# Dr. Dharani Perera > Consultant / Senior Design Strategist / Rebirthing Breathwork and Sound Healing practitioner / Founder Inner Light Awakening. - U.S. Permanent Resident authorized to work in the United States. Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/drdharaniperera I help organizations drive growth and innovation by embedding Human-Centered Design into their strategy and operations, delivering measurable business outcomes while creating exceptional user experiences. Recent Consulting Impact: Singapore Tourism Board (Jan 2026): Project Lead delivering a Social Media Marketing strategy workshop that enabled the team to define a targeted future vision and clear strategic priorities. KFC Asia (Sep 2025): Designed and facilitated a Design Strategy and Behavioral Science workshop for 40+ participants, equipping leadership with frameworks to align customer insights with business goals. GIC Singapore (Jan–Apr 2025): Principal Design Strategist standardizing the Discovery phase across teams, creating research toolkits now used organization-wide and upskilling 20+ designers and PMs. Aquent/ExxonMobil (May–Jul 2024): Trained enterprise teams in design strategy and change management, contributing to long-term contract renewal. What I Bring: I specialize in making HCD work for business, adapting methodologies to drive profitability, building stakeholder buy-in, and mentoring teams. My approach blends rigorous research with strategic facilitation, ensuring solutions delight users while remaining viable for organizations. Background Previous experience include Senior Manager of Design Strategy and Research at Grab, Customer Experience Manager at Save the Children, Customer Experience Designer nbn innovations, nbn, and Monash University. PhD in Human-Computer Interaction. Speaker at Advancing Service Design 2025, Asian HCI Symposium, UX Australia, OZCHI, British HCI, and C&C. In 2022, I founded Inner Light Alchemy (ILA), a trauma-informed healing space devoted to spiritual growth and embodied transformation. Let's connect if you're looking to embed human-centered thinking into your organization's strategy or build internal design capability. Specialties: Design Thinking | Human Centred Design | Customer experience and innovation Strategy | service design| Facilitation | Mentoring | Methodology and tool kit creation | VOC Programs | Assistive technologies & accessibility | Entrepreneur | Business Development ## Work Experience ### Principle Design strategist and Research (contract) @ Unknown Jan 2024 – Present Project Lead (Consultant) Singapore Tourism Board I Jan 2026 Delivered a Social Media Marketing strategy workshop that enabled the team to define a targeted, actionable future vision and clear strategic areas of focus. As Project Lead, I translated client objectives into a structured workshop design, content, flow, and facilitation, that achieved alignment, clarity, and practical outcomes. Design Strategist (Consultant) KFC Asia | Sep 2025 Successfully created and ran a Design strategy and behavioral science workshop for over 40 participants from KFC Asia. Principal Design Strategist (Contract) GIC Singapore | Jan 2025 – Apr 2025 Standardized the Discovery phase as a service design entry point across Public and Private Market teams. Created a discovery research toolkit with templates and journey mapping guides now used organisation wide. Upskilled 20+ designers and PMs, embedding service-oriented thinking into research and planning. Design Strategist (Consultant) Aquent USA | May 2024 – Jul 2024 Trained enterprise teams in design and change management strategy, contributing to a long-term contract renewal with ExxonMobil. ### Trauma-informed Breathwork Facilitator | Sound healer | Founder Inner Light Awakening @ Inner Light Awakening with Dharani Jan 2022 – Present I help people heal, grow, and lead from a place of grounded wholeness. As a breathwork facilitator and sound healer, I blend somatic practices namely, Rebirthing breathwork, sound healing, and cacao ceremonies with conscious inquiry tools including coaching, art therapy, and guided meditation. This balance supports nervous system regulation, emotional release, and deep self-awareness, creating change from the inside out. My approach is rooted in lived experience navigating burnout, disconnection, and the shedding of old identities and supported by professional training, including: - Rebirthing Breathwork Practitioner Certification - Multi-Instrumental Sound Journey Practitioner Certification - Intuitive art therapy mod 1 and 2 Through Inner Light Awakening, I’ve guided clients across Bali, Singapore, Australia, and the U.S., holding safe, compassionate space for transformation and conscious leadership. If you’re ready to reconnect with your inner wisdom and create lasting change, let’s connect. ### Principal Design strategy and researcher @ Grab Jan 2017 – Jan 2023 | Singapore Led service and product design strategy for GrabFin, Maps, Loyalty, POS, and Safety - driving EBITA growth and operational cost savings. Embedded service design in product development; authored the Finance Design Playbook's service design section. Embedding