WHOLE is a strategic design and innovation company.

We partner with visionary leaders to navigate change, shape new opportunities, and drive meaningful outcomes.

PARTNERS WE'VE WORKED WITH

HOW WE WORK

Through strategic design, intentional technology and thoughtful collaboration, our work aims for sustainable and social transformation. We approach change and challenge as invitations to ask meaningful questions; to not just solve problems but to respond to their underlying drivers. We approach each project as a sandbox to map opportunity and explore facets of more whole futures.

Our experience includes working from social innovation to SaaS, with partners ranging from Fortune 500 to nonprofits. We focus this breadth of expertise on three verticals and their strategic interplay.

Climate & Sustainability

Health & Wellbeing

Systems of Exchange & Economies

PRACTICE AREAS

Our three practice areas equip your organization to see clearly, act intentionally, and test your processes and offerings to ensure they add value in the real world. That’s because we see strategy as a living process that’s shaped by diverse inputs, tested in context, and continually refined through action and feedback loops. Whether you’re exploring long-term possibilities, redesigning how people experience your offerings, or assessing if that big idea has legs, our work seeks to increase the value transfer between thinking and doing, allowing for good ideas to surface anywhere, and ensuring that strategy is always grounded in reality.

WHOLE Industries

Illuminate opportunity and trace where change is flowing. Map emerging signals, clarify opportunity spaces, and explore long-view possibilities to not just react to change, but shape it.

  • What future are we creating?
  • How do we stay oriented in the face of uncertainty?
  • What is the context in which our work will happen?

WHOLE Services

Frame the opportunity, then operationalize the vision through human-centered design research and service innovation to improve how people experience your organization, inside and out.

  • Where should we focus?
  • What are our opportunities and which ones do we prioritize?
  • What methods and processes best suit the opportunity?
  • What does meaningful innovation look like for the people we serve?

WHOLE Labs

Experimentation and feedback loops grounded in the people and reality of your offerings. Test the tools, methodologies and practices to uncover unmet needs, break down challenges, and test bold ideas in practical, measurable ways.

  • Do our actions and strategies align and run towards the same goals?
  • Are our strategies taking us where we want to go?
  • What does human centered implementation look like?

SERVICES

Strategic Design & Innovation

Break out of silos, gain new perspective, reimagine whats possible, form new playing fields and spaces.

  • Service design and mapping
  • Digital transformation
  • Scenario design
  • Vision and mission design
  • Concepting and prototyping
  • Strategic foresight
  • Systems thinking
  • Co-design

Workshops & Facilitation

Co-create a vision, identify priorities, build modern capabilities, de silo organizational knowledge and practices, and build alignment across the organization and stakeholders

  • Design thinking
  • Design sprints
  • