_services
#hcd
#salesforce
#2021
#experience_strategy #financial_services
#hcd
#salesforce
#2021
Professional Services at enterprise scale has a dirty secret: the deal closes, and the vision that sold it quietly evaporates. The executive who championed it moves on to the next fire. The implementation team, excellent at what they do, delivers the software. And somewhere between signed and scaled, the thing that was supposed to transform the business becomes a project plan.
The Experience Strategy Group was the answer to that gap. A design-led innovation practice built inside Salesforce to meet the executive moment, carry it through implementation, and turn a point-in-time contract into a continuous engine for growth. $70M in revenue. 18 months. The methodology is now standard operating procedure for Salesforce's Professional Services teams.
How we built it — and why the gap is the hardest part
The Experience Strategy Group was the answer to that gap. A design-led innovation practice built inside Salesforce to meet the executive moment, carry it through implementation, and turn a point-in-time contract into a continuous engine for growth. $70M in revenue. 18 months. The methodology is now standard operating procedure for Salesforce's Professional Services teams.
How we built it — and why the gap is the hardest part
Media
#ai_gtm
#account_planning
#enterprise_strategy
#management_consulting
#salesforce
#2024
#enterprise_strategy
#management_consulting
#salesforce
#2024
The Salesforce account plan was a spreadsheet. A document engineered to satisfy the FinPlan, not to guide it. Sellers worked backwards from a predetermined number, filled in the arithmetic, filed it, and repeated the exercise every quarter. Sales leadership thought they had signal. Q4 disagreed.
The insight that changed everything: Salesforce wasn't selling SaaS anymore. It was selling platform transformation to the C-suite of the world's largest institutions. Management consulting doesn't end at contract close. Neither should the plan.
Today the methodology lives in official Salesforce onboarding and across nine public Trailhead Trails. What started as a fix for a broken spreadsheet is now how Salesforce teaches the world to sell.
From first-grade arithmetic to enterprise-wide vision
The insight that changed everything: Salesforce wasn't selling SaaS anymore. It was selling platform transformation to the C-suite of the world's largest institutions. Management consulting doesn't end at contract close. Neither should the plan.
Today the methodology lives in official Salesforce onboarding and across nine public Trailhead Trails. What started as a fix for a broken spreadsheet is now how Salesforce teaches the world to sell.
From first-grade arithmetic to enterprise-wide vision
Media
#brand_strategy
#brand_design
#business_design
#global
#launch
#2020
#brand_design
#business_design
#global
#launch
#2020
The American Health Care system is broken, and Cigna recognized that their acquisition of Express Scripts was an opportunity to cast off old clay and start over, this time with humans at the center, and a bold message for the Health Insurance industry—we are here to do what y’all don’t, won’t, or can’t.
Health is the starting point of human potential. Without it, we can’t innovate, strive for more, or design our ideal future. So strap in, and keep up. We’re moving onward.
Learn about the birth of Evernorth
Health is the starting point of human potential. Without it, we can’t innovate, strive for more, or design our ideal future. So strap in, and keep up. We’re moving onward.
Learn about the birth of Evernorth
Media
#innovation
#design_thinking
#consulting
#rapid_prototyping
#experience_design
#2015
#design_thinking
#consulting
#rapid_prototyping
#experience_design
#2015
The line between hardware and software is hard to trace, and breaking new products has become less a function of filling an unmet need, and more about plugging into a node of a ubiquitous ecosystem: Alexa, Google Assistant, Android and iOS, Peloton, Fitbit – which software does your wearable work with?
So when one of the world’s most skilled hardware crafters approached us about securing their future, we began by finding them a doorway into the largest product pipeline ever created. Inspired heavily by the Spike Jonze masterwork Being John Malkovich (1999).
Get weird with Lenovo
So when one of the world’s most skilled hardware crafters approached us about securing their future, we began by finding them a doorway into the largest product pipeline ever created. Inspired heavily by the Spike Jonze masterwork Being John Malkovich (1999).
Get weird with Lenovo
Media
News, Cigna
TL;DR IPG RFP FTW FKA AOR
#leadership
#design_ops
#marketing_ops
#transformation
#global
#2021
#design_ops
#marketing_ops
#transformation
#global
#2021
Imagine a jungle-thick field of acronyms, and your prize for deciphering them was a dollar amount with 8 zeroes in it. That’s about as close as I can get to a concise explanation of what it was like running Cigna’s largest re-org and vendor selection program in over a decade.
When I landed at Cigna, I found a marketing function that ran two distinct ecosystems: Cigna ran with an AOR (McCann) and supplemented with internal Creative teams; Express Scripts worked primarily with their own internal Creative teams, and supplemented with dozens of niche agencies. Further even, over a hundred shadow marketing vendors served far-flung business leaders, creating varying degrees of off-brand tactics without the benefit of plugging into the stream of work that was already being done. By virtue, this system was inconsistent, and had challenges ensuring quality of work, and brand integrity.