consistent language and frameworks for service design across teams. Trained 100+ team members in journey mapping, blueprinting, and ecosystem mapping. Founded the Grab Merchant Research Panel: cut recruitment costs by 65% and time by 45%. Streamlined research intake process: reduced evaluation time by 60%, cut stakeholder load by 80%. Enabled design teams to run 70% of usability tests, freeing researchers to focus on strategic studies. ### Senior Manager Design strategy and Research @ Grab Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | Singapore Created the Product Prioritization Framework (Open Spaces), linking top 10 insights to core OKRs; credited by leadership for major EBITA gains. Secured representation in leadership forums; elevated design and customer insight into C-level reviews. Institutionalized HCD phases into product lifecycle. Led visioning, strategy, stakeholder alignment, ideation, and validation workshops across disciplines—with a strong emphasis on mapping service journeys and aligning tech and operations with product objectives. Developed and conducted organization-wide training in service design tools including journey mapping, blueprinting, and ecosystem mapping—enabling early engagement of design in GrabFood, GrabMart, Grab Maps, and Safety. Managed cross-regional design teams supporting eight SEA markets; aligned tech, ops, and product through co-creation workshops. Launched design thinking curriculum; created customer immersion program that spurred engineering-led innovations. Over 200+ Engineers across all regions were upskilled. Scaled Design strategy and Research function cross all Grab product lines. Growing and managing a team of 45 Design strategists and researchers. ### Customer Experience Manager @ Save the Children Australia Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 Developed the first customer satisfaction and loyalty measurement program to ensure the organisation has continued insights from their supporters. Created in-depth understanding of the Supporter customer segments within the organisation through creation of personae, jobs to be done and customer journeys. - Established an industry partnership with RMIT Design thinking for innovation program to bring in concepts with development, marketing and launch roadmaps to elevate the Supporter customer segment engagement with Save the children. Evangelised human centred design practice and culture within business. Managed and mentored Customer Experience team. ### Senior Customer Experience Designer @ nbn™ australia Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 - Lead CX research projects for nbn Products and Services using both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. - Co-founded nbn innovations. An innovation lab for new product ideas that reached profit within a year. - Developed practice of human centered design methodologies. - Pioneered ‘Experience Jams’. A methodology to ensure that products to market are meeting all user and front facing staff needs. - Developed the techniques and templates toolkit for the CX team. - Procured customer experience agencies. ### Customer Experience Designer @ nbn™ australia Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 Pioneered "Experience Jams" (service blueprinting) for GTM readiness; adopted company-wide. Co-founded nbn Innovations Lab; delivered a profitable service line within one year. Led CX for Satellite product launch, which achieved highest customer satisfaction (8/10) in company history. ### User Experience Consultant @ Monash University Jan 2008 – Jan 2013 • Lead UX design projects for Monash University digital solutions (usability and accessibility) • Lead the effort to introduce user centred design activities to the Scrum framework • Leadership and mentoring ### Human Computer Interaction Researcher @ Collaboration with UTS Jan 2010 – Jan 2013 | Collaboration with University Technology Sydney (UTS) The aim of the project is to investigating ways of improving the enjoyment of practising speech therapy exercisers. For this project I am working as the Human Computer Interaction researcher and collaborating with a team of inter disciplinary experts in speech pathology, interaction design, game design and electronic music from University Technology Sydney and University of Sydney. We are using a number of user centred design activities such as interviews, observation studies, deign workshops, design ethnography and usability evaluations throughout the project life cycle. ### Art program creator (Volunteer position) @ Alarming Art centre Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Melbourne I volunteered as an art programme creator for people with disabilities, where I investigated the use of vocal input as a mode of interaction for creating digital art. ## Education ### PhD in Human-Computer Interaction Deakin University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/dharani-perera - Portfolio: https://deehansika.wixsite.com/dharaniperera --- Source: https://flows.cv/drdharaniperera JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/drdharaniperera/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13