About me
Shazia Kazi
Hi, I Am

Shazia Kazi Product Leader | Strategist | Architect

Hands‑on design leader who thinks in business outcomes, balances the real risk of innovation, and leads teams and technology with trust and pace—bringing impactful, inclusive product experiences to life.

Avanade 2021 Global People First Leader Award presented to Shazia Kazi, Head of Experience Design, on marble — pioneering people-first culture and community.
FY21 Global People First Leader — people-first culture and community.
Shazia Kazi with e-commerce and experience design industry recognition.
Avanade 2025 Global People Awards — People First Leader Award presented to Shazia Kazi, Head of Experience Design, with companion recognition pieces on marble in a city office.
2025 Global People Awards — People First Leader; mentorship, design culture, and people at the heart of the work.

Powered by empathy. Boosted by AI.
I use critical thinking and a deep feel for people to guide the work and let AI handle the heavy lifting

About Me
Leader | Creative thinker | Innovator | Systems thinker | Explorer | Empathiser | Futurist | Maximiser | Mobiliser | Experimenter | Ambiguity Buster

As a strategic design leader, I proactively uncover and define opportunities that take client work beyond the original brief shaping customer experiences, processes, and systems that create measurable value for both businesses and their customers. Drawing on deep experience in service design and end‑to‑end digital products, I use a wide range of research methods from stakeholder and customer interviews to field studies, surveys, and trend analysis to make sure every decision is grounded in real insight.

I translate complex findings into clear stories and artefacts: personas, current and future‑state journeys, service blueprints, storyboards, and prototypes that align teams and de‑risk big bets. With senior stakeholders, I design and facilitate high‑energy workshops that use design thinking, lean experimentation, and continuous prototyping to move quickly from ideas to validated strategies often incorporating AI where it can enhance discovery, decision‑making, or delivery.

Across consulting, product, and startup environments, I’ve led multidisciplinary teams, coached both designers and non‑designers in design thinking, and helped build strong, collaborative cultures through knowledge sharing, showcases, and shared tools. My strength is turning complex problems into strategic opportunities and impactful experiences and enabling the people around me to do their best work and have fun while we do it.

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Strategic Product & UX Leadership

From vision to shipped outcomes

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Innovation Lab (LUMA Certified) & Consultation

Unpacking complex problems, busting ambiguity. Rapid experimentation sprints for founders

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Career Coaching & Mentoring

Navigate your next move with someone who’s hired, led, and grown teams—on both the design and product side.

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Public Speaking & Events

Enabling Women and Youngsters in STEM and Tech, empowering the generation to think outside the box.

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Some of the awesome clients I've had the pleasure to work with!

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My Curiosity

From Noise to Clear Next Moves

In an AI world where agents can output full interfaces, my role is to hard‑wire UX principles into the design system and AI stack so every generated screen, chat, or workflow is not just technically correct, but humane, predictable, and delightfully easy to use.

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Responding To Change

Owning the Shift, Leading With AI.

With AI reshaping design and product, I don’t just use tools, I redesign how teams think, build and learn. Each of these tiles shows a different way I combine AI with human insight.

Creative Intelligence

Blending prompt engineering with creative thinking, I use AI to explore possibilities fast then filter them through psychology, research and business goals.

The result: roadmaps where technology, brand and people line up around measurable outcomes.

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Systems Thinking

I co‑design with AI engineers and product leaders to shape the intelligence, timing, and tone of digital experiences, not just the screens. From LLM-powered recommendations to semantic search and personalisation.

Data flow and systems thinking – extract and transform

Outcome Ownership

When a metric dips, a flow breaks, or a launch goes sideways, I’m there, rethinking strategies and coaching teams through ambiguity in designing learning loops and architecting problem-solving systems.

Data-driven outcome ownership and dashboards

Transform Ideas into Market‑Ready MVPs

Bringing AI ideas to market quickly can transform startup trajectories, turning concepts into validated products that fuel growth and funding. Whether it’s a startup MVP or enterprise transformation, my work is about moving the business and character of products forward with clarity, speed and soul.

