# Teddy Zmrhal > Founder @ Trimtab Design + Innovation | Global Design and Innovation Executive specializing in 0 to 1+! Ex-IDEO and Salesforce. Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship Location: Sausalito, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/teddyzmrhal With extensive experience in strategy, entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and business transformation, I currently lead Trimtab Design + Innovation as its Founder, fostering creative solutions to drive impactful change. My background includes building commercial startups, go to market innovation teams and various boards, both for profit and non profit. Dedicated to advancing innovation and fostering meaningful change, I bring a collaborative, forward-thinking approach to every initiative. ## Work Experience ### Founder @ Trimtab Design + Innovation Jan 2024 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area •Building boutique consultancy focused on business strategy, go to market and brand/marketing strategy and alignment to foster new AI-centric revenue opportunities. •Advise a portfolio of emerging AI-native startups •Work closely with boards and management teams of Fortune 500 companies to work through the current AI and geopolitical uncertainties •Lead business development •Spearhead projects including: - go to market strategy including sales and marketing alignment to facilitate entry into new markets and capitalize on big deals - Designing tailored (learning) experiences to foster and enhance client engagement and brand strategy loyalty and effectiveness. ### Adjunct @ Stanford d.school Jan 2025 – Present | Stanford, California, United States ### Board Treasurer @ Next River Jan 2024 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area ### Interim Managing Partner @ Next River Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | Oakland, California, United States ### Board Member @ Next River Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco Bay Area ### Global Design Leader @ Neol Jan 2024 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area ### Steering Committee and Founding Member @ Design Leaders Community Jan 2024 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area ### Steering Committee Member @ The Aspen Institute Jan 2023 – Present ### Judge @ StartX. Jan 2020 – Present | Palo Alto, California, United States ### Partner Advisor @ inplural Jan 2024 – Jan 2026 | San Francisco Bay Area Inplural is the transformation partner company to StrawberryFrog. Specializing in business transformation and product innovation, inplural does the work of premium consulting firms with a bent toward diversity, creativity, independent thinking, truth, and experimentation. ### Member Board of Directors, Audit Committee member @ Alonzo King LINES Ballet Jan 2014 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco I've loved Lines since I first saw them and offered to help out after meeting visionary Alonzo King at a performance! ### Global Vice President - Design and Innovation @ Salesforce Jan 2019 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco Founded and led a team that connected 1500+ designers and innovators across Salesforce to bring practice and points of view on the future and strategic imperative of design as a vehicle for transformation. We're pioneering the mindsets for a new practice of Relationship Design. ### Senior Managing Director, Strategic Innovation - Global Head of Transformation, Ignite @ Salesforce Jan 2016 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Took on a new role to transform and scale Ignite globally, including DesignOps, Marketing, Comms and Global Partnerships. Ignite is Salesforce's customer facing innovation program. ### Managing Director, Strategic Innovation, Ignite West @ Salesforce Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco Promoted to lead the Ignite West team which runs from from San Francisco to Detroit, LA to New Orleans, plus Latin America, the Caribbean, and parts of Canada Ignite is Salesforce's customer facing innovation program. ### Senior Director, Strategic Innovation Executive @ Salesforce Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco I joined Salesforce as a Strategic Innovation Executive to help grow a team to provide innovation services across the full business, design, and technology spectrum to top Salesforce customers. We're currently located in San Francisco, New York, London, and Tokyo! I work primarily with Global 100 Financial Services clients across their cloud, social and mobile business and product strategies. Secondarily, I work with retail and telecoms and continue to pay attention to health and wellness, especially as it regards wearables and personal data, and next generation travel, leisure, and hospitality innovations. ### Global Advisory Council - Fortune Brainstorm Design @ Fortune Magazine Jan 2019 – Jan 2023 ### Advisory Board @ Launchpoint Jan 2015 – Jan 2023 ### Advisory Board @ GovReady Jan 2013 – Jan 2023 ### Advisor @ Experience Institute Jan 2014 – Jan 2023 | Chicago, Illinois ### Steering Committee Member, Socrates Program @ The Aspen Institute Jan 2017 – Jan 2020 ### National Society of Fellows Vanguard Board @ The Aspen Institute Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 ### Director @ IDEO Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Singapore Growing the Singapore Office in size/scale/capability as well as diversifying into the private sector in Singapore, Southeast Asia, and Australia! Responsible for approximately $3m in Business Development and major client relationships in Oil and Gas, Telecom, and Higher Ed sectors including Shell and Australian Telecom Subsidiary Sensis Taught Innovation, New Ventures, and Foresight courses at National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University Spoke at INSEAD, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Crowdsourcing Week, NUSs Startup Singapore, New Context Conference, Social Business Summit, Ideas Inc., Design Startup Week, and the Global Social Innovation Forum. Mentored/Judged at The Hub Singapore, National University of Singapore's Engineering School Tech Launch, and Social Innovation Camp ### Mentor and Teacher @ The HUB & HUB Ventures Jan 2010 – Jan 2013 | San Francisco designed and taught a Customer Development and Market Validation workshop for social enterpris ### Mentor @ The HUB & HUB Ventures Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Singapore Invited and Honored to join the mentor community for the first HUB in Asia! ### Designer and Instructor - Designing the Future @ National University of Singapore Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Singapore Four friends designed this course for the undergraduate University Scholars Program at NUS to stimulate a next generation of designers and futurists. ### Adjunct Professor @ Nanyang Technological University Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 | Singapore Co-Taught an Executive Education Course on Innovation and New Product/Service Development ### Adjunct Faculty @ Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 | Greater Chicago Area Designed and Taught the first ever entrepreneurship course at the Institute of Design - Entrepreneurship and Lean Startup for Designers! ### Adjunct Faculty - McCormick School of Engineering @ Northwestern University Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Evanston, IL co-designed and co-teaching NUvention Energy - a green startup accelerator for Energy Startups to McCormick Engineering, Kellogg School of Management Business School, and Northwestern Law Students. ### Board Member @ Adaptive Path Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | San Francisco Helped stabilize company during a challenging period. Transitioned Amsterdam and Austin Studios, instituted new business development processes and retained employees. ACQUIRED by CapitalOne Oct 2014! ### Guest Faculty @ Kellogg School of Management Jan 2010 – Jan 2012 | Greater Chicago Area Co-designed and co-teach a Corporate Innovation and New Ventures course to business students from Kellogg, Engineering students from McCormick, and Law Students. ### Mentor and Program Consultant @ Greenstart Jan 2010 – Jan 2012 | San Francisco Bay Area Recruited to help design the Greenstart program. Teach workshops on Design/Design Thinking and Networking/Social Navigation. Mentor Companies. ### Faculty - Graduate Design Program @ California College of the Arts Jan 2009 – Jan 2012 | San Francisco California College of the arts was founded over a hundred years ago in the German Arts & Crafts tradition integrating both theory AND practice. Today it is the preeminent art and design school in the Bay Area and on the rise internationally, listed as one of the top 30 design schools in the world. Teach Strategy, Experience Design and Entrepreneurship to young designers in the Graduate Program in Design which merges 2D, 3D, and Interaction Design. Teach Strategy and Negotiations to Executives in the Leading by Design Fellows Executive Certificate Program. Teach Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship to mid career designers and businesspeople in the Design MBA Program. ### Associate Chair, Faculty - MBA in Design Strategy @ California College of the Arts Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 | San Francisco A couple years ago, we decided to mash up a business school with an art school = out came the Design MBA! I am the Associate Chair of this groundbreaking 'startup within a school!' Having just graduated our first class in spring 2010, we're doubling the size of the program within the next year to 120 students earning a 2-year MBA in Design Strategy with an emphasis on design, strategy, and innovation. The program is designed to integrate design and innovation principles into a rigorous business program and help shape a new generation of innovative leaders in the business and NGO worlds. ### Mentor and Teacher @ Astia Jan 2009 – Jan 2012 | San Francisco Bay Area Designed and teach a Negotiations workshop specifically applicable to female entrepreneurs! ### Mentor @ Excelerate Labs Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Chicago Mentor nascent Chicago-based startups! ### Faculty @ Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley Jan 2010 – Jan 2012 | Berkeley Taught an advanced strategy elective entitled Strategy by Design that applies the tools of Design Thinking to Business Strategy against a backdrop of Scenario Planning. We taught in the Haas-Berkeley School of Business flagship Full-time Program and the