“She is the best boss I’ve ever had in my career. She taught me what empathetic leadership looks like in action – defined for me what a leader can be and my understanding of leadership. She has had a dramatic impact on me professionally and personally.”
“Natalie is a great leader and one of my favorite superiors in a long career doing UX. She’s passionate about the field, innovation, the team and the company and helps the rest of the team be infused by and carry that passion. One of the best leaders at ZS that I’ve observed or worked with.”
“I will always have something to learn from Natalie, and I appreciate and love how she always says “we are all learning together” – so humble and so inspiring!”
“Fantastic all-around leader, with motivating and innovative ideas and ways to meet client needs – especially in new places. Natalie has the perfect management style for me, she’s my emergency button when I need her, gives great advice and helps strategize in ways that move me, my work, the team AND the clients forward – sometimes all at the same time!”
“People feel they can drop you into any situation. You will not be flustered and can “take control of a room if needed.”
My direct reports at SAP said “Displays a broad, overarching awareness of the interaction and priorities between teams, departments, and company. Forward thinker, very strategic.”
“She is a supreme leader … leadership ability and style are magnificent.”
“Natalie has done an amazing job creating a high-functioning and healthy team. There is so much work that goes into it, way more than one person (even if that person is Natalie) can handle. This past review cycle, I’ve seen Natalie start to more effectively delegate responsibilities, which is necessary given the scale of the team. Natalie gives the perfect balance of guidance and autonomy necessary for team members to all contribute. The All Hands meeting that Natalie organized this year was the best one yet. It’s nice to see how Natalie improves and evolves it year after year. “
“Really motivating to work with Natalie, I believe she inspires the best in me and in other team members.
“Natalie is an excellent leader for ZS UX. She has vision and the ability to make things happen – a rare combination!”
“Her trust and high expectations of the team make us want to work harder and deliver good work. She sets a strong example of what makes a consultant successful as she is always working and learning. I appreciate her laser focus and organizational skills. She will ask for opinions and ideas, showing that she is open to fresh ideas.”
“Her energy is contagious and I’m pleased to see that she has remained undaunted even when there’s a challenge.”
“Natalie is an amazing leader. She does a great job keeping her team informed of what’s going in the firm and positioning us to deliver the most value. I look forward to seeing how she grows the UX team.
“Natalie shows great leadership skills and motivates team members to achieve goals. She responds to questions promptly and tries to solve problems immediately.
“Natalie demonstrates great leadership and has helped me to focus on what’s most important this past cycle and empowered me to do my best work. I feel that all interactions with Natalie are very positive, objectives focused and remarkably efficient. She is an incredibly articulate communicator, not only written and verbally, but also actively listens which makes engaging with her super effective.”
“Strong visionary with the unique ability of knowing how to turn a vision into a reality at SAP, and ensure that vision aligns with business objectives, adding exceptional business value.”
“Natalie has a great ability to explain very complex strategy and long-term vision while connecting it to the changing business landscape at SAP. This empowers her team to execute these decisions effectively and take ownership of the vision as it evolves. She also provides access to key data points and information relevant to the teams’ work, allowing them to factor the relevant information into their projects.”
“Natalie’s willingness to be transparent, even when things are ambiguous, create the highest level of trust in Natalie. She is open with the team on opportunities and challenges, and is so willing to be candid and forthright, which I believe helps the team avoid issues turning into problems – we can all work to correct, and pivot quickly.”
“Always displays very high ethics and a tremendous amount of empathy for all involved.”
“I have never come across such a stable and mature mentor and guide like Natalie. She has been a solid pillar of support for the space and has always ensure she is available in times when she is needed the most. She also ensures any roadblock the team faces — is taken care of as she starts to get involved. She has been empowering as a leader which gives us lot of room to flourish and take decisions. She is also not fearful of failure which give us tremendous confidence in her as our leader. Natalie is also organised and detail oriented when it comes to putting structure to all the ad-hoc elements. She is diligent with numbers and metrics which enable us to stay on top of the same to ensure any red flags are pro-actively communicated back for mitigation.”
“One of Natalie’s strengths is in assessing complex systems – things that involve people, process and technology – and envisioning how they can change for the better. She thinks holistically, at a strategic level and also at a detailed level. This allows her to make specific recommendations about a variety of aspects of a problem, service or tool that need to change to work better. Her solutions to problems are innovative and creative – not incremental. She really can set a course for a significantly better way and articulate to others what that better way could be.”
“Natalie excels at every dimension of her role as a leader. If I were to pick one area of opportunity, I might point out that her eagerness to expand and strengthen the UX practice at ZS might, at times, result in plans that could be overly ambitious. For a determined and energetic leader who is not afraid to delegate and nurture her team, this usually results in many significant achievements but it can also lead to overload.
“One of the most consistent themes expressed about you whether personal or expert interactions with you is your passion and enthusiasm. This is seen as a strength in multiple ways – building your credibility, endearing your space, inspiring your team. And it is noted to be enduring, irrespective of the challenge at hand.”
“Natalie is an excellent leader and open, forthright, communicator that works harder than most if not anyone on the team. I feel that given the opportunity Natalie can help play a big role in helping ZS transition to design-led organization.”
“Natalie is very thoughtful and dedicated practice leader. She is transparent and open to input in many areas of our practice and eager to allow all members of the team to take responsibility in shaping the team and guiding its success.”
“She gives everyone lots of autonomy which is much appreciated by all of us.”
“Natalie is fearless, hard-working, and genuinely cares about the people on her team. She sees the problems in ZS, but also is positive enough to see the potential for what it could be, and is working hard to try and get us there.”
“Natalies key impact for the team and broader organization is her no-nonsense but also very positive approach to our clients, teams, the work and culture at ZS which is unwavering, consistent always positive and future focused.”
“Natalie is an organized and strong leader.”
“Natalie is an inspirational leader who is highly engaged in leading the practice. Her dedication and thoughtfulness is highly motivating for me and her unwavering commitment to ZS values and mission is the glue that keeps the team aligned to a common purpose.”
“Natalie is an exemplary leader and team member who works way harder than anyone else on the team and much of the organization for that matter. Natalie’s approach to work, the team and the broader organization is admirable and provides great role model even in the toughest of circumstances.
“The key strengths I have observed with Natalie are communication and as mentioned being a role model for senior leaders and connector to other key teams and leaders at ZS. Her approach to the work at the macro/strategic level is always solid and well reasoned but she is flexible and open to new approaches and alternatives as well.
“Natalie has been a solid leader – especially in terms of standing beside her managers and senior team members. She has always exhibited strong ethics and has focussed on doing the right thing associated with decision making and empowering her managers to follow the same. She has great skills to navigate through the organization and also has the ability to seamlessly steer through challenging situations. As a Principal. she always ensures to balance her facetime as needed in terms of getting into the details v/s guiding her managers or to move forward by trusting their judgement.
“Natalie does an amazing job with the UX and custom development teams, week in and week out. Her support, insights, and guidance for the UX West team has been critical in helping us grow and manage challenges over the last semester and key in helping us deliver high impact projects for clients. Clear communication, hands off leadership style and helping the diverse teams work together to deliver value to internal teams and our clients have played a big part of the successes we’ve been able to achieve.
“Natalie continues to be an excellent Leader of the UX and CD area. We have grown significantly, due to her encouragement, support and enthusiasm for work that is important to ZS, our clients the team. Natalie always encourages us to give input in team growth, structure, approach, to work and priorities and this is greatly appreciated. I feel like I am a part of something larger than just me, and am incredibly proud of how far the UX BT team has
come.
“As the team grows, it seems that we all take on more and more things adjacent to client work, to move our team forward. Natalie is always transparent and communicative and always available. I feel that she supports her team, and each of us as individuals as well as tries to pave the way to allow us to chase the work and topics we have an interest in.
“Natalie continues to be a brilliant mentor and pillar of support for the custom space and myself as a professional. She has always ensured she is available for people challenged and also ensuring the team stays motivated. Never have I seen a situation where we have asked for her help and she has not been available considering her busy schedules. She has been empowering as a leader which gives us lot of room to flourish and take decisions. She is a fearless leader and the level of trust that instills in me as a leader offshore is tremendous.
“Natalie is an outstanding leader that brings a level of dedication and thoughtfulness to her work that is unique and always leads to great outcomes. Her intense work style is rewarded with a clear sense of direction for the practice – even when things are in flux. She is also very considerate and open, accessible when input is needed and eager to support and enable her team -both professionally and personally.
“Natalie consistently models what an exemplary leader should be. Natalie is the reason I chose to join ZS and is one of the biggest contributing factors to why I choose to stay.”
“Natalie is incredibly versed on the dynamics of the firm to guide and direct me and team in challenging situations.”
“Although this was a complex and difficult year, I still felt motivated to do my best work, to engage and participate in leadership activities thanks to her leadership and support.”
