Ruth Ellison is the Research Director and co-founder of Propel Design, a boutique strategic research, design and delivery consultancy in Australia. She brings a deep sense of curiosity, and pragmatism, balanced with experience in digital delivery, strategy, policy and transformation across the public and private sectors.
Ruth loves working with organisations to propel their human-centred and systems-thinking approaches. She is passionate about building happy curious product teams who love solving problems and making a difference.
Outside of work, Ruth loves exploring escape rooms, especially a number of great New Zealand rooms.
Throughout her career, Sachi has often felt like the odd one out.The only woman, the only Pasifika person, the one who laughed too loud, the one who looked different and sounded different.It’s no secret - we have a diversity problem in design and technology. In NZ, women make up less than 30% of the Technology workforce and Pasifika sits at around 2% (Diversity data is unknown for the research and design fields)In the workplace, our beacons of success are often the people who have climbed the mountain of achievement - our managers, leaders and senior executives. When our measures of success are embodied in the values, norms and behaviours of the majority group it’s understandable why many of us who aren’t, feel the pressure to conform to gain favour. In her talk, Sachi will share the challenges she’s faced as a Pasifika woman in design and technology; and how this has shaped her approach to leadership and her drive to create inclusive environments where individuals and teams thrive.Learn how she, along with her design leads, are building a diverse team of designers at NZ’s largest bank. She'll share her reflections and learns from a leadership perspective, in the hope these will help others create teams that reflect the depth, breadth and richness present in our communities.