Management of Technology Program - a joint graduate program between the Haas School of Business and the College of Engineering and the Information School at UC Berkeley. ### President, Board of Trustees @ foolsFury Theatre Company Jan 2007 – Jan 2012 | San Francisco foolsFury is an ensemble-based theatre company whose mission is to enlighten and inspire the human spirit through vital, thought-provoking theater and theater training With the observation that most theatre in the western world starts from the text and with a psychological foundation, foolsFury attempts to create theatre from a different starting point; that of the physical. Non-believers in Descartes' mind-body split, foolsFury attempts to integrate the physical and mental in its creations. ### Partner @ Congruity Jan 2003 – Jan 2012 Congruity is a boutique management, investment and social architecture consultancy focusing on the social software/web 2.0 consumer internet space, with special emphasis on gender-based design. We consult to start-ups and established companies on the experiences they offer their customers with their products and services, how those experiences support overall business strategy, and how they relate to, connect to and communicate with their customers. ### Advisor & Consultant @ HealthRally Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 HealthRally is a new way for friends and family to motivate each other to lose weight, quit smoking, exercise more or achieve other health-related goals. We rally the support you need to change your life. ### Advisor - Business and Society Program @ The Aspen Institute Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 | Aspen and NYC Participated in next generation business school curriculum shaping with select group of business school deans, including those of Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and Northwestern, alongside top business leaders including Jamie Dimon. ### Faculty @ Presidio School of Management Jan 2008 – Jan 2011 | San Francisco Redesigned and Taught the core Strategic Management course as well as Scenario Planning and Negotiations to mid career professionals in the first Sustainable MBA program in the country. Heavily involved in curriculum overhaul and integration, capstone experience re-design, and faculty governance initiatives. ### Design/Product Consultant @ PulseTracer Jan 2010 – Jan 2010 | San Francisco We did the original customer/design research for the initial product launch. About 100 hours of interviews and workshops with a 90-150 minute protocol across 35+ potential users including single 30s females, 40+ single males, 50+ married women, several couples, trainers, and professionals. Pulsetracer became myBasis and ACQUIRED by Intel in March 2014 for $100m! ### Co-Founder and VP Product @ Wieux Jan 2009 – Jan 2010 | San Francisco With the High Concept pitch = 'Pandora for Shopping,' the three founders pushed through the product strategy, financial model, pitch and started fundraising when one of us got an offer to good to refuse :( ### Advisor @ SOUND-Goods.org Jan 2008 – Jan 2010 | New York SOUND is a non-profit with a mission to 'green' the retail apparel supply chain! ### Board of Advisors @ Dreamfish Jan 2008 – Jan 2010 Dreamfish is a global work Cooperative whose mission is to empower as many people as possible to realize their dreams through sustainable ways of working together. ### Traveler/Researcher @ South Pacific & Southeast Asia Design & Sustainability Tour Jan 2009 – Jan 2009 Spent 11 weeks traveling from the US through French Polynesia, New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Indonesia, and Japan looking at the current state of design & sustainability. From the 80% renewable energy coming out of New Zealand to the 300yr old wisdom of the hill and river tribes in Papua New Guinea, to the effects of bleaching on the coral reefs, it was an amazing opportunity to compare, contrast and get a global view of the diversity of challenges...and inspiring in the range of solutions. Also managed to fulfill a couple life dreams along the way - sailing in French Polynesia and the Whit Sundays, diving in Bora Bora, Lombok and Bali, and Skiing in New Zealand. ### Co-Founder, Chief Product and Operating Officer @ B! Jan 2005 – Jan 2009 | Palo Alto B! was the first instantiation of web 2.0 technology/principles for women 35+ and the first ground-up application of the principles of design and marketing for women in the health and wellness industry. Until IDEO, the best work of my life! With partner, Estee Solomon Gray, we took the company from concept through incorporation, raised $1.2m from amazing angels and another $500k in in kind investments from strategic partners, built full physical and digital prototype with 120+ 'alpha' testers before the markets forced queasy series A investors to pull out in Jan 2008 just as we were setting to launch. Argh, painful! ### Board of Directors @ B! Jan 2005 – Jan 2009 | Palo Alto B! was the first instantiation of web 2.0 technology/principles for women 35+ and the first ground-up application of the principles of design and marketing for women in the wellness industry. ### Board of Directors, Consultant @ Executive Networks Jan 2005 – Jan 2008 | San Francisco Executive Networks provides Consulting Services, Events, and