Joan Gregor

Joan Gregor is the co-founder and president of Intersection-Inc, a design consultancy fueling innovation through the lens of design by translating business strategy into meaningful user experiences, products and service by creating connections between companies, research, science, technology, markets, and internal teams. The Design Academy is Intersection's educational collaboratory.

As a strategist and grounded visionary, Joan deciphers the organic creative and product development processes into tangible and feasible strategies to drive growth and accelerate commercialization. With a focus on leveraging the value of design, she has consulted for such clients as GE Healthcare, CVS Pharmacy, Magna International, BMW/Designworks, NZ Better By Design, Bose, and Lifetime Brands to create exceptional and consistent user experiences, transform cultures, and empower leaders to visualize change. Her ability to stimulate intellectual and creative development through applied research in design has led to the development of business-critical research and tools for design management challenges, innovation and concept filtering, customer co-creation workshops and corporate assessment programs.

As founder and partner of The Design Academy, she created The Power of Collective ThoughtTM methodology, a diverse network of design, research and academia to maximize innovation and minimize risk. She believes in approaching projects with a mentoring lens to increase client’s capability and create sustainable processes. Her vision, HUMIINTM, is to provide increased comfort, beauty and function through an empathic understanding of humans in their universal context with each other, nature and our spiritual essence.

As an entrepreneur, she created with her partner, a retail product line, resulting in 5 patents, including all elements of business start-up to market launch and licensing.

Through her multinational clients and sense of adventure, she has traveled extensively contributing cultural insights and knowledge to her perspective on design thinking. She is an avid sailor and passionate about how design can make our world a better place.