01 Design Leader
In 2013, Janaki helped create the Design and Co-Innovation Center, a strategic design agency within SAP. She recruited, coached and inspired talented interaction designers, visual designers, design thinkers, technology and business experts to deliver products and services to customers that transformed the way they worked. She led teams that won multiple product design awards including the Gold award for Best Enterprise Experience, several Red Dot awards, IDEA award, Fast Company Innovation by design award, to name a few. Janaki was named a Women of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal in 2016.
I'M
Janaki Kumar.
Design leader |
Innovation culture catalyst | Speaker | Author | Artist
Janaki is a thought-leader in design-led innovation for the enterprise. She is committed to delivering award-winning products and services that help businesses transform the way they work. She is a proven leader in building, coaching and inspiring high-performance design teams, leveraging design-thinking, customer empathy, and co-innovation.
02 Innovation Culture Catalyst
Janaki is a passionate advocate for creating a culture of innovation in organizations that harness the creative potentials of all employees. She has helped create a framework to evaluate which stage an organization is today, and how to get to the next stage.

04 Author
Janaki has published a book, Gamification at Work: Designing Engaging Business Software. She is an active blogger. She is also an inventor on 21 intellectual property patents for innovative user experience.
05 Experience
2018 - Present
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Head of Design, Commercial Bank
2001-2018 (17Y)
SAP
VP, Design Evangelist, Office of the Chief Design Officer
• Extend SAP’s thought leadership in design and
Innovation
• Nurture the design community in SiliconValley
• Lead strategic projects on behalf of the CDO
VP, Head of Design and Co-Innovation Center, Americas
• Established SAP’s Design and Co-Innovation team, a
strategic design agency in Palo Alto.
• Recruited and staffed a team of designers,
researchers, and design thinking experts to work with
customers on their strategic innovation projects.
• Completed over 700 projects in less than five years with
some of the most important companies in the world
Senior Director, UX Design USA
• Led a centralized team of designers for all lines of
business based in PaloAlto including the Cloud Products,
Sustainability Applications Group and the Global
Business Incubator.
• Established the Governance Risk&Compliance (GRC)
design team and shipped SAP’s GRC suite
• Led the design of Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) Productivity Suite
• Experienced in end-to-end enterprise suite of products
2015-Present (5Y)
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Co-Instructor
Customer Engagement Design: A Neuroscience Perspective,” a course with Dr. Baba Shiv at the Stanford GSB LEAD Certificate: Corporate Innovation
2000-2001 (1Y)
myCFO / Harris Financials
Interaction Designer, User Experience Group
1998-2000 (2Y)
SAP Labs
Internet Developer, Electronic Commerce
Created SAP’s first web based products. Collaborated with Frog Design, Cooper Interaction and Karen Holtzblatt to create best practices for design at SAP
1994-1998(4Y)
Fannie Mae (FNMA) Washington
Senior Software Engineer, Web Development Group
Winner of the 1998 ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award
Designed screens, created prototype, conducted usability studies for a web-based financial application – MortgageLinks
1993-1994 (1Y)
eCredit.com/SR Research
1991-1993 (2Y)