Learning, Talent, and HR peer networks for C-Level executives from Fortune 100 Companies. ### Visiting Scholar/Fellow - Social & Development Entrepreneurship @ Stanford University - Reuters Digital Vision Program Jan 2005 – Jan 2006 | Stanford The RDVP was a Reuter's Foundation funded social entrepreneurship program housed at the Center for the Study of Language and Information. The program brought social entrepreneurs, largely from developing countries, to Stanford for a year to prototype a social or technological innovation that would be of benefit back in the village or town they came from. I was fortunate enough to spend time with these entrepreneurs helping craft, fund, and pitch their awesome ideas! ### Designer and Convener @ Technology Muckabout Conference Jan 2004 – Jan 2004 | Palo Alto We designed this event to be a first in bringing the folks building the new (social software/community building) tools together with those using them. We hosted 30 global bloggers and tool builders to talk the practice of managing communities of practice, especially online, before anyone thought there might be such a role! ### Investor and Board of Directors @ Realm Interactive Jan 2001 – Jan 2003 My first angel investment, Realm Interactive was a MMPOG gaming company funded by, partnered with and eventually purchased by Korean game giant NC Soft. ### Strategy & Product @ SmartForce Jan 2000 – Jan 2002 SmartForce (formerly CBT Systems, later bought by Skillsoft), the Irish eLearning giant, ACQUIRED Learning Productions, the company below that I co-founded in a $16m half cash half stock deal in March of 2000. I led the post-merger product integration with the major development centre in Dublin, while helping to grow our own development centre from 20 to 60 designers, all the while riding the locked up stock down from $60 to an excruciating $6! ### Co-Founder and VP Product @ Learning Productions Jan 1998 – Jan 2000 Co-founded Learning Productions with several colleagues from my time at Andersen Consulting. LP was a learning simulation technology and content developer/provider for Fortune 500 companies. ACQUIRED by SmartForce (formerly CBT Systems) for $16m in a half cash half stock deal in March 2000, weeks before the crash! Function/Content-wise we spent a great deal of time with sales organizations on their strategy, process and behaviors, interviewing and shadowing reps, managers, area VPs, and ultimately the heads of the sales organizations. ### Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board @ Strawdog Theatre Company Jan 1997 – Jan 1999 | Chicago Designed and co-founded the Board of Directors for this small but irreverent Chicago storefront theatre. A decade later in 2009 it celebrated its 20th year, a rare feat in the fire of the Chicago Theatre World. Nearly tripling in size over that time period, its also won its fair share of awards including multiple Jeffs, and created a community housing first rate ensemble actors. ### Senior Consultant & Learning Designer @ Deloitte Consulting Jan 1998 – Jan 1998 | Chicago Made a quick 'stop' through Deloitte where my primary client was Herman Miller, en route to starting Learning Productions with several colleagues from my time at Andersen. It was one of the best working environments I had/have encountered at any of the large consulting firms. Content-wise - this was my first exposure to large scale ERP systems, most notably Baan ### Senior Consultant & Learning Designer @ Accenture Jan 1994 – Jan 1997 | Chicago Struck out for a consulting company from college as I didn't know what I wanted to do...yet. Figured consulting would provide with varied work and lots of travel. In the end, I really worked only on 2 projects the whole time I was there - one coding in C, C++, and DB2 in CICS environment on FS90, the firm's internal accounting system (whoopee!) and two, designing and building a sophisticated tracking database for Amoco...RARELY traveling at all for business! I did also manage to spend a bit of time at the Multimedia Factory during the summer of 1996, before going back to graduate school. ### Consultant in Financial Research @ United States Embassy Jan 1992 – Jan 1993 | Madrid Investigated newly adopted leasing legislation and its interpretation by Major Spanish financial institutions. Interviewed CEOs of major banks in Spain. Developed blueprint for increasing American exports to Spain via financial leasing instruments. Explored internaional and developmental entrepreneurship models. ## Education ### Visiting Scholar in Fellow, Social Entreprenurship Stanford University ### M.B.A. in Strategy and Organizational Behavior Columbia Business School ### M.B.A. in Strategy and Entrepreneurship London Business School ### M.A. Learning Sciences/Learning Design in Interdisciplinary Degree - Schools of Engineering, Psychology & Education Northwestern University ### Intermediate French Language Studies University of California, Berkeley ### B.A. in Double Major - International Business and Spanish, Russian Minor Illinois Wesleyan University ### Universidad Complutense de Madrid ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tzmrhal --- Source: https://flows.cv/teddyzmrhal JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/teddyzmrhal/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-08