Vanitha Shankar Email & Phone Number

India

Work with HFI clients to drive design maturity and embed design as a business value driver: - Aligning design with strategic business goals, offering services in innovation workshops, optimizing CX, and facilitating design-led transformation. - Conducting innovation audits, creating scalable roadmaps to craft seamless service experiences, and guiding digital products from concept to launch. - Helping brands refine their positioning and visual storytelling, ensuring a cohesive, resonant identity. Focusing on actionable frameworks, I empower teams to generate ideas, enhance customer journeys, and embed design thinking for sustainable growth.Executive trainer leading CUA/ CXA certification tracks for global corporate clients covering innovation strategy, User-centered analysis and conceptual design, omnichannel strategy, service design/design thinking, and practice institutionalization for global learners from leading corporations across SE Asia, the Middle East, Europe, South Africa, and India. I create curated content for HFI clients on Design Thinking, Service Design, Omnichannel strategy.

I partner with innovation/Incubator/startup ecosystems such as BITS, SRM, VIT - Tech business incubator, CIIC, and CEED to enable design-led transformation. I do this by offering specific interventions through:- Full stack design strategy (UX/CX/ Service Design)- Design Impact metrics and SDG-aligned actions- Accelerator/ boot camps/ structured mentorshipI also support centres strengthen innovation ecosystems:- Drive Design-led digital transformation - Institutionalize design & innovation capabilities- Embed Design as a business value driver

CIC is the Chennai center for intellectual excellence. This intrapreneurial role allowed me to use my past global experiences to pilot a practical design, digital, and industry collaboration model. Reporting directly to the governing board of veteran industry shapers from diverse domains, including IT, Finance, Healthcare, Media, Policy & Law, I was directly responsible for architecting:- The Design and Digitization of stakeholder/ membership/ admin workflows, membership touchpoints, and customized workflows using the Zoho product suite (with minimal resources)- Discovery and ideation frameworks for industry professionals/ policy/ academia/ citizen integration & collaboration, curating participatory programs and focus groups (creative culture in traditional environments)- Additional responsibilities included managing corpus growth, membership engagement, governance, and administration (extending the role of design to other aspects)Notable Outcomes: Despite limited resources, we were among the first to Pivot to Digital during the early COVID-19 lockdown, transitioning offline engagement to an online model. This shift enabled seamless adoption for over 500 members, 2000+ attendees, leveraging UX (usability + persuasion) approaches that increased digital engagement, growth, and scale. It also resulted in a streamlined practical and workable approach to the discovery & development of tangible concepts for industry interventions.

United States, Singapore, India

Past: Experience Design & Program management roles at FIS/ Citibank SG/ DCB Bank/ Accenture Innovation Hub, SG:As the Head of client content development at Accenture Innovation Hub SG my role was to:- co-create & facilitate integrated discussions for workshop curation & curate thought leadership from Accenture Leaders for IOT center capability showcase & knowledge mgmtSenior manager at DCB Bank: Reporting directly to the Head of NRI Banking, I used a mixed approach of data and real-world insights to streamline end-to-end customer journeys and simplify complex forms impacting UX by working with Compliance. I was also responsible for APAC NRI business development. Outcome:- Streamlined digital processes (UX & Ops)- Proposed interventional strategies for better TAT. Business Analyst/ Program Manager at Citibank, SG: Reporting to the Regional Business Operations and Tech vertical, I was involved in steering UX/CX program rollouts, facilitating business, tech, and customer collaboration, and detecting gaps for large-scale program migrations. Outcome:- New features resulting in enhanced UX from mainframe to UI's- Sales workflow transformation across geographies using EMC’s Documentum. Usability Analyst and member of FIS's global user-centered design team: - Drive regional UX initiatives and integrate UX design into Fintech product development- Structural & detailed interface design, Usability Testing for call center performance,- Metrics, design systems, and heuristics Outcome: Design Maturity in IDC when UX was very niche During my parental sabbatical;- Enabled digital adoption (B2B & B2C) for notable companies: TravelMall (Travel Mall-Tours) and Being Sattvaa (About Beingsattvaa, Ubud - Co-founded a design-led arts confluence (www.madhuradhwani.org), adopting an ecosystem design model with 2000+ attendees, 80+ volunteers, 15 partners, 50+ artistes and sponsors. I'm an artist, a keen photographer, and a full marathoner.