About Khoj Lab

khōj . खोज in Hindi
(to) search, discern, discover, research and explore. Discovery is the essence of improving the future.

At Khoj Lab, we are unique in our ability to bring an operational view to innovation. We have experience consulting (both internal and external) Fortune 500 companies and multi-billion dollar corporations. We work with innovation labs, Product leaders, strategy teams, and operations functions to ensure the impact of innovation efforts. We bring expertise in user research, process innovation, customer experience, business strategy, and lean methodologies. We work across technology, architecture, manufacturing, healthcare, consumer packaged goods, retail, and the non-profit sector.

We can reach diverse audiences through our multicultural, multi-lingual, women-led team of researchers, designers, strategists, and planners. We speak English, Hindi, Cantonese, Mandarin, French, and Spanish and have worked with organizations worldwide.

Researchers

Advocates for the end-users with a unique mixed-method approach to design research that allows people to think differently and prepare for the future.

design strategists

Integrators with a knack for connecting the dots between discrete innovation activities to align with the overall strategy

Facilitators

Strong team builders with expertise in growing in-house-design research innovation capabilities and guiding teams through a structured step-by-step process to achieve the desired outcomes.

visual communicators

Storytellers help us make complex stories easier to understand and, as a result, deliver a more impactful message. It makes stories imaginative, believable, and relevant.

HARMONIZERs & catalysts

Fierce collaborators who know how and when to engage stakeholders for alignment and faster decision-making

Our Mission

Help our clients tackle innovation bottlenecks and realize full value from all of their innovation efforts.

Shilpi Kumar

Founder, Khoj Lab & Innovation Catalyst

Shilpi Kumar has over 15 years of professional experience as a Design Strategist, User Experience Researcher, Industrial Designer, and Design Educator. Before founding her consulting firm, Shilpi worked with GE Transportation Digital and Herman Miller, where she worked closely with the operations and strategy teams to define an integrated business process for new product development and align innovation ideas to company strategy.

Shilpi teaches graduate students at the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech Chicago called ‘Corporate Innovation Effectiveness’. She specializes in taking an inclusive approach with an eye on bringing diverse perspectives from people across the organization. This approach helps innovation and strategy teams understand the whole view of innovation, draw on existing organizational strengths, and enable quick adoption of innovations. By framing the right questions to users, customers, and internal stakeholders, she can get to the root of the problem, figure out what to make next, or how to re-imagine a brand. Most importantly, her expertise is prioritizing organizational initiatives to align with where the market is heading and what customers need.

Shilpi has a Masters of Design Methods from the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech Chicago with a focus on Innovation/Design Research/Strategy, a Masters of Design from the Industrial Design Center at IIT Bombay, India, and a professional BArch from BIT Mesra, Ranchi, India.

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Catherine Pansard

DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS STRATEGY

Catherine has spent her career as a consultant studying what behaviors and processes make employees succeed or struggle within their organization and finding ways to scale the identified success routines to make the entire workforce adopt them.

Using both her business and design experience, she helps companies innovate by bringing user perspective and design methods into their strategy and processes. As a design researcher and strategist, her passion is to improve user experience to increase business performance.

Catherine has a Master of Design Methods from the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech Chicago, focusing on Design Research, and a Master of Management from EM Lyon business school, France, in 1999.

Helen Tong

DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH

Helen has over ten years of professional experience as a design researcher helping organizations develop innovative new products to drive business growth. She is passionate about uncovering hidden human insights by digging through user data and secondary research. Through visual storytelling, she has helped stakeholders of multiple CPG companies (SC Johnson, Steelcase, and Radio Flyer) better understand and empathize with end users. She has also worked for many years in the healthcare industry improving hospital workflows and patient care by integrating new technology systems. She brings a multicultural perspective with her experience working on global innovation teams in China, India, and the US.

Helen has a Master of Design degree from IIT Institute of Design, focusing on Design Research/Strategy, and a B.S. in Human Factors Engineering from Tufts University in Boston, MA.

Nyurka Fernandes

DIRECTOR OF CREATIVE COMMUNICATIONS

Nyurka’s outlook on work is really for its purpose. She has a knack for art and storytelling, is a keen observer of new trends, and likes to combine that with old traditions in human-centered businesses. Born and brought up in a multicultural setup, she spent her formative years in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. A student of Psychology and Commerce - she then chose to pursue her Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Media Communications at Manipal University, India, which throttled her into the real world!

She says here is where she learned about the people, art, science, social constructs, and most of all, the complexity and beauty of unique cultures within the same nation. Learning new concepts on every job keeps her motivated, and she never shies away from a challenge.

On a personal front, Nyurka is keenly interested in culture, music, human relationships, and human capacity. She’s a thinker and a doer at the same time. She loves to help others achieve their goals. Currently, she's on a journey of making her life goals align with her work as a design researcher, conceptualizer, visualizer, and strategist and helping people who want to make their ideas turn into reality!