Sara Alonso
Freelance Strategic Designer Portfolio.
Resume .
Freelance Strategic Designer - Sarantipity, Spain. January 22’ - Present.
Freelance Collaborator Project Manager - Ashoka, Spain. | Impacta+ April 22’ - Present.
Master’s Professor Social Innovation & Impact - IED, Spain. May 21’ - Present.
Doctoral School Entrepreneurship Program Co-lead - Innpulse Consulting, EU. Jan 23’ - Jan 24’.
Senior Innovation & Strategic Designer - Opinno, Spain. April 18’ - January 21’.
Mentor Circular Economy Course - UC Berkeley Extension. February 21’ - May 21’.
PARTY H2020 Project Member - Paco Design Collaborative, South Africa & Namibia. November 17’- March 18’.
Industrial and Research Designer - bigD Design That Matters, Spain. October 15’ - November 17’.
Associate Professor - Creanavarra Design School, Spain. September 16’ - February 17’.
Bachelor Thesis - Yifan Dhemen, China | Product Design BID Mention 2015. June 15’ - August 15’.
Student Entrepreneurship Internship - GAZE, Spain. February 15’ - June 15’.
Industrial Design Internship - Indaux & Dhemen, Spain. June 14’ - August 14’ & June 13’ - August 13’.
Industrial Design Assistant - Hayden, China. June 12’ - August 12’.
EDUCATION
Industrial Design and Product Development Engineering Bachelor - Tecnun Navarra University, Spain. September 11’- June 15’.
Erasmus Exchange - Aalto University, Finland. | Winner of International Altuning Program. September 14’- December 14’.
ICF Certificated Coach - Lider Haz Go Coaching School. June 20’- December 20’.
Sara Alonso Freelance Strategic Designer Portfolio.
WHY I Design
The passion that drives the steps I take in my design career.
Pg. 3
WHY HOW WHAT
Pg. 5 HOW I Design
The methodology through which my (and our) ideas turn into realities.
The Strategic, Research and Design Facilitation projects I have been part of.
Pg. 7 WHAT I Design
WHY I Design .
I strongly believe in people and our ability to make this World a better place to live in. Through actions, through conversations, through collaborations… And in my case, through Design.
That’s why I call...
to our ability to co-create a positive impact together, understanding each other as dots of an ecosystem that connect in order to create sustainable value in people’s lifes.
HOW I Design.
1. EXPLORE
Project scope definition and team alignment.
2. OBSERVE
Stakeholders’ understanding through ethnographic techniques such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, etc.
3. DEFINE
Design Challenge definition, through the previously gathered insights’ analysis.
4. IDEATE
Identified improvement opportunities’ solution ideation and prioritization through co-creative techniques.
5. PROTOTYPE
Iterative prototyping phase in which Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) are created, measured and validated.
6. DEVELOP
Sustainable (ecologically, economically, technically and socially) solution development.
7. COMMUNICATE
Solutions turned into stories, giving them soul and voice.
WHAT I Design .
Strategic Design
Mission-driven strategic projects aimed at fostering and adapting to current and future realities. These transformative challenges combine forward-thinking processes with realistic roadmap and impact indicators to drive meaningful change.
#SystemThinking #ContextUnderstanding
Sara Alonso Freelance Strategic Designer Portfolio.
BOOSTING A MORE DIVERSE, ACCESSIBLE AND INCLUSIVE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP ECOSYSTEM IN SPAIN.
As Project Manager for this ambitious and transformative initiative, I was responsible for four main key areas:
Launched at the end of 2021 by Ashoka and supported by Google.org, the Impacta+ initiative brought together more than 130 individuals, institutions, and diverse organizations. Over the course of two and a half years, three social innovation labs collaborated to address the challenges within Spain’s social entrepreneurship ecosystem. This co-creative process resulted in the development of five prototypes designed to tackle the identified challenges:
ERES: Producer of diverse and intergenerational narratives focused on giving a voice to underrepresented groups.
MIES: Movement aimed at spreading the sto ries of social entrepreneurship in rural areas.
Youth Business Spain: Existing initiative that supports young people and has included a social component in its training program.
Fondo de Fundaciones de Impacto: Existing initiative that has diversified the parti cipating foundations and the social entrepreneurs funded.
Málaga #ImpactaMás: Initiative to enhance responsible public procurement by fostering relationships between public administrations and social enterpreneurs.
Project Management: Coordinating various stakeholders, overseeing the entire initiative’s development, and managing the budget.
Workshop facilitation: Co-designing and co-facilitating workshops involving up to 50 experts from the social entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Event organization: Conceptualizing, managing providers, and executing three large-scale events during the development of the project.
Client: EIT Manufacturing Year: 2023-2024. Type: Strategic Design. Designed with
CO-LEADING EIT MANUFACTURING DOCTORAL SCHOOL’S
ENTREPRENEURSHIP & INNOVATION 2-YEARS PROGRAM
> YEAR 1 PROGRAM
SELF-DISCOVERY PHASE
Identify team strengths and fit within a business ecosystem.
MARKET EXPLORATION PHASE
Find unsolved problems in the chosen ecosystem.
IDEATION PHASE
Develop a business idea and model to solve identified problems.
IMPLEMENTATION PHASE
Organize operations and create an investor deck.
IDEA VALDATION PHASE
Test the idea’s viability through market interaction.
< YEAR 2 PROGRAM
PROTOTYPE PHASE
Build a Minimum Viable Product for market validation.
Sara Alonso Freelance Strategic Designer Portfolio.
Together with my co-lead Henri Mennens, I had the privilege of leading the EIT Manufacturing Doctoral School’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program. This initiative, aimed at scientists and researchers within the European smart manufacturing ecosystem, sought to foster an entrepreneurial mindset among engineers and help them scale their research findings into real-world solutions. Over the course of two years, the program covered the full cycle of the solution’s concept design, development, validation, and implementation. We worked collaboratively with polytechnic universities and their doctoral schools in key cities such as Paris, Grenoble, Porto, Mondragón, Bratislava, Prague, and Tartu, promoting a practical and scalable approach to innovation.
Year 1 Program:
How to explore an ecosystem that fits with you, and design a business idea that solves a problem over there.
Year 2 Program:
How to validate a solution and its related business model on desirability, feasibility, and viability and how to prepare for a launch.
With the aim of shaping an actionable customized Innovation Model for the company, the project started with the analysis of the actual innovation status in the organization (AS IS) through in-depth interviews and the design and analysis of a company-wide survey. Through co-creative sessions with the company’s key leaders, the definition of the company’s innovation vision (TO BE) was defined, as well as the roadmap and KPIs to reach it.
The project concluded with an in-detail definition of the guidelines and tools to implement the designed ad-hoc Innovation Model (innovation framework, governance, roles and responsibilities, etc).
Sara Alonso Freelance Strategic Designer Portfolio.
AGILE MODEL
1. CEREMONIES
2. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
LEADERSHIP TEAM
● Sponsor
● Process Owners
3.
● Key Decisors EXECUTION TEAM
OWNER
Scrum Master
Core Team
Solution Architect
Extended Teams
Agile Coach
2/8
INVOLVED LEADERS >70 SPRINTS 10
AGILE EXECUTORS >100
8 TRAINED EMPLOYEES >200 REMOTE TEAMS
This Agile Transformation project had two goals: define the ad-hoc Agile Model for the company and develop eight international high-impact pilot projects in the process. The project started with the training and alignment of all the employees involved (executors and directors). During 3 months, I was one of the Agile coaches in one of the pilots. The gathered experience and insights, gave shape to the final Agile Model developed for the company, which was constructed from iterations, as it was validated by the involved teams.
As these pilots were implemented, the team designed and facilitated the “Inspect and Increment” event in which 200 people took part to find synergies among the projects. Once the coaches accompaniment finished, the company’s future agile coaches were trained to ensure a successful agile scaling process in the whole company.
WHAT I Design .
Design Research
Qualitative and Quantitative research projects that aim to identify user/stakeholders insights (needs, desires and aspirations), as well analyze their experiences in order to identify improvement opportunities.
#Empathy #Analysis&Synthesis #Act.Listening
Sara Alonso Freelance Strategic Designer Portfolio.
Client: International Insurance Company. Year: 2019. Type: Service Design. Designed with
Sara Alonso Freelance Strategic Designer Portfolio.
The aim of this project was to redesign the current company’s recruiting experience, adding value to both the applicants and recruiters.
