design thinking story
Nicole Dessain
Why Talent Tales?
Why Talent Tales?

human-centred design

Scaling Capability – A Conversation with IBM’s Damon Deaner

Scaling Capability – A Conversation with IBM’s Damon Deaner

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Damon Deaner, the Director of Employee Experience & Design at IBM.

Damon’s superpower is blending design and technology. He now applies his superpower by using design and tech to enable people experience.

Damon started his journey in design thinking in 2012 when IBM announced that they would bring design back and build a culture of design thinking. Damon joined the newly formed design organization and helped bring developers, engineers, and designers together to use design thinking. From there, he ended up leading all design talent at IBM and conducted several employee lifecycle projects. That caught the attention of the CHRO and eventually Damon was asked to join the HR team to build an employee experience practice.

Building Belonging – A Conversation with Corgan’s Halima McWilliams

Building Belonging – A Conversation with Corgan’s Halima McWilliams

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Halima McWilliams, People Operations and Culture Leader at Corgan.

Halima’s creative superpower is being strategically creative - connecting the dots with an out of the box approach.

Halima describes herself as a “family reunion aficionado” making family tradition and legacy particularly important to her. She aims to create that same level of connection and belonging in the workplace.

Failing Forward – A Conversation with GE’s Christopher Lind

Failing Forward – A Conversation with GE’s Christopher Lind

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Christopher Lind, Head of Global Digital Learning at GE Healthcare.

Christopher’s creative superpower is to take complicated or fragmented topics and make sense of them for others. He models this in his own podcast show, Learning Tech Talks.

Christopher is a self-proclaimed people development geek who has always been fascinated by technology’s possibilities in support of learning.

Enabling Managers – A Conversation with Eurobank’s Stella Ioannidou

Enabling Managers – A Conversation with Eurobank’s Stella Ioannidou

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Stella Ioannidou, IT Workforce Management Lead at Eurobank.

Stella’s creative superpower is applying the concept of analogy. She often draws from another context to gain inspiration for the current problem she is trying to solve.

After having worked a decade in project management, Stella recognized that what set apart good projects was how people were engaged in the process. She started to include some coaching practices into project management. Stella then realized that it was even more important to engage people in a cultural context overall instead just on a project. That realization sparked her interest in learning more about how people perform, what makes them tick, and what skills they need to succeed.

Hacking Diversity – A Conversation with Sittercity’s Kelli Koschmann

Hacking Diversity – A Conversation with Sittercity’s Kelli Koschmann

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Kelli Koschmann, VP of People at Sittercity.

Kelli’s creative superpower is keeping an open mind through the lens of empathy.

Kelli discovered design thinking by attending HR.Hackathon Chicago hosted by the HR.Hackathon Alliance, a community of HR rebels that believe in the power of design thinking to tackle our most pressing workplace challenges.

Kelli leveraged the practice of ideation facilitation that she learned at the hackathons to impact change inside Sittercity.