“Raphaela is an incredibly skilled and tactical leader. She brings an innovative yet systematic approach in bringing clarity to complex enterprise issues. She continuously challenges processes to improve the efficiency of teams and advocates for user-centric thinking in cross-functional collaborations. Her ability to form meaningful connections allows her to develop strong partnerships both with clients and within the company. This not only allows her to build the best teams from a staffing perspective, but also cultivate a sense of community. Raphaela shaped the vibrant culture of the Seattle digital studio by creating spaces for a multi-disciplinary team of designers, engineers and product managers to play, learn, and grow. As my manager, Raphaela supported my early professional growth and development. She was a constant source of guidance through my engagements as the single UX designer, and never hesitated to give me the gentle push I needed to fully step into UX leadership roles."
Anna Nguyen
UX Research Co-op @ Wayfair | MS Candidate in Human Factors in Information Design
Colleague and Advisee | Avanade
“Raphalea is merely amazing. Her extensive knowledge combined with an extraordinary amount of passion and drive makes her an explosive professional. She has the ability to successfully apply the experience design methodology across a broad range of industries (I think there is no industry she did not apply her knowledge). She also has the extraordinary ability of growing junior staff members and being able to create an individual growth path for each person. Raphaela's expertise in design inclusion and accessibility completes her background and provides yet another crucial skill. What more can be said? Each team would love having someone like her."
Francesca Tassistro
Senior Director | Experience Design Global Lead
Milan, Italy | Avanade
“Raphaela is a super talented UX architect with a sharp focus on accessibility and usability; also passionate about building team community and culture, building strong relationships with her peers and reports.
I had the opportunity to work alongside her for +5 years, and collaborate on various projects where she demonstrated her tactical and leadership skills, understanding not only the problem to solve, but the smallest details about the industries she works with. Raphaela will always come back with solutions to find a common ground between stakeholders, and a strong opinion on what's best for the user.
Any team would be lucky to have Raphaela with them."
Carmen Orta
UXD: Visual Designer @ Google
Colleague | Avanade
“Raphaela was one of the first design leads that I worked under while I was interning and onboarding as a full-time designer. Throughout the combined 15 weeks we worked together she was incredibly supportive and detailed in ways that I could improve and continually helped me refine my foundational skills and trusted me to help contribute in a meaningful way to the projects we worked on together. She would teach me not only the basics but help me understand the aspects of product design that were adjacent to our work so that we could be better teammates to them. I frequently refer back to the skills and lessons that Raphaela taught me to this day.
Not only that, she's a catalyst for community within the teams and organizations she's a part of. She continually championed bringing people together online and helped turn an online experience into something that felt more connected, more personal, and more impactful. She is deeply inclusive, deeply passionate, and has been an incredible mentor to me and plenty of other designers that have had the pleasure to work with her."
JoJo Saunders
UX Designer
Colleague and Mentee | Avanade
“I had the absolute pleasure of recently working with Raphaela on one of our Media & Entertainment pursuits. Raphaela is an AWESOME individual, plain and simple. Not only did Raphaela show initiative in building out a collection of custom UX assets from scratch, but she also played a huge role in pushing our client forward from a design-thinking perspective - helping them to “think outside of the box”… Raphaela’s attention to detail and general UX creativity made a huge impact on the engagement. All in all, Raphaela is a rock star and any organization would be lucky to have her!"
Earvin Venzant Jr.
Director | Delivery Management
Colleague | Avanade
"Raphaela's been a key contributor to our ongoing work at JCI. Due to budget constraints on the client side, Raphaela had to work with minimal hours but still delivered high quality work aligned to client expectations. She's now an integral part of the redesign team for JCI's OpenBlue content, which has high visibility across the organization (both internally and externally). We've proven the value and need for UX and will be able to double the team size in the next engagement. Thanks for bringing excellence to the project!"
