Gretchen Gscheidle, Mpd2 Email & Phone Number

Chicago, Illinois, United States

Chicago, Illinois, United States

Greater Chicago Area

Catalyzer of growth and lasting value for business, society, and Mother Earth. Hands-on research, design strategy, and innovation advisory services. We partnered with startup founders and leaders of established "phygital" (physical and digital) product, service, and SaaS companies from start to end in their solution development efforts. With discovery research/ insight-based foundations and "how might we" classic design thinking, we buckled in with a strategic, structured, and rigorous "whatever it takes" mindset. Our objective was to help iteratively develop and eventually launch/ commercialize designed solutions that make things better for all stakeholders – including Mother Earth.

Evanston, Illinois, United States

I taught "Design Thinking and Communication" (DTC) to engineering undergraduates for four Quarters. See https://design.northwestern.edu/programs/take-design-course/design-thinking-communication/ for more information about the course. The DTC program has existed for 20 years and naturally evolved including remote instruction (one quarter, my students were across 18 time zones!). Regardless of in-person or remote, the learning objectives remain the same and build around hands-on practice in the principles, processes and tools of human-centered design; teamwork; and project management.

Greater Chicago Area

As a precursor to my big career pivot in 2019, I pursued and won the Design Director role within the Innovative Kitchen (it was a metaphor, NOT kitchen cabinetry) leadership organization at Herman Miller, a $2.5B publicly traded global innovation pioneer and research-based problem-solving design leader, ranked #1 in the world for performance seating, #1 in the industry for workplace thought leadership.During my 12 months in the role, my major project was directing to the Concept Proposal milestone in the stage-gate process the design of the "OE1" product portfolio, introduced in 2021. In addition to the Industrial Facility team, I was the liaison to commissioned design studios in Berlin (Studio 7.5), Boston (Catalano Design), and others sprinked throughout the United States. I also had the responsibility of responding to proposals that came in unsolicited from studios around the globe. Another highlight that last year was hosting Herman Miller's new CEO Andi Owen and introducing her to the Innovation Kitchen culture, team, and projects.

Greater Chicago Area

Groomed to take on the leadership of Herman Miller's research operations, I'm proud to say I was the only female to lead in the full 60 years of its storied history. I grew the team, and its impact. Over time, I redeployed the headcount to propel technology innovation by hiring company’s first RDD Director of Future Technology and added experts in education, human factors, design research and communications along with building the practice of hiring annual Research Fellows. We were an internal core team of 15, working with collaborators inside and outside the organization. The work became much more relevant and timely and we generated "pull" from business partners and customers. In the creation of the cross-functional Innovation Kitchen, Herman Miller’s front-end of product development organization, I also became the company's research competency lead with researchers deployed to product commercialization teams.The Living Office Research project was a signature project. I created quantitative and qualitative methodology and assembled the team for this 3-year longitudinal, international research study on the connection between physical space attributes and organizational performance.As the primary representative of Research, I presented to the Board and CEO during R+D-related board meetings and spoke annually to 25+ high sales potential / Tier 1 customers.I fueled growth of the global business by expanding in-house research geographies across 6 continents.Over time, I cultivated numerous strategic relationships, including: • STUMPF WEBER + ASSOCIATES (Minneapolis) • RICHARD HOLBROOK DESIGN (Pasadena)• STUDIO 7.5 (Berlin) • CATALANO DESIGN (Boston) • INDUSTRIAL FACILITY (London) • TZ DESIGN (Brooklyn) • DSCOUT (Chicago)• LEESMAN (London) • RATIO (Indianapolis)• UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, San Francisco | Ergonomics Lab• UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO (Canada) | Department of Kinesiology• UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK (UK) | Warwick Business School

Master Of Science - Ms, Product Design And Development

MPD2 curriculum included 24 discrete subjects; 12 from the Kellogg School of Business, 12 from the McCormick School of Engineering ".

Bachelor Of Fine Arts, Industrial Design, Outstanding Senior In Industrial Design As Voted On By The Faculty

Activities and Societies: Student IDSA