About
I aspire to inspire.
I push boundaries — corporate, cultural, social, individual — by offering perspectives that challenge and unlock potential. My approach is rooted in a simple conviction: the best innovation is inspired by people, designed with people, and built to deliver for people.
I've spent my career in the space between bold vision and operational reality — helping organisations figure out not just where they want to go, but what they need to decide today to get there. My work centres on making innovation rigorous. That means identifying the right opportunities, building honest business models, designing experiments to test assumptions, and having the discipline to say no as often as yes.
The hardest — and most valuable — thing in innovation isn't generating ideas. It's deciding which ones deserve your resources. And which ones would quietly drain them.
The journey
I started my career as a Systems Analyst at RBC in Canada, fresh from an Industrial Engineering degree at the University of Toronto. It gave me a systems-level way of thinking about complexity — but I was drawn to the strategic and human dimensions of how organisations create value.
So I moved to Milan, earned a Master in Strategic Design with honours at the Politecnico di Milano, and followed it with a PhD in Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, specialising in innovation and design. That combination — engineering rigour, design sensibility, business strategy — became my professional fingerprint.
In 2006 I co-founded Acrobatik, a strategic design agency working with senior leaders across retail, FMCG, hospitality, and lifestyle sectors across Europe. Alongside that, for seven years I taught and researched at the Politecnico di Milano — co-directing the Master in Strategic Design, leading EU-funded R&D programmes, and publishing peer-reviewed research on design-driven innovation.
From there I moved into senior consulting at ECSI, leading business model and solution innovation engagements for B2B organisations across North America, South America, and Europe. Then came GF Machining Solutions — a global advanced manufacturing group — where I built the enterprise design thinking and business model innovation function from the ground up, enabling the launch and commercialisation of digitally enabled multi-technology products and services.
My most recent executive role was Group General Manager for Innovation at Mediclinic Group, where I directed an enterprise-wide innovation hub across Southern Africa, the Middle East, and Switzerland. I built and governed a rigorous pipeline — engaging employees across the organisation and rigorously filtering a high volume of ideas into a focused set of proof-of-concepts, pilots, and MVPs — with a mandate to help one of the world's leading private hospital groups evolve into a broader health company.
Today, through Acuvera, I advise healthcare leaders on future-oriented strategy, scenario-based decision-making, and the responsible introduction of digital, data, and AI-supported capabilities.
Areas of expertise
- Corporate innovation leadership and portfolio governance
- Opportunity identification, business modelling, and ecosystem design
- Business experiments and go / no-go decision frameworks
- Strategic foresight, scenario planning, and trend translation
- Cross-functional leadership and stakeholder alignment
"Understand and respect the dynamics of a corporate culture and what the company is trying to achieve. Learn to read the room. Then, armed with empathy, give the people a compelling vision and find a way to hit the ground running. Always try to act with humility, to be human, and to be yourself. Finally, never forget where you came from — or that the best is yet to come. Optimism is a free stimulus for anyone."