Jacob Knettel
Sr Manager | Advisory - Workplace Experience
Avanade
"Wrapping up a 6 month engagement with a challenging client that always pushes us to learn and improve, and you have been a key contributor to earning their trust which has in turn led to extensions of the team and building on a relationship for work into the next fiscal year! Thank you for all you've contributed to this project and I look forward to continuing our success!"
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Jacob Knettel
Sr Manager | Advisory - Workplace Experience
Avanade
"Hats off to Raphaela for paying attention to the signed Scope Of Work on a fixed fee, fixed scope project and making sure the teams focus on that scoped work. It's a tight schedule and a tight budget and this awareness and calling out of concerns will only help the entire project."
Thomas Lin
Director | Digital Marketing Solutions
Avanade
"You have worked diligently to drive success on the various projects. We see the efforts paying off as the client is continuing to engage us for bigger and better projects. Kudos to you!!"
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Peter Hanushewsk
Client Director
Avanade
"Raphaela has been able to join a content audit team that was already in motion and not miss a beat. She quickly got up to speed and has been exceeding both mine and the client's expectations on a daily basis. Her hard work has resulted in Avanade (and Accenture) being able to completely win-over a notoriously difficult client. We are winning future work with the client and Raphaela is a huge reason why. Great work Raphaela!"
Craig Taylor
Director | Application Architect
Avanade
"Thank you for participating in the Virtual Coffee challenge in June 2020! You are part of what makes Women in the West such a welcoming community and Avanade a great place to work."
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Joy Kirkwood
Group Manager | Business Applications
Avanade
"This is for a fabulous team of Design Thinkers who were challenged not only by delivering virtually, but also by a short prep-time and time-zones...and they delivered! Here is a quote from the client regarding your efforts:"I’ll start by thanking all of the facilitators and participants from across the business (and time zones!) for giving your time and energy to theIdeation Workshop. I believe this was XXXX’s first virtual IdeationWorkshop." - Jason Francis, XXXX Subsurface Innovation Lab Manager. I am very proud of the work this team accomplished and the positive impact it had with the client. Thank You!!!"
Robert Skoglund
Director | Analytics Architecture, South Region
Avanade
"Thank you for stepping in and helping facilitate Avanade and XXXX's first ever full virtual Design Thinking workshop and successfully helping our Client develop 3 very impactful solutions. We received a thank you note from Matt Johnson and he personally classified it as a great success! Thank you and keep going!"
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Laone Taylor
Global Talent Community Lead | Business and Technology Integration
Avanade
"Despite waking up at 4 am all week and working multiple bench projects... Raphaela was able to jump in last minute and save the day on XXXX. Thank you, Raphaela, for being Wonder Woman on this RFP!"
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Yuri Tran
Group Manager | Experience Design
Avanade
"Thank you for volunteering to drive the employee point of view during this global health and business crisis. I continue to be impressed at your ability to articulate and address needs the point of view of our colleagues. Thank you for living the value: Employees Feel Cared For. I am so happy you're watching out for me (and all of us)!"
Davi Bryan
Managing Director | Global Workplace Advisory
Avanade
"Your work and – perhaps more importantly – your flexibility and optimism enabled us to deliver impressive results in just a short period of time. Thank you for your can-do attitude, willingness to improvise, and dedication to delivering quality."
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Chaz Decker
Creative Director | Experience Design
Avanade
"Rolling on to my most recent project, it was quick for me to see how much the client respected and enjoyed Raphaela, but it was quick to see how much she'd be missed. She not only made a great impression on them, but on me as well. She set me up for success to roll-on and take over for her - which were big shoes to fill."
Joshua Christensen
Group Manager | Experience Design
Avanade
"Thank you for all your support and mentorship during the project. I really appreciate you having my back and understanding! I learned a lot and really enjoyed working with you! Hope we have a chance to work together again in the future :)"
Divya Ramireddygari
Consultant | User Experience
Accenture