2024 Creative LIAisons Coaches
Thomas Mueller
Chief Design OfficerAccenture
Munich
I am a thinker, a maker, a leader. Over the last 20+ years, I have helped client-side and agency design & innovation teams bring creativity, simplicity, elegance and rigor to their practice. Clients I have worked with range from mega-corps to non-profits, CEOs/CMOs and CDOs and a wide range in between. A huge fan of simplicity, I love using design as a process to unlock value, understand people, integrate technology, create emotional connections and ultimately enable magical experiences. I believe in the success of design when it puts people at the center. I want to give people something to smile about, while enabling the quality and equality of human lives.
In my role as Chief Design Officer, I am on any given day involved in building deep client relationships, enabling innovative team environments, while infusing creativity and simplicity into Accenture’s DNA, so that we deliver human impact and business value in equal parts to our clients.
Prior to joining Accenture Song, I helped transform Siegel+Gale as its Chief Experience Officer into a modern brand experience consultancy, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia rejuvenate its online business and Arnold Worldwide help build a world-class creatively integrated digital team.
I got my start in New York at Razorfish just as the term Silicon Alley was coined. Over the course of nearly ten years, I helped build design teams across the world in my role as VP Design/Executive Creative Director, working with clients such as AOL, CBS, Ford Motor Company, Time Warner, Charles Schwab, Giorgio Armani, Citibank, and Sony to name a few.
As a proud graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, I offer time to the college faculty, its students and graduates as a coach, sounding board and advocate for design education. I live in Munich with my partner. In our free time, we love to soak up the city's culture, energy, beauty and history or scout the next cycling challenge in the Alps.
In my role as Chief Design Officer, I am on any given day involved in building deep client relationships, enabling innovative team environments, while infusing creativity and simplicity into Accenture’s DNA, so that we deliver human impact and business value in equal parts to our clients.
Prior to joining Accenture Song, I helped transform Siegel+Gale as its Chief Experience Officer into a modern brand experience consultancy, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia rejuvenate its online business and Arnold Worldwide help build a world-class creatively integrated digital team.
I got my start in New York at Razorfish just as the term Silicon Alley was coined. Over the course of nearly ten years, I helped build design teams across the world in my role as VP Design/Executive Creative Director, working with clients such as AOL, CBS, Ford Motor Company, Time Warner, Charles Schwab, Giorgio Armani, Citibank, and Sony to name a few.
As a proud graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, I offer time to the college faculty, its students and graduates as a coach, sounding board and advocate for design education. I live in Munich with my partner. In our free time, we love to soak up the city's culture, energy, beauty and history or scout the next cycling challenge in the Alps.
1. Through each conversation, I relived parts of my much younger years as a creative professional. I remembered struggling with the exact same questions. I was able to empathetically share my similar moments, how I tackled them, how it worked out, if I would do the same thing again, or go about it differently.
2. In many moments of my conversations, I sensed some eye-opening ‘aha-moment’ with my coachees, which was wonderful. Again, I realized the value of the LIAisons programs, to these young professionals in those sparks. It is a wonderful initiative.
3. Above all, these dialogues were a 2-way exchange, meaning not only was I able to provide perspective, experience, share lived moments, but reversely the experience of these young professionals, provided an invaluable insight for me into their struggles, questions, excitements, challenges, and opportunities today.
I’d like to thank LIA for the opportunity of involving me in this program and look forward to meeting you in October in Las Vegas.