How I helped Spinifex expand into the Bay Area
Spinifex, headquartered in Los Angeles and focused on automotive clients, was seeing growing demand from Bay Area tech giants like Salesforce, Cisco, and Workday. To seize this opportunity, I launched and scaled Spinifex’s San Francisco office in collaboration with George P. Johnson. This strategic expansion positioned the company to serve a rapidly growing tech portfolio.
Client
Spinifex / GPJ
DELIVERABLES
Strategic Design · Experience Design · Digital Transformation · Customer Journey Design · Experiential Marketing · Team Leadership · Product Innovation · Rapid Prototyping · Stakeholder Engagement · Cross-functional Leadership · Business Development
Year
2016-2018
Role
Experience & Strategic Design Director
Driving this new market entry, I shaped Spinifex’s regional strategy, operational model, and creative leadership to integrate digital innovation with large-scale physical activations. This involved:
Establishing and leading a multidisciplinary team that unified Spinifex’s creative, technical, and strategic capabilities with GPJ’s production and architectural expertise.
Developing new hybrid workflows integrating agile, design-led processes with GPJ’s large-scale production methodologies to accelerate innovation and delivery timelines.
Building strategic partnerships with key software, hardware, and experiential technology vendors to expand the firm’s capabilities and deliver next-generation experiences.
Setting up a rapid prototyping facility to enable user testing and iterative development, reducing risk and enhancing creative experimentation.
Driving client engagements by translating complex strategic goals into cohesive solutions that integrated creative vision, technical execution, and business outcomes.
This expansion enabled Spinifex to secure and execute some of the industry’s most high-profile and technically complex experiential activations, redefining how major brands engage audiences at global events and positioning GPJ to meet Silicon Valley’s evolving expectations for digital-first experiences.
Salesforce Dreamforce
At Salesforce Dreamforce, the world’s largest tech conference, Salesforce sought to evolve its traditional trade show presence into a digital-first engagement platform, uniting digital and physical touchpoints into a cohesive customer journey.
In collaboration with Spinifex, GPJ, and Salesforce, I:
Led the end-to-end design of a unified customer journey spanning pre-event, on-site, and post-event experiences, ensuring seamless and continuous engagement across channels.
Directed cross-functional teams in designing and building immersive activation zones showcasing products like Einstein and Lightning, allowing thousands of attendees to engage hands-on with Salesforce innovations.
Oversaw digital fabrication and physical installation on-site in San Francisco, ensuring quality and consistency across physical and digital touchpoints.
This approach resulted in a cohesive, high-impact attendee experience that deepened customer relationships and reinforced Salesforce’s position as the leader in enterprise CRM.
Results & Value Delivered:
Drove a strategic market entry that expanded Spinifex’s client base into the tech sector and generated multimillion-dollar new business opportunities.
Elevated the firm’s capabilities to deliver digital-first experiential solutions, positioning Spinifex and GPJ as trusted partners for global brands navigating digital transformation.
Enabled high-profile activations that received industry recognition and awards, significantly increasing brand visibility and competitive positioning.