Lead brand, product, content, research, and experience strategy across the enterprise-buyer-to-working-adult-learner journey. Partner with executives and teams across product, marketing, sales, employer clients, and academic institutions to turn evidence into positioning, commercial narratives, products, and services. Work includes major partnerships such as Amazon and Taco Bell, plus mixed-methods research on AI, workforce readiness, and the future of work.
Annette Neu
VP of Design, applied researcher, and speaker with nearly 20 years of experience helping organizations understand complex problems, make better decisions, and create experiences people can trust. I’m especially interested in how AI changes work, learning, and human capability. Most importantly, I’m a mom, focused on how technology can strengthen human agency and help build a better future.
Experience
Led research-informed strategy and design for complex digital and physical journeys. Key work included research across seven countries with 45 small-business owners for FedEx and research for Audi on a car-rental app and self-driving futures through the lenses of autonomy, trust, and control. Other clients included Facebook, Nickelodeon, Chase, WP Engine, Southwestern University, and Silvercar.
Helped establish interaction design within a creative agency, bringing user experience, design research, and digital product thinking into brand and marketing work.
Developed brand platforms, design systems, and digital experiences for Chase, Cartoon Network, JCPenney, Sprite, UPS, and The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.
Capabilities
Research and audience insight
Reveal human needs and expose assumptions or evidence gaps.
Product, content, and service
Make complex experiences understandable and usable across the buyer-to-user journey.
Brand and design leadership
Make the future believable, build coherent systems, and connect quality to outcomes.
Education
Bachelor of Science, Advertising
The University of Texas at Austin, 2005 to 2009
Texas Creative Sequence: Art Direction
College honors
Three Student ADDY Awards
Interactive Art Directors Club, selected member
Speaking
- 2026Featured event speaker · AI, the future of work, and the value of design at InStride’s company-wide event in California for about 200 attendees
- 2019–2026Guest lecturer on design, research, and creative leadership at Howard University, UC Irvine, Austin Community College, and others through Good Cause
- Through 2019DesignCraft · Founding team member and speaker for cross-industry events in Austin and Seattle
- 2017Circles Conference · Speaker and panelist
Recognition
- 2026TIME World’s Top EdTech Companies and America’s Top EdTech Companies · InStride
- 2025FORTUNE Change the World · InStride
- 2024Fast Company Innovation by Design, Learning honorable mention · InStride
- 2023Fast Company No. 5 Most Innovative Company in Education · InStride