Alongside our new CMO, I defined a new research-based model, hired a search consulting firm—Burnett Collective, they were awesome to work with—and rounded up a group of Marketing, Comms/PR, and Strategy leaders to put something new in place: A bespoke agency crafted specifically to fit our needs by one of the big 4 holding companies.
The majority of what ensued next is tangled under many layers of NDA’s, but the outcome was that IPG, the owner of our former AOR (McCann), beat out the competition, and fielded a team that blended talent and leadership from R/GA, MRM, Craft, and Initiative. Same holding company, new faces, mission, and operating model.
In the end, we slashed our way through the jungle, and the view from the other side looks lush, and full of potential.
When I landed at Cigna, I found a marketing function that ran two distinct ecosystems: Cigna ran with an AOR (McCann) and supplemented with internal Creative teams; Express Scripts worked primarily with their own internal Creative teams, and supplemented with dozens of niche agencies. Further even, over a hundred shadow marketing vendors served far-flung business leaders, creating varying degrees of off-brand tactics without the benefit of plugging into the stream of work that was already being done. By virtue, this system was inconsistent, and had challenges ensuring quality of work, and brand integrity.
Alongside our new CMO, I defined a new research-based model, hired a search consulting firm—Burnett Collective, they were awesome to work with—and rounded up a group of Marketing, Comms/PR, and Strategy leaders to put something new in place: A bespoke agency crafted specifically to fit our needs by one of the big 4 holding companies.
The majority of what ensued next is tangled under many layers of NDA’s, but the outcome was that IPG, the owner of our former AOR (McCann), beat out the competition, and fielded a team that blended talent and leadership from R/GA, MRM, Craft, and Initiative. Same holding company, new faces, mission, and operating model.
In the end, we slashed our way through the jungle, and the view from the other side looks lush, and full of potential.
Media
Case, Edward Jones
From Wall to Main to Easy.
#experience_strategy
#enterprise_web
#consulting
#transformation
#experience_design
#2019
#enterprise_web
#consulting
#transformation
#experience_design
#2019
Edward Jones has prided itself on being more Main Street than Wall Street, providing the average american with access to financial stability and a prosperous vision of the future, all cemented through a handshake across the threshold of their 6-panel exurban front door.
And like many other vestiges of the Second Industrial Revolution, that version of the American Dream has aged like absolute milk. Over the last 20 years, phenomena like robotrading, retail investing, generational despair, and superstonks have revealed there’s much more occupying the space between Millennnial investors and their financial advisors than a sensible mahogany desk and complimentary mints.
Helping Ed Jones get personal
And like many other vestiges of the Second Industrial Revolution, that version of the American Dream has aged like absolute milk. Over the last 20 years, phenomena like robotrading, retail investing, generational despair, and superstonks have revealed there’s much more occupying the space between Millennnial investors and their financial advisors than a sensible mahogany desk and complimentary mints.
Helping Ed Jones get personal
Media
#brand_strategy
#brand_design
#service_design
#pharma
#rebrand
#2021
#brand_design
#service_design
#pharma
#rebrand
#2021
Pharmacists didn’t go to college for 8 years just to ring out your late night Haribo fix at the back register. Like software engineers, their work, when done effectively, should be invisible. The practice of pharmacy keeps you, the patient in this hypothetical riff, safe from violent and potentially deadly drug interactions, allergic shock, and free of fraud and price gouging—so you can get busy, get better, or be more yourself while doing both.
The same is not true of brands: they fundamentally fail unless their impact is seen and recognized. That’s why we took the task of rebranding the 2nd largest consumer pharmacy on Earth to a place where customers came face to face with the actual people under all of those white coats.
Meet the new Express Scripts Pharmacy
The same is not true of brands: they fundamentally fail unless their impact is seen and recognized. That’s why we took the task of rebranding the 2nd largest consumer pharmacy on Earth to a place where customers came face to face with the actual people under all of those white coats.
Meet the new Express Scripts Pharmacy
Media
#graphic_design
#illustration
#screenprinting
#non-profit
#nationalparks
#contest
#illustration
#screenprinting
#non-profit
#nationalparks
#contest
Typehike is an organization that exists to bolster funding for our National Parks through the power of art and beauty, so we can all get out more into the wilderspaces of our country. They generate hundreds of thousands of dollars by engaging with artists and illustrators to create posters and design objects, then they sell the design products and donate all profits to the NPS. The resulting work has been exhibited in galleries all over the world, and even has a permanent installation at The Library of Congress.
To celebrate the St. Louis Gateway Arch, an iconic work of Midcentury modern design from Eero Saarinen, becoming our nation’s 60th National Park, Typehike held a friendly contest among their 60 curated artist partners—to design a fan favorite poster commemorating Saarinen’s catenary arch.
60 artists. 1 winner.
Check out the design (spoiler: I won)
To celebrate the St. Louis Gateway Arch, an iconic work of Midcentury modern design from Eero Saarinen, becoming our nation’s 60th National Park, Typehike held a friendly contest among their 60 curated artist partners—to design a fan favorite poster commemorating Saarinen’s catenary arch.
60 artists. 1 winner.
Check out the design (spoiler: I won)
Media
