Ilana Harris

About Ilana Harris

I help leaders, teams and organizations dig and uncover their gold to unearth the treasures to deliver their biggest impact. My compounds? One part miner, one part empath, two parts optimizer. Let me explain. In the movie “The Sixth Sense” actor Haley Joel Osment earns his unique point of difference by owning his gift for ‘seeing dead people’! I’m exactly like that but what I see is gold in even the most unsuspecting, hidden places. I see raw opportunities and curate them into the company’s greatest assets - from big picture systems to the smallest design details - equipped and ready to strike a goldmine. Yes, I’m talking about revenue, but even more precious than gold is the 24K variety called personal capital. Its value? Priceless. My three key success principles to transform business visions into sustaining realities are: 1. The Golden Rule: As a fearless gold miner, I place the highest value on inclusivity, equity and respect to develop people and teams to galvanize growth - both revenue and the human kind. Developed and implemented training curriculum pre-positioning the firm for higher caliber, competitive projects on a national and international stage. This enabled a +28% growth in referrals, a rise in confidence and a shifted culture of growth and leadership. Test your mettle: Challenges like the pandemic have tested our mettle and what we’re made of. I learn and lead by relying on the most malleable “metals” to embrace change while building grit and resonance. Within a record-breaking compressed timeframe of eighteen months, I led the turnaround of four offices to drive a +12% hit rate increase, recovered our revenue and empowered individuals to continue to own their value in the company at large. Investing In The Currency of Action: Leveling up the game to achieve meaningful short and long term results - across revenue generation, brand legacy, or optimizing systems. Optimized personal capital…developed process for a robust change management approach for training the eight studios on centralized software tools for customer relationship management. Within six months the entire company was on-boarded with full adoption of new workflows, enabling leaders and saving $100k per quarter. When I’m not excavating, you can find me in full-on play mode - hiking/camping/skiing at 11k ft, geeking out on music documentaries or creating imaginariums with my daughter.with accents and props of course.

Experience

1. Director of Marketing and Business Development

   Design Workshop

   Jun 2018 — Present · Denver, CO, US

   As Director of Marketing and a member of the Executive Leadership Team, I play a key role in driving the firm’s growth strategy and communications across all 8 studios. With a deep interest in \"design for social impact\" and its transformative effect in cities, I bring market-driven focus and tactical direction to advance the thinking and practice as a whole.+Created short-and-long format sales training programs for seller/doers and achieved a 12% increase in hit rate and 28% increase in referral base during the pandemic +Designed and implemented the firm rebranding of website, communications and collateral materials resulting in a 59% increase in new visitors +Built a high-performance team with the longest tenure in the firm; ongoing leadership development +Plays a central role in the proposal strategy, content and communication of some of the most complex and challenging urban projects

Education

• International Center of Photography

  Certification, Digital Communication and Media/Multimedia

• Washington University in St. Louis

  Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA)

• School of Visual Arts

  Certificate, Film Animation

• The New School

  Certification, Project Management for the Web