Bios:

Lauren Burger
Sr. Design Strategist

As a design strategist, Lauren is working at the intersection of human needs and desires, engineering feasibility, and business strategy. She holds dual degrees from the University of Michigan – a BSE in Mechanical Engineering and a BFA in Industrial Design – which shape her ability to connect how people experience products with how those products are actually created and brought to market.

Her work centers on guiding design and innovation efforts from early problem definition and discovery through opportunity identification and prioritization to help teams make confident, evidence-based decisions. She is particularly focused on translating complex inputs, including user insights, technical constraints, and market dynamics, into clear frameworks and strategic direction.

Before joining Sundberg-Ferar, Lauren spent several years at Gongos leading human-centered research and innovation initiatives. Earlier in her career, she founded and grew her own consumer brand, gaining hands-on experience in product development, manufacturing, marketing, and multi-channel retail.

Outside the professional world, she likes to spend her time trying out new vegetarian recipes, expanding her backyard garden, kayaking, strength training, and dreaming up her next big hike.

Dave Byron
Principal and CEO

As Principal and Chief Executive Officer, David leads the firm and our partners to design with purpose and create new futures. With over 12 years at SF, and 25 years in the industry, David’s passion for learning and ability to translate complex problems into simplified opportunities with clear pathways to tactical solutions has helped SF’s partners bring game-changing solutions to market. Over the last decade plus, he’s led design efforts spanning the Hyundai ELEVATE and TIGER walking cars, to automotive HMI solutions and high-speed trains, to home appliances and virtual education solutions. His focus is on driving innovation for SF’s partners by identifying human-centered needs and new market opportunities, and creating emotionally resonant, real-world solutions that create market value.

David’s design journey began with a love for cars, leading him to Detroit to earn a BFA in Industrial Design with a focus on Transportation from the College for Creative Studies. Early in his career, he contributed to production and concept vehicles at General Motors and ASC. Moving on to come the Lead Designer at Saleen, he lead all creative design on the 2008 S5S Raptor super car and the 2010-2013 Saleen Mustang. He later joined New Balance’s Warrior division, designing hockey and lacrosse helmets while broadening his experience into product market strategy, consumer research and human factors and ergonomics.

Passionate about design advocacy, David serves as president of the Michigan Design Council, a non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating and retaining industrial design talent in the state, where he oversees the annual K-12 Michigan Design Prize and produced the documentary The State of Design to inspire young designers about various career opportunities in Michigan. He also continues to teach design each year at CCS for over 18 years, helping his alma mater inspire tomorrow’s designers, while being inspired by the students’ everlasting desire to improve our world through design.

“I am so fortunate to have the opportunity to work with people and organizations to create something new every day. Questions that begin with “What is the future of…” get me up every morning with an endless desire to figure out what that future is and how we can make it a reality.”

Jeevak Badve
Chief Growth Officer, SundbergFerar.com

Jeevak brings energy, passion & curiosity to his CGO role at Sundberg-Ferar Innovation Studio. With his unique blend of education and experience in industrial design, engineering and business, he is a rallying voice for the alignment of innovation strategy and business vision; via empathetically injecting the end user’s un-met needs & unspoken wants in the core value proposition of a company’s products & service portfolio, spanning the entire customer journey; to attain the optimal market-product relevance fit, to eventually generate a significant and sustainable business growth.

Jeevak has more than 25 years of professional design experience, starting in India at Tata Motors, and then in the U.S. for 20 years; at GM Design, ASC, Harman, RLE and now Sundberg-Ferar. Beyond his role at SF, he also served on IDSA’s International board for 6 years and chaired IDSA’s 2017 flagship International Design Conference: “Design IS Business” apart from orchestrating numerous regional design events and webinars.

Jeevak is also sought as a keynote speaker on the topics of innovation strategy and business growth. (Conferences include – DMI, IDSA, CAR-MBS, Design weeks, business schools) He is/was also a jury member for the EOD car award show, cooper-Hewitt national awards, IDEA awards, etc. He was the board member for IDSA, Ether, Design Core, MIDC, etc) He also conducts hands-on workshops/seminars for building a winning culture of design for a significant and sustainable business growth.

In his copious amounts of spare time, Jeevak can be found indulging in his love of fitness kickboxing, obstacle course running, or photographing birds in obscure parts of the world.

Action:

Feel free to come prepared with a question or two for our speakers, ranging from innovation, strategy, biz growth, creativity, future, design studio life, team culture, customer centricity, marketing, etc.

If unable to attend, send the questions to Jeevak@SundbergFerar.com

Next Speaker/Topic:

Feel free to suggest what other topics might interest you or which speakers you would like to hear for our next session. We will do our best to respond to those requests. Jeevak@SundbergFerar.com