Design X Impact

Hello, I’m Pam,

Strategy & Operations Consultant│Innovation Leader│Product Manager │Start-up Advisor

I am DEEPLY passionate about transforming complex challenges into significant Business opportunities.

I am a multi-disciplinary Strategy, Product, and Transformation leader that thrives on coaching teams through complex business challenges, innovation initiatives, organizational change projects, and the various phases of product development to help organizations drive towards a more sustainable, equitable, and diverse future without loosing sight of tangible bottom-line impact.

Call Me:

+1 (310) 490 3499

Mail Me:

pamEla.schau@gmail.com

Why I do what i do

My mission

Leverage the best of business, technology, and human insight to drive purpose-led innovation, strategic transformation, and intentional growth for a more sustainable, equitable, and diverse future - by design.

Purpose-led

In an era defined by climate change, societal transformation, and heightened economic volatility, I guide organizations in reshaping their value-generation strategies to seize sustainable growth opportunities, pinpoint latent areas of value, assess risks and potential, and forge robust business frameworks that yield strategic results.

people-centric

I have applied my human-centered design expertise across a range of projects in customer strategy, operations, business transformation, and product development, leveraging both human insights and quantitative metrics to create market-validated solutions that drive business impact within evolving competitive dynamics.

Boundary-spanning

To address systemic organizational challenges, I blend strategic foresight, stakeholder engagement, and emerging technologies to co-create solutions that drive ROI and mitigate risks. My expertise in team facilitation, project management, and technology transformation shapes strategies that convert ideas into profitable ventures initiatives

Latest Insights:

E-Book: Artificial Intelligence for Humans - A quick intro to designing for human-centered Artificial Intelligence
‍Presentation: Sustainable Business Transformation - A Primer Presentation: Models for Financing an Environmentally Sustainable Business Transition

LEARN MORE

What i do

My Portfolio

My Focus Areas

Direction

01

Strategy &
Operations

I leverage a broad spectrum of approaches to craft future-proof strategies that align current capabilities with emerging business needs for organizational success.

Project & Program Mngt

Strategic Analysis & Planning

Product Portfolio Analysis

Market Research

Competitive Intelligence

Customer Strategy & Insights

Segmentation Studies & ICP's

Financial Modeling & Analysis

M&A Commercial Due Diligence

Operating Model Design

Pricing Strategy

Market Entry / GTM Strategy

Sustainable Business Strategy

Expansion

02

INNOVATION &
Transformation

In a time of crucial shifts for businesses, my expertise in lean innovation shapes strategies for product portfolios that swiftly unlock growth and transform core business operations.

Innovation Strategy

Growth Initiative development

User Research & Partnerships

Feasibility & Viability Assessment

Customer Experience Design

Concept VAlidation

Co-Design Facilitation

Business Model & Investment CaseS

Behavior Design

Operating Model Transformation

Process Design & Optimization

Change Management

Sustainable Innovation

DEVELOPMENT

03

product Management & Growth Marketing

I collaborate with cross-functional teams, employing lean experiments and agile methodologies to evolve ideas from early-stage concepts to award-winning products.

Cross-functional Team MNGM

Product Vision & Strategy

Brand & Value Proposition Design

UX Research

Data Analysis & Feedback Loops

Lean Experiments

MVP, ALPHA & BETA Definitions

Roadmap Prioritization

Agile & Lean Development

Backlog Grooming

Emerging Technology Integration

Go-to-market & Growth Strategy

Content Strategy

transformATION

04

Training &
Mentorship

As a 'Women in Leadership' awardee, I specialize in developing multi-disciplinary teams, mentoring startups, and coaching individuals through significant challenges.

Program Development

Workshop Facilitation

1:1 Mentoring

Hackathon Facilitation

Team Integration

Stakeholder Engagement

Project & Program Management

40+

Projects Completed

30+

Happy Clients

12+

Years’ Experience

Honors & Awards

Who i am

My Story

About me:
I am a multi-disciplinary Strategy, Product, and Transformation leader, who thrives on coaching teams through complex business challenges, innovation initiatives, organizational change projects, and the various phases of product development.

My leadership style combines visionary thinking with pragmatic execution, focusing on creating sustainable, equitable, and diverse solutions without losing sight of tangible bottom-line impact. My expertise lies in transforming strategic visions into actionable plans, effectively catalyzing organizational success, and driving progressive change by empowering diverse teams within complex, global matrix organizations across the US, Europe, and APAC.

Currently, I am working at Visa's internal venture incubation arm, developing new ways to connect the world through the most innovative, reliable, and secure payment network. In my previous roles at BCG Digital Ventures, Deloitte Consulting, and as co-founder of my own digital consultancy, I have gained over 12 years of experience in management consulting, innovation strategy, product development, and business transformation, helping clients across the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific bring their visions to life.