“Natalie is a strong ZS citizen and very quick with decision making and acts on any issues that are brought to her attention. She is a well-balanced leader and has the ability to see things through to completion.”
“Delegation, setting fair guardrails for our team to succeed, creatively growing and evolving the UX and Custom Development practice in new and interesting ways, connecting our team across the organization, supporting interesting pro bono work in an engaged way.”
“Natalie has been my go to person since the last 4 years as we started off this journey to develop custom development space. She has been one leader i have always looked up to for guidance and motivation.”
“Natalie understands that there is a fine line between working with team members and micromanaging them. She stands behind her team members when celebrating success and give credit where it’s due.”
“Natalie is an executive like no other at ZS, and I consider myself and the firm fortunate for her dedicated UX leadership and guidance towards reaching 2030 ambitions.”
“Natalie demonstrates strong empathetic leadership with her straightforward yet open communication style, strong business and design strategy expertise, and commitment to taking action to move the team forward.”
“Natalie is a leader who inspires those under her to feel empowered in their own journey through ZS. Her transparent and straightforward leadership style helps foster a trusting and open environment.”
“Natalie has continued to provide great leadership for our team as we evolve and grow despite a challenging pandemic year helping us develop our regional practices while also being available and helping us deal with the challenges we face as managers and leaders. Natalie provides tireless leadership in helping us think about growing impact of our team at ZS.”
“Natalie is a strong leader. She is always clear & concise with her directions and what she expects. She is able to navigate and handle difficult client conversations with compassion and makes firm and educated decisions. When you bring up a problem, she is willing to listen and take actionable steps to help alleviate the issues. She has a high impact on the team and tries really hard to get new projects and work in business development.”
“Natalie has enabled and supported the team through a lot of rapid change in the last 6 months, partially due to ZS’s unique financial situation, its aspirations to become a product & platform company, and changing firm priorities and expectations of Expertise Centers. She has been very consistent and solid even through all of this change, always positive and pragmatic while offering advice and prompts to help the LT ideate to solutions and approaches to BD with client teams.”
“It’s been such a pleasure to get to work more closely with Natalie this cycle on both client work and some of our internal initiatives. She continues to do an amazing job at creating a positive culture on our team, where everyone feels heard down to our freshest associate.”
“Natalie is the epitome of a leader. She operates on the principles of transparency and unbiasedness. She clearly communicates team’s future vision and expectations from the team members which is highly appreciated. She is very approachable and is genuinely interested and engaged in investing in empowering of the team and making it a better place to work.”
“Colleagues also highlighted a couple of cases where [Natalie] demonstrated strong leadership in the way [she] handled conflict/tension, and this inspires further confidence in [her].”
“Natalie continues to be a brilliant mentor and pillar of support for the custom [development] space and myself as a professional. She has always ensured she is available for people challenged and also ensuring the team stays motivated. Never have I seen a situation where we have asked for her help and she has not been available considering her busy schedules. She has been empowering as a leader which gives us lot of room to flourish and take decisions. She is a fearless leader and the level of trust that instills in me as a leader offshore is tremendous.”
“In commenting on her management style, team members were generally complimentary in the way [Natalie] strikes the right balance of personal involvement vs. empowerment. This is leading to a very satisfactory experience for most people.”
“Natalie has created a very productive culture of open-communication, positive energy, and trust within the … leadership team and is always eager to provide opportunities for a wide range of leaders to take ownership of key areas.”
“Natalie is a big-picture thinker and visionary leader who truly cares about the people on her team and their impact at ZS. Because of her leadership, the UX function at ZS exists and is growing in awareness and importance.”
“Natalie’s passion and positivity are felt by the entire team, and demonstrated throughout our organization. Her expectations are entirely realistic, and she understands that our team is not superhuman, and there are only so many hours in a day – this is deeply appreciated, as all PAMs don’t necessarily share this view, and this is the kind of view that keeps morale high: not burning out staff, or asking people to meet unrealistic expectations. This shows true leadership and the ability to really think about opportunities and problems, and address everything head-on, in a collaborative manner. Natalie’s belief in her team, our skills and our viewpoints and her ability to really listen to issues and concerns and then act to remedy, when possible, lay all the right foundations for a high-performing team.”
“She empowers me to lead my subspace and really enables me to grow by offering support as needed.”
“She showed tremendous leadership in the restructuring of our Pune team – she confronted the issues head on rather than dodging them.”
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