Strategic Design & Operational Excellence

Hi! I’m Ray Knickmeyer, a seasoned design leader passionate about product strategy, operational excellence, and cultivating high performing, engaged teams that drive business impact.

I leverage human-centered problem solving, a systems mindset and deep design expertise to help cross functional teams set a vision and achieve their goals.

I bring a designers mindset to problems of all kinds and help teams unlock their potential all while having fun along the way.

My Expertise

My career has been an interesting mix of product design and employee experience. In addition to some of my customer facing work at Capital One, I’ve also led teams focused on human resources, corporate real estate, collaboration tools, and communications. I have a unique perspective from having served on top of house teams driving operations, organizational and talent strategy as well, all leveraging a human-centered approach to solve a variety of business challenges.

Product and Experience Design

  • Mapping an optimizing customer & employee journeys

  • Defining the destination state vision and strategy for products & experiences

  • Enabling teams to deliver research-backed design concepts from lo-fidelity prototypes to high fidelity, accessible and scalable designs

Strategic Consulting & Facilitation

  • Helping executives and teams set clear goals and OKRs based on customer needs and business opportunities

  • Facilitating workshops to define vision, conduct ideation, co-create team norms, metrics and strategy

Talent Strategy

  • Defining destination state talent expectations

  • Establishing and supporting ongoing, effective talent & performance management processes

  • Developing highly effective talent resources including job descriptions, hiring strategies, and learning plans

Employee Experience

  • Creating and implementing strategies to boost employee engagement through cultural initiatives and multi-channel communications

Impact Measurement

  • Helping teams set measurable goals and identify metrics to track tangible impact

  • Standardizing common metrics frameworks for large organizations to bring consistency to understanding business impact