I help design-forward companies lower uncertainty and reduce cost when developing new product lines—so they can move faster, make smarter bets, and launch products that win with kids, parents, retailers, and content creators.
I bring 25+ years experience across product development, children’s products, startups, marketing, branding, buying, and strategy. That range makes me unusually qualified to take a concept from strategy → product design → branding → go-to-market.
To make this work repeatable, I built the Child-ish Design Rubric (CDR): a proprietary framework that evaluates nine critical product attributes and predicts how key stakeholders will respond. I also developed the Child-ish Design Intelligence System (CDIS), which incorporates AI into the product development process to deliver faster, better, and more cost-efficient outcomes.
Credentials: MBA (Columbia Business School); Certificate in Industrial Design (RISD); 15+ years in the children’s products industry; dozens of products and brand initiatives brought to market.
My products have been sold in thousands of retail locations worldwide—including premium doors like Bergdorf Goodman—and featured in The New York Times, GQ, O, Architectural Digest, and Elle Décor. They’ve also received multiple awards, including Top Toy of the Year.
Available for fractional or full-time, hands-on consulting leading new product lines and concept development.
Services
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Strategy
Market Research, Competitor Audit, Customer Interviews, Trends, Target Audience, Product Vision, Business Case
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Concept Development
Ideation, Prioritization, Sketches/Mockups, Value Proposition, Feasibility, COGS Estimation, User Feedback
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Design
Design (form, ergonomics, aesthetics), Engineering, CAD Modeling, Material/Color/Finish Selection
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Prototyping & Testing
Prototype Development, Internal Reviews, Refinement, User Testing, Iteration Cycles
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Branding
Strategy, Voice, Personality, Logo, Color Palette, Typography, Graphics, Imagery, Website, Packaging
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Go To Market
Marketing Campaign Development, Creative Asset Development, Product Page Content, Launch Event, PR
My Background
My education and work experience put me in a unique position to help manufacturer-designers bring great products to market.
Education
BA - Art History (BYU)
MBA - Marketing (Columbia)
CID - Industrial Design (RISD)
Experience
25+ years of experience in product development, strategy, branding, startups, buying and marketing, including 15 years in the toy industry.
Validation
Product distribution to 2,000 retail locations (e.g. Bergdorf Goodman). Media placement in 40+ outlets (e.g. NYT, Architectural Digest). 18 awards (e.g. Top Toy of the Year).
Child-ish Design Rubric
The rubric is a proprietary, nine-part evaluation tool that helps manufacturer-designers determine the strengths of a new product early in the production process, before significant investment is made. It is also useful for evaluating competitive offerings.
The rubric is based on the idea that design is a critical element in any product and drives desirability among all stakeholders. But design is only one of the nine evaluation criteria. Using the nine elements, a score is created for a product’s appeal to children, parents, retailers and content creators.
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The rubric was created as a tool for product manufacturers and designers.
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I developed it based on my education in business and industrial design. I add to those decades of experience working as both a buyer and in product development, branding and marketing. And finally I layer on my experience as a parent.
This experience has taught me that for any given product there are multiple stake holders from children to parents to retailers to media/press.
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Just contact me. If you are a manufacturer, I’ll be happy to send you examples.
Child-ish Design Intelligence System
The Child-ISH Design Intelligence System (CDIS) is an AI-enabled approach to new product development designed to make early decisions faster, cheaper, and more reliable—without replacing human expertise and understanding. CDIS uses AI to synthesize scattered inputs into clear direction, reducing time and expense.
CDIS integrates AI across strategy, design, branding, and go-to-market. It accelerates iteration, stress-tests assumptions across key stakeholders (kids, parents, retailers, and content creators), and helps teams build better products and marketing that resonates.
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CDIS is for design-forward companies that want to develop new product lines with less risk and less waste—typically founders/CEOs, heads of product development, design leaders, and brand teams responsible for building the next wave of products. It’s especially useful when teams are making high-stakes early decisions (which concepts to pursue, what to cut, what to emphasize, and how to position the product) and need a faster way to get clarity without losing creative quality. CDIS can support internal teams as an “accelerator,” or it can be used by a single leader who needs a repeatable system to drive alignment across functions.
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CDIS integrates AI across the core phases of new product development—strategy, design, branding, and go-to-market—so the product and the story evolve together instead of in silos. It synthesizes inputs like customer insight, category patterns, brand cues, constraints, and risks into clear direction, then helps teams iterate quickly, pressure-test assumptions across key stakeholders (kids, parents, retailers, and content creators), and tighten concepts before expensive prototyping and launch commitments. The result is a structured, repeatable way to reduce false starts while improving both product quality and market readiness.
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CDIS can be engaged as a short diagnostic sprint, a concept-development engagement, or an embedded partnership. Most teams start with a focused project—often around a new product line or a specific set of concepts—where CDIS is used to clarify the opportunity, generate and refine directions, and align design, brand, and GTM into one coherent plan. From there, it can scale into an ongoing system your team can reuse: a shared way of working that speeds decision-making, improves cross-functional alignment, and increases confidence that what you’re building will resonate in the real world.
