Stuart joins us from Seattle, Washington, where he is the managing director of his own company the Ashmun Group LLC, a product development consultancy he founded just last year. In this role, and with his extensive experience in Design, Brand, Customer Experience and Business, he helps product development clients connect with their customers and exceed their business goals.

He is well-suited for this work having experienced a long and successful career in the technology sector. This included key leadership roles at Microsoft beginning in 1984. Most recently he was the Device Design General Manager for the Microsoft Device Group.

His accomplishments included building and leading multi-disciplinary teams to create more than 30 categories of award-winning products world-wide. Among them Microsoft HoloLens, Xbox 360, Xbox One S, Xbox One X and Accessories.

His responsibilities have included encompassing the end-to-end customer journey from promotional materials, visual design and UI layout to typography, industrial design, brand scape, branded sound and color, packaging and user reference materials. He also led a team of strategists, designers and human factors specialists while partnering with brand, marketing, engineering and operations to direct device design for six Microsoft product businesses. Through strategic business decisions and a consultative approach, he drove billions of dollars in gross margin, including a highly profitable end-to-end hardware business which generated over $535M in annual revenues and more than 60% gross margin.

You can see Stuart’s work and more information regarding his background on his website: www.ashmun.com