Zero-to-one AI design & Innovation

Hi, I’m Sally — a design leader, educator, and entrepreneur who turns ambiguity into opportunity.

I’m motivated by three things: educating the next generation of designers + founders, turning ideas into high-revenue businesses, and guiding companies to find product-market fit. As the founder of Designpreneurs & Co., I build platforms where these worlds meet.

“Intersection of AI innovation, education, & talent.”

As an AI design advisor at Parsons School of Design’s communication design program, I guide multi-year curriculum development and bridge academic learning with fast changing AI applications. From bringing partnerships to insights from startups, industry, and ever-changing AI tools, my focus is preparing designers to work with emerging technologies in ways that are both strategic and human-centered.

I partner with Fortune 1000 companies to build and launch new ventures through AI x human-centered design and lean product-market fit validation. With a high-quality and selected superstar team, I turn early-stage business challenges into live product solutions in just a few weeks. I'm always looking for talented freelancers from diverse backgrounds to hire.

Through running the Designpreneurs Hackathon, I bring designers and entrepreneurs together to solve real-world problems in AI & XR design. I’ve originally started this to simply help my design students build product design portfolios in a weekend, I saw the product-market fit on the other side, now the hackathon drives real business impact — one startup raised $4M, another was acquired, and 70+ designers landed jobs through the platform. We focus on quality over quantity—each sponsor, judge, mentor, and hacker is hand-selected and it’s been an exhilarating journey to see how this community is growing fast!

“My passion lies in empowering the next generation of designers and entrepreneurs – Designpreneurs.”

Through Designpreneurs, I selectively work with fast growing AI companies to hire highly curated AI design talent. Rather than operating as a traditional recruiting pipeline(I was the hiring manager, it doesn’t work), we focus on long-term fit, assessing AI design skills to adaptability to navigating ambiguity. By working directly with top tier talents from top universities, hackathons, and incubation, we have deep understanding of both tech and human qualities.

As a part-time educator at The Parsons School of Design and The School of Visual Arts, I teach interaction and startup design. I love mentoring the next-gen designers—many of whom I still stay in touch with. It’s been such a rewarding journey seeing these connections come full circle: one of my former students is now mentoring my current class, and I even had the honor of attending one’s wedding last year! It’s incredible to see how our personal and professional lives intertwine, creating a tight community where we rise by lifting each other.

Previously, I led experience design for six years at BCG.X, the startup & tech build division at Boston Consulting Group, where I helped launch 12 digital businesses for Fortune 500 clients in industries like healthcare, energy, financial services, and consumer goods. Before that, I co-founded HelloAva, an AI-powered beauty chatbot featured in The Wall Street Journal and Forbes, and was a founding member of Saks Fifth Avenue’s digital team, launching the company’s first mobile, editorial, and social media experiences.

“Design-Driven, Business Minded.”