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Pouring My Heart Into

With every project, I push my own boundaries.

Peeling back the ambiguity, layer by layer, this is where I’m calmest: owning the “I don’t know yet,” rolling up my sleeves, and working the problem until the real answers and next moves show up.

AI Smart Note taking App for Aged Care

AI Research & Strategy with Aged Care across AU for Mircrosoft | POC

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Market Segmentation & Health Enterprise App

AI Research & Strategy | End to End Service Design

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Product Design and Management for Fintech App

Research | Design Leadership | Product Strategy and Leadership

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Product Marketing Website for Fintech App

Research | Content Strategy | UX & UI Design

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Brand Identity Direction & Creative Consulting
for Fintech Start up

Creative Direction | Design System | Logo | Brand styles and guidelines

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In Their Kind Words

Real feedback from founders, product leaders, and teams who've shipped meaningful work alongside me

"I have nothing but praise for Shazia and the team, and cannot thank you enough for your support. The amount of work you and the team were able to achieve was extraordinary. The level of detail and ability to articulate our team, industry best practice and what makes sense for us was invaluable. Shazia, your honesty, support and leadership was and is exceptional. We have been incredibly stretched through EUX at the time, and your calmness and ability to overcome obstacles to achieve the outcome is like no other. The leadership you show and the support and respect you have from me and my team, and I can see in your own team does not go unnoticed. Thank you for your support. I cannot wait to work more with you in the future."

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Zoe Van Kalken

EUX Executive Director, CBA

"Shazia has been instrumental in helping us create new relationships with senior leaders from the bank in the EUX Team. CBA EUX GM praised Shazia's work at a dinner we had with his team last week. He is someone who we have been trying for months to build a strong relationship with and Shazia has been key to this, the quality of her work is exceptional. This is huge for us collectively and for Microsoft who also recognise Shazia's contribution."

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Nicola Skinner

Managing Director - Accenture ANZ

"Working with Shazia has been a great experience, from the very beginning she has been full of energy and enthusiasm. Shazia is dedicated to ensure we deliver the correct experience for our customers as well as the Business. She has a great 'team' attitude, always willing to share knowledge, and help regardless of the different time zones. To ensure we are delivering both a successful service and product Shazia has a way of focusing on the 'right thing' with our customers, exploring what we want to learn and tries to understand the areas we know the least about."

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Sabina Thiara

Associate Partner, IBM UK

"My experience working with Shazia was incredibly positive - she always sought to make the customer experience more seamless by asking the right questions and getting the root of the problem. I also found her to be a great problem solver and people person."

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Davyd Stockman

Senior Category Manager, BP

"Shazia is a strong and confident leader in the Service Design space. Not only is she a joy to work with, she is a consummate professional who can be relied upon to provide honest guidance. During my time working with Shazia, I have been fortunate enough to see her and her team deliver high quality results setting our program up for success. Shazia is an expert in her field who is an asset to any team. I look forward to leveraging her expertise again in the future."

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Shaun Kimpton

Principle Program Manager - bp

"Shazia is an outstanding UX Leader. We at Laser Clinics Australia were very fortunate to engage with her for our digital transformation. She led the discovery and design phases with great passion and fantastic facilitation skills. She delivered great designs and solutions which has enhanced our brands online presence. She continuously provides guidance on how the more features can be added to enhance the experience our users. I highly recommend Shazia for any Digital transformation project."

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Maria Nenarokova

Digital Marketing Manager - Laser Clinics Australia

"Shazia is a fantastic lead UI/UX designer and I whole-heartedly recommend her to design and then govern the interface of any project. I've had the pleasure of working with her for over a year as a front-end developer. She's bubbly, energetic and friendly, always approachable and full of ideas, and has a quite amazing ability to be able to make great design decisions on the spot about details of an interface large and small. It's never too much trouble to ask about UI clarifications and which way to go when faced with alternatives. I've seen first-hand large, discerning clients be very impressed with her designs and she has led and completed many very successful and high-profile projects. With her great design sense, seemingly natural efficiency and rich understanding of how to make interfaces both look excellent and be intuitive, together with her friendly, down-to-earth nature, you can rest assured your design is in great hands with Shazia. I really enjoyed working with her and would happily do so again."

