As a creative innovator, strategic researcher, and bridge builder, Annie Hardy’s expertise ranges from product strategy and marketing to innovation and research, for companies in multiple industries. Today, as the Senior Visioneer at Cisco, Annie is establishing a practice in the Customer Experience organization to pull empathy and the customer’s voice into conversations around corporate innovation. She seeks to democratize enterprise innovation, to represent that diversity of thought in the rooms where engineers build new things, and to cultivate an innovation dialect in her team.

Previously, she was the Founder and Principal of zeet insights, a strategic market and design research firm which explored the hidden needs of humans through qualitative and quantitative research.

The human-centered focus Annie has today actually began with her first job out of college – as a Community Health Worker in a Medicaid Managed Care company. She helped low-income American and immigrant families in Texas, conducting home visits with pregnant mothers, connecting them to the healthcare and resource they needed, and supporting local social service organizations. This experience fundamentally shaped her perspective and inspired within her a passion for the people-centered practices she cultivates today in her company and her community.

This foundation is a critical component in how she thinks, and how she intends to work with ISSIP members and leadership. As the future of Service Innovation and Work is impacted by machine learning, automation, de-urbanization, human augmentation, supply chain diversity, and the newly available pool of global talent among other trends, she is p[pleased to partner with ISSIP to help drive the organization forward.