My Superpower: Collaborative Problem Solver
I thrive on bringing people together around a common goal, look at challenges from all angles, and connect the dots across functions to chart a path forward together.

Latest Experience

Nov 2022 — Currently

Director - product Portfolio MNG

| Visa Inc. - VAS

Driving product lifecycle and portfolio management for Visa's high-growth Value-added Services portfolio.

Nov 2022 — Currently

Sr. Manager - VeNtures

| Visa Inc. - Visa Garage

Innovation, incubation, growth, and co-investment in new venture opportunities at Visa. Outstanding individual & team performance rating.

May 2021 — Aug 2022

Accelerated MBA

| UC Berkeley & AGSM Business School

‘Women in Leadership’ Scholarship recipient, AGSM Consulting Director and UC Berkeley Student Board Member.

Feb 2022 — May 2022

Consulting Project Manager (MBA)

| Google - Area 120

Led a global team of 5 MBA students across 3 work streams to drive the GTM strategy of a new venture within Google’s innovation arm.

Nov 2018 — Apr 2021

Sr. Consultant

| BCG Digital Ventures

Developed product portfolios, business strategies and multi-award winning corporate ventures across the healthcare, financial services, consumer, and B2B enterprise sectors valued between $8-35M USD.

Aug 2015 — Nov 2018

Analyst to Sr. Consultant

| Deloitte Consulting

Helped Fortune 500 clients identify their future-state strategies and act on their innovation vision, product portfolio aspirations, and digital transformation ambitions for projects of up to US$ 30M.

See full career timeline

GO TO
PORTFOLIO

My Resume

Education, Scholarships & Awards

• MBA (Exchange)
• Global Entrepreneurship & Innovation Certificate
• Blockchain Decal
• Executive Product Management Certificate
• Sustainable Capitalism & ESG Certificate

• MBA
• Women in Leadership Scholarship
• Consulting Director
• Montagio LEAD Program Scholarship

‍

• Bachelor of Business (Hons.)
• Academic Medal
• Phillip L. Pearce Prize
• RACQ Prize

‍

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Business Certificate

• Merger & Acquisition Certificate

• Behavioral Science of Management Certificate

• Advanced Responsible Investment Analysis
• Responsible Investment for Trustees Certificate

• Emerging Leaders Academy Appointee
• Agile Training
• Six Sigma Yellow Belt

• UX Design Immersive Scholarship

‍

• SAFe® Lean Portfolio Management (6.0)
• SAFe® Product Owner & Product Manager (6.0)

• Certified Scrum Master

GO TO PORTFOLIO

My Process

While the specific approach may vary depending on the problem context, a well-defined process will set the guard rails for a team to focus on their North Star, while constantly adapting to emerging challenges and opportunities along the way.

1. Discovery

Review secondary research on market environment, consumer behaviours, industry trends, and competitors
Explore ancillary problem spaces
Conduct primary qualitative & quantitative research
Identify best practices, challenges, user needs, market gaps, and opportunity spaces

2. Analysis & Co-creation

Synthesize research insights
Conduct gap analysis between current state and desired future state
Form solution hypotheses and co-design potential implementation pathways
Estimate high-level opportunity sizes, market segments, and ROI
Test assumptions in the field
Analyse test outcomes and refine solution hypotheses and implementation approach

3. Strategy development

Turn solution hypotheses into strategic insights & recommendations
Assess against goals, capabilities, structures, systems, partnerships, KPI's and other relevant factors
Workshop around key requirements, resources, and implementation timelines
Build strategic roadmap
Socialize roadmap with stakeholders and generate buy-in

4. opportunity selection

Select top priority opportunities from the strategic roadmap
Define the goals and focus for validation (idea desirability, viability, feasibility, impact potential, market focus, etc)
Map out assumptions, and prioritize the most critical ones
Convert assumptions into testable investment hypotheses and KPIs
Identify the required experiments and corresponding budget
Prepare program plan & team for agile sprints and stage gate decisions

5. concept Validation

Map out all desired experiments, target groups, key variables, risks, and KPI'S
Plan experiment sequence, duration, and criteria for go/no go decisions
Conduct experiments and analyze insights
‍Pivot and repeat experiment if needed
‍Go/No go decision for further investment based on key insights

6. MVP Test & Learn

Gather all insights from the prior stage and map out key users, target market, feature preferences, channels, partners, business model, resource requirements, and technical capabilities.
Workshop the MVP roadmap
Develop build, test, and feedback plan
Identify key criteria, sequence, and timeframe for next phase go/no go decision

7. Agile development

Take feedback from MVP to determine Alpha and Beta phase roadmap
Alpha: Build out MVP features, test technical build and business model components , and iterate on augmentative launch components
Beta: Refine feature set, integrate compliance/content/security requirements, and recruit Beta users

8. Launch

Create product launch plan, build anticipation, and recruit early adopters
Release fully functional product to public
Gather live feedback via in-build metrics to inform future strategy
Expand into key markets via targeted product marketing and partnerships
Continuously iterate on product usability, functionality, business model, and impact factors

9. Grow & Transform

Work with customers, designers, engineers, and sales to continuously improve the product, service or strategic initiative
Apply Growth Hacking methodologies to run experiments, optimize the funnel, and identify new user groups
Monitor new market and consumer trends to plan the long-term roadmap and identify new markets opportunities
Transfer knowledge to other opportunities in portfolio

Who I've worked with ...