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Brenton Paris

Frontend UI Development Manager - CapGemini

"I have known Shaz for almost 3 years and worked together on a number of digital transformation projects. Shaz is an UX evangelist who is passionate about delivering clean, functional and modern designs for the best customer experience. She consistently receives rave reviews for her work. Her strong work ethic and energy she brings to the team makes her an asset for any digital led project."

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Ronil Rangaiya

Practice Manager, Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) - Empired

"Shaz is a joy to work with. She provided us with the ideal mix of creativity and technical know-how that has allowed us to launch a site that exceeded our original expectations. Three months in, average order values have increased by around 260% and number of orders have increased by around 220%. We have also had almost 350 accounts requested to be opened by new customers. I have been extremely impressed with her professional attitude and her fast response times. In fact, she is so pro-active that she often find issues before we do, and come to us with some great suggestions on how to improve the site."

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Todd Connolly

Vice President, Global Brand Transformation - Komatsu

"I’ve had the pleasure of working with Shaz in 2019 where she led the workshops to design the UI for our strategic customer portal program. Shaz was attentive to business needs, experienced in finding intuitive designs that solved our functional challenges and co-ordinated the business participants and design team very effectively. Shaz is a professional who thrives in her domain, a delight to work with and I am happy to recommend her to any future employer."

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Steve Liles

Enterprise Solution Architect - KOMATSU PTY LTD.

"Shazia worked on Ferry Program - Proof of Concept at TfNSW through Empired and helped deliver dashboards for Contract Managers. She facilitated the UX Workshops and her experience showed in the final product. The Program team and end users were very happy with the outcome - Thanks Shazia."

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Sandeep Mathur, PgMP, FAICD

Program Manager | Non - Executive Director - Transport NSW Sydney Ferries.

"Shazia was a delight to work with on the creation of our new website. She worked hard to understand the intricacies of our business and our requirements to ensure her designs met our customers needs. She surpassed my expectations in her strong and clear communications, fabulous work rate, and outstanding results that we are now seeing come to life in the website build. I highly recommend Shazia as an addition to any project or team looking to deliver results."

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Sarah Blackman

Sales & Marketing Manager - EBOS Healthcare

"It has been a great pleasure working with Shazia over the past couple of here at Empired. She is not only a highly skilled and committed professional, but also a great character to have in the team. She is always contributing with a positive, supportive and constructive attitude to the working environment. Shazia has deep and wide knowledge around UX, but most importantly, she’s truly passionate about it. This has been demonstrated time and time again, over many engagements she has been responsible for delivering, small, large end everything in between. All of this always fully backed by outstanding customer feedback at the end of each engagement. A highly recommended professional, and I certainly hope we cross paths again in the future."

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Max Andrade

Solution Architect - Empired

"Shazia was a pleasure to deal with during the initial phase of our web design. Her personal attributes made it easy for us to convey our ideas to her and then to see those ideas come out in her designs."

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Moise Wakim

Corporate Markteting Manager - EBOS Healthcare

"We had the pleasure of working with Shazia on recent project. Shazi was able to capture and very quickly translate the ideas presented into customer centric designs that exceeded our expectations. She was able to provide guidance on best practice while also undertanding the industry specific needs of our customers. Feedback from within all the stakeholder group was extremely positive and we were very pleased to have her as part of the project."

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Iain Wade

IT Business Relationship Manager - EBOS Group Limited

I’ve kept this section short and scroll‑friendly. If you’d like to see more feedback from founders, PMs, and teams I’ve partnered with, head over to my LinkedIn profile and connect

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 Have a project in mind, or just want to say hello? I’m always open to discussing new ideas, partnerships, or opportunities to collaborate.

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  • Based in Sydney, working globally

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