IDEO Europe’s strategic operations rest within Anne Kim’s hands—from the development of the strategy for the region to how IDEO operationalises to accelerate the ability to achieve it. As a Partner and Senior Executive Director, that approach is mirrored in her work with some of IDEO’s largest transformative client partnerships, for whom she leads the commercial and operational strategy. In lockstep, Anne enables IDEO and client teams to co-design resilient and inclusive futures in which people, planet, and business thrive.

Anne is deeply optimistic about the catalytic power of design while remaining a realist at heart. Time and again she has seen design’s ability to empower people to solve problems in radical new ways. But she also believes that true change can only happen when paradigm-shifting strategies and breakthrough solutions are ballasted with the operational know-how to scale them out into the world.

She has helped companies like Ford, Intercorp and H&M operationalise for the future, by helping them embed human-centred design capabilities and ways of working into their organisations.

Anne has a bachelor’s degree in International Economics from the University of Waterloo in Canada and a master’s in International Business & Development from Birkbeck, University of London. Prior to IDEO, she worked as a retail buyer for fashion brands including Polo Ralph Lauren and eventually shifted gears to lead product