Zachary Jean Paradis is an innovation strategist and experience designer obsessed with building organizations and products for market success. Through the use of his professional experience and academic training in design, business, the social sciences, and technology, Zachary works with organizations to be come successful innovators and to utilize design and design thinking as a strategic asset as manifested in better products, flexible process, and open culture.
In his final year in a Masters of Design program at the Illinois Institute of Technology Institute of Design, Zachary is currently researching and writing about the emerging formal practice of innovation. He views the practice as integrative approach to understanding people and markets, matching unmet needs with business model, and finally creating compelling experiences that produce delight in customers. He is currently co-authoring a work with the Institute of Design’s director of product design, Chris Conley, in addition to working on a variety of projects focused on SAP AG, the Chicago Transit Authority, augmented reality, and web-based software to catalog and analyze qualitative user insights.
Zachary completed dual Bachelor of Arts at the University of Chicago in Anthropology and Psychology in 1995. Since then, he worked in advertising, the concert industry, as a pioneer in lifestyle marketing, and finally in experience design and product management for technology companies. His past employers and clients include Allstate, Amazon.com, Four Points Digital, Hyatt, JAM Productions, Kevin Berg and Associates, MCI, Microsoft, Platinum Technologies, Phillip Morris, Miller Brewing Company, Radiowave, RollingStone.com and magazine, SAP AG, SPIN, Tallan Consulting, Unilever, Universal Music Group, Yahoo!, among others.

Mastermundo interview team: Irad Lee; Mark Ridder; Przemek Siemion; Rick Nijhout
Mastermundo visuals: Menno Steenvoorden; Rick Nijhout
Sound: Irad Lee
Editing / post production: Przemek Siemion
Mastermundo ( mastermundo.org/ )