With this goal, the current recruitment experience was analyzed through in-depth interviews, focus groups and workshops with all the involved stakeholders.
Once both the improvement opportunities and posible solutions from ideation sessions were identified and prioritized, the desired future recruitment experience was defined.
The solution was shaped into three Minimum Viable Products ready to be prototyped, as well as the roadmap of their implementation. One of them, the skill mapping, was further developed by Opinno with the goal of aligning the recruiting strategy with the overall company one
With the goal of improving the Multiple Esclerosis patients’ journey, a detailed research of the patient’s experience was conducted. To do so, in-depth interviews were carried out with patients, families, healthcare workers and association responsibles. The gathered insights were analyzed and synthesized in order to define and prioritize the identified improvement opportunities. This prioritization was done through co-creative sessions with multidisciplinary health teams.
PATIENT
INTERVIEWS WITH PATIENTS &
INTERVIEWS WITH HEALTH PROFESSIONALS.
INTERVIEWS WITH ASSOCIATION’S LEADERS.
Velites Sport, a company that manufactures fitness products, contacted with bigD to create a service through an app that would help their clients keep motivated and learn healthy habits. The challenge proposed to us was to develop an app that answered to the following question:
“How might we empower people to get fit from a holistic wellness perspective?”
At the Design Research stage, we carried out a deep technological and market analysis as well as qualitative-quantitative interviews with both users (around 300 surveyed) and other experts in the health and fitness industries. To co-create the solution, we organise focus groups and co-creative workshops. As a result of this process, we designed an app that on the one hand empowered people to exercise by fostering motivation through constantly achieving small steps towards their own bigger goal and on the other hand, the app helped them to better program their trainings and habits.
Sara Alonso Freelance Strategic Designer Portfolio.
WHAT I Design .
Design Facilitation
Design methodology and entrepreneurial mindset related academic initiatives focused on the development of workshops / mentoring sessions in which participants acquire knowledge and skills through a “learning by doing” approach.
#Cocreation #Creativity #DesignTools
Sara Alonso Freelance Strategic Designer Portfolio.
Punctual workshops, courses, and other academic collaborations.
+100 WORSHOPS & MENTORINGS
When lecturing and coaching, I employ a hybrid learning-by-doing approach, blending co-creative workshops with personalized mentoring sessions. This method allows me to share and explore various innovation methodologies and tools with entrepreneurs working on impactful projects all around the World.
Desafío Ashoka Changemaker by Bridge for Billions:
Co-mentored The Black View project over the course of four months, actively engaging with the program’s entrepreneurial community and following up on the social entrepreneurship project through the project platform.
The Break Fellowship facilitated by Impact Hub: Mentored over 30 women entrepreneurs from across the EU as part of The Break, a European project aimed at attracting female talent. This initiative took place simultaneously across Spain, with more than 1000 women entrepreneurs participating in it’s two editions.
Design Research Mentor with IED Madrid:
Guided Innovation and Strategic Design Master’s students through the development of their team projects during the Market Exploration Phase (3 months). This weekly follow-up was combined with theoretical sessions.
PARTY project is an international and intersectoral Horizon 2020 project funded by the European Commission with four years of duration (01/2015-12/2018). During 2017 and 2018, I was involved in this project as Paco Design Collaborative member, doing two one-month exchanges in Kimberley (South Africa) and Windhoek (Namibia).
PARTY aims to endorse human development and assist in reducing youth unemployment in South Africa and Namibia by using participatory and explorative Service Design Tools. The project focuses on youth and young adults (13–24 years of age), especially living in poor or otherwise marginal conditions who either are or face the risk of becoming marginalized. The project is based in developmental cooperation through research and innovation staff exchanges and sharing of knowledge.
Apart from Design, I also express myself through words, clicks and movements:
PERSONAL BLOG
I found in writing words my way to express, think and communicate. “Elige el color de tu mundo” is about my own picture and all the people that give it color day by day.
KNOW MORE
PHOTOGRAPHY LIFE
Always on my neck, my camera is the lens through which I see the World and the “clicks” the memories that make these moments infinite.
FIGURE SKATING
With the skates on, I translate music into movements since I was eight, at the beggining alone, then in a team and later on through other skaters.
Thank you!
Sara Alonso.