David de Benedetto

About David de Benedetto

I’m a strategy and experience leader operating at the intersection of customer behavior, data, technology, and business transformation.My career began in media and creative direction and evolved into leading enterprise-level design and product strategy across fintech and highly regulated industries. Today, I focus on shaping complex platforms, defining high-impact problem spaces, and aligning executive stakeholders around clear, insight-driven direction.With an MBA and experience leading multidisciplinary teams, I bring both creative rigor and commercial fluency to the table. I’ve driven large-scale innovation initiatives, platform strategy, and cross-organizational transformation efforts for brands including MTV, Citi, Schwab, Bayer, Pfizer, Lilly, Time Warner, and U.S. Bank.I’m most energized by roles where experience strategy informs business strategy - where design becomes a lever for platform clarity, operational efficiency, behavioral insight, and sustainable growth at scale.

Experience

1. Head of Design Strategy

   U.S. Bank

   Mar 2024 — Present · New York, NY, US

   I lead strategy and innovation within a 400+ person internal design team supporting one of the largest U.S. financial institutions. My work focuses on uncovering customer and business opportunity areas, framing high-value problem spaces, and enabling product and design teams to accelerate decisions through strategic clarity.Recent work includes:Design Transformation Playbook: Directed a 16-week engagement to codify and scale the design team’s methods—resulting in a 100+ play internal platform that equips teams with modular, flexible methods for discovery, problem framing, and insight generation. The playbook is widely adopted across the enterprise, enabling teams to operate with greater autonomy and accelerating alignment in early-stage strategy work.Enterprise Discovery Strategy: Built and coached a central team focused on opportunity discovery and design thinking enablement. Our work has influenced upstream roadmaps, enterprise capability builds, and new product exploration.Cross-functional Alignment: Regularly lead workshops, facilitate decision-making, and produce synthesis tools that help senior leaders—from design, product, and business—align around priorities and opportunity sizing.Team Development: Develop high-potential talent into design strategists. Coach teams in delivering insights that blend qualitative depth with business and operational awareness.Complex Systems Thinking: Often operate in regulated, multi-stakeholder environments where legal, compliance, product, and experience must all align.This role spans influence across product, data, operations, and experience—with a consistent focus on ensuring design drives measurable strategic value, improves cross-functional decision-making, and unlocks earlier-stage innovation.

Education

• University of Southern California

  BA, Psychology

• New York University

  MA, Cinema

  2004 — 2007

• Boston University

  Master of Business Administration - MBA, Business Administration

Skills

• Paper Prototyping
• Animation
• Digital Strategy
• Marketing
• Multimedia
• Art Direction
• User Scenarios
• Lean UX
• New Business Development
• Microsoft Excel
• Content Strategy
• Creative Strategy
• Interactive Advertising
• Strategy
• Customer Relationship Management (Crm)
• Digital Media
• Digital Marketing
• Advertising
• Site Maps
• User Experience Design
• Online Marketing
• Film
• Video
• Interactive Marketing
• Graphic Design
• Gamification
• Javascript
• Motion Graphics
• Photoshop
• Wire Framing
• Information Architecture
• Storyboarding
• Illustrator
• User-Centered Design
• Crm
• Management
• Adobe Creative Suite
• Experience Design
• Web Development
• Rapid Prototyping