Testimonials

Kristin Krajecki

VP - Customer Strategy & Insights, Visa Garage - Visa's Internal Venture ARM

Count yourself fortunate if you get to work with or have Pam as a part of your network. I’ve had the pleasure of having Pam on my team in the Visa Garage and she is an incredible self-starter who dives into ambiguity with curiosity, tenacity, and extreme competence in new business creation. She is dedicated to her team and brings everyone together in true collaboration. Perhaps what stands out most is Pam's consistent willingness to go the extra mile without ever being asked to do so. She showed this multiple times across projects, including stepping into tasks outside her immediate area of responsibility. If the task needed to get done, Pam stepped up to make things happen.

Sevara Mallyn

Principal Product Manager, Visa Garage - Visa's Internal Venture ARM

I have been lucky to work with Pam at Visa building new businesses for the company. Pam is a brilliant strategist and team facilitator. I was consistently impressed with her creative and thoughtful approach to solving complex and challenging problems. She is able to look at situations from different angles and present multiple approaches to achieve results. She can strategically think through business needs at a 10,000 foot level, but also equally able to dig into the minute details when necessary. Pam is dedicated and persistent in delivering high quality work, ensuring the full team always put their best foot forward when presenting to C-Suite leaders. I can't say enough about how much I enjoyed working with Pam and know she will be an incredible asset to any team.

Grace Davey

Partner & Director at BCG Digital Ventures

During the project I saw Pam grow into a confident leader within the team. She communicated her findings clearly and integrated solution-based thinking into all of her team presentations. She absorbed data from the field, and drew logical and well-founded conclusions. She was open to the views of other and sought out advice when needed. As a testament to her work, the current design for our medical digital app is receiving fantastic reviews from the user base. and is currently the No. 1 Epilepsy app on the US App store.

Matt Brown

Lead Engineer at BCG Digital Ventures

Pam was incredible to work with on Epsy - her commitment to (and advocacy for) building a product that would be loved by the patients was unwavering. She consistently worked across cohorts, going beyond her role to drive the design and iteration of key product features (HCP report, medication reminders, etc) and leading customer success (being the "go-to" person for our MVP users) throughout incubation - including working closely with engineering to ensure product outcomes. Her work output is always of the highest quality, and she is exceptional at trading off completeness with attention to detail. The insights she gathers have been a critical input into the broader product development process.

Mark Stormont

OC&C ConsultantS

I have worked with Pam on consulting projects in both healthcare and social technology, most recently with Google. As the Project Lead on both projects, her outstanding roadmapping skills made initial project stages smooth and swift and her leadership probably catalysed the early output of the teams by ~200%. During projects she offers excellent council. When team members are stuck she draws on macro perspectives, absorbs information quickly, and helps clarify insights into salient points for the client.Pam has a natural hunger of knowledge and approaches changing the world with an infectiously graceful air and she will be a valuable asset to every team and every project.

Peter Bauld

Head of Operations, Deloitte Digital

Pam's experience spans across business strategy, innovation, customer experience, UX design, brand design and consumer behaviour research. Pam is a real asset to the Deloitte Digital business and was my go to for a range of projects having experience over so many fields made her a vital addition to the team.Pam is a highly dedicated and motivated individual who the team could always rely on to bring a wealth of knowledge and personal experience to the table.I would highly recommend Pam for all things digital and look forward to working with her for years to come.

Davy Renny

National Managing Director Tribal Australia | 40 under 40 Campaign Asia 2021 | Ex-Deloitte

Pam is the pinnacle of a rounded professional. Her analytical and creative mindset make her perfect for innovative problem solving and delivery. A truly inspirational professional that delivered for me time and time again.

Andrew Galvin

OX Consulting

Pam is a Social Media expert – developing and implementing social media strategies for organisations, products and services and events. Pam created a targeted social media campaign for the Australian Computer Society (ACS) annual event that utilised the primary Social Media channels, Gamification apps and video distribution channels to build the event audience. As a result ACS YITcon14 was fully sold, Social Media impression was approximately 500,000 with the event video being viewed over 200,000 times. We have worked with Pam over the last year and have found her to be professional, results driven and a pleasure to work with. I strongly recommend her as a Social Media expert.

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