It has been an honor and a privilege to work at Colgate-Palmolive for almost seven and a half amazing years. As I leave, I want to thank my partners, collaborators and teammates. I joined as an outsider – an external ‘design agency’ hire, and leave as the first SVP of Design for Colgate-Palmolive, feeling fully embraced and integrated. I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity. 

Thank you to our amazing Design team around the world. When I started (thank you Yves Briantais for believing in me) we were a packaging (graphics) service. As I look at the team now, we have elevated the impact and influence of Design around the world, from our New York Headquarters to our Regional and local teams. We’ve created Design leadership by promoting and hiring great leaders and we’ve doubled the size of the Design team – filling it with excellent, diverse talent. To my design team — you are the force driving this amazing progress. 

Beyond Packaging
In addition to great Packaging Design – we’ve expanded the definition and expectation of design by adding capabilities like Brand Strategy and Experience, Design and User Research, Content Design, Retail Design and Digital (UX/UI) Product Design and of course – Industrial Design.

We have built an inhouse Design Operations team and capability to elevate the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall global team by instituting ‘Design Excellence' at scale through processes, tools and measurement. We’ve outlawed the word ‘vendor’, and instituted the idea of partnership and collaboration. Big thanks to our entire Design Operations team for this and much more.

Design is now a strategic partner and driver of growth.

Above: Colgate-Palmolive Design 2021 Showreel

Designing a Design Culture
We’ve introduced team rituals, learning forums, events, annual highlight reels, we’ve designed and produced year-in-review design books, websites, blogs, communities and community. We’ve experimented with AR (Softsoap 2023 Winter Seasonals), VR (Colgate Connect @ CES 2020) and we’ve experimented with Generative AI in our creative process – both upstream in breakthrough innovation, and downstream our traditional Industrial Design (bottle-making) process (with amazing results I might add). We’ve built repeatable people-centric feedback loops into our design process so we learn what people really want and need – not just what we want them to want. Now we’re exploring using machine learning to automate parts of our adaptive design development process. The opportunities are endless.   

I know Design is a change agent for social good and I’m  proud to have worked with brands such as Colgate, used in more homes than any other brand, to create maximum positive impact.

Over and out…

Above: Colgate-Palmolive Design 2020 Showreel