Design Strategist

For more than 100 years, Purina has been revolutionizing pet food production, and its ability to enrich the lives of pets everywhere. By 1956, we began mastering new production techniques and literally reshaped pet care, introducing Dog Chow® as the first extruded dry food. We’re still at it today, with Tidy Cats®, the lightweight cat litter champion of the world and the leader in our category.

So here’s why we need you. We’re growing our core team of Design Strategists so we can continue to enable and accelerate innovation at a larger scale across the larger business. Your role on this team is to help us affect our culture. How? You’ll make sure all the right brains are in the game. You’ll provide the insight and consult regarding the importance of focusing on the user, adapting, being agile, taking calculated risks, learning by doing, critiquing and trying again.

- Finding alternatives when presented with constraints - Identify constraints and the root issues behind them - Understand and articulate success criteria for a project and be able and willing to reframe the objectives to find adaptive solutions - Challenge corporate orthodoxies and present new ways of addressing them - Ongoing learning/validation through prototyping and communication - Express concepts (including business models, competitive landscapes, and design strategy) through powerful visuals and tangible form - Collaborate with designers to deliver prototypes that bring to life human-centered experiences - Use prototypes and visual expressions to convincingly build confidence in new concepts/areas of opportunity - Empathizing with users (consumers and non-consumers) - Lead contextual/observational research alongside internal/external research partners - Synthesize qualitative/quantitative research data into actionable insights and opportunity areas rooted in user problems - Facilitating conversations across disciplines - Lead cross-functional teams comprised of creative and analytical backgrounds through innovation projects with phases in research, strategy, design, and development - Translate multiple stakeholder points of view (when necessary) to encourage balanced engagement and alignment - Create and lead workshop experiences and facilitate colleagues through design-led exercises - Perform all other duties as assigned.

**Education:** - Bachelor’s degree in Design from an accredited college or university required (Ex: industrial design, graphic design, architecture, etc.) - Master’s degree in a related field preferred **Experience (Years/Type):** - 5 or more years of experience managing/leading product, service, brand, or cultural design/innovation initiatives (or 2 or more years of similar experience with Master’s Degree)