Amrita Kulkarni
Director, Design Research & Strategy
She/Her
Amrita joined Highland in fall 2020, having previously applied her skills across four continents. With formal education in architecture, industrial design, and innovation strategy, she has spent the past decade in the innovation consulting space, helping imagine new futures in collaboration with her clients. Her foundational driving force lies in defining the right thing to do before doing it the right way, and this directive reflects in her research questions, synthesis frameworks, and team conversations.
Whether working on a patient data management app for the US market, prototyping digital experiences for subway riders in London, aligning disparate global teams around a user growth journey, building culture-sensitive solar lamps in west African villages, or designing new food experiences that celebrate crafts in India, her focus on ‘user’ behavior—whether that of a customer, consumer, manager, teammate, client, or other—drives a holistic understanding of all the forces at play.
She loves to talk about the difference between synthesis and analysis, problem-solving and opportunity-finding, as well as generative and evaluative research. Her desire to learn endlessly pushes her in many directions—which she simply calls building range—in an attempt to live a spherical life.
Fun fact
Amrita likes to say that she speaks 4.5 languages, with the half being assigned to her obsession with French. Growing up in India took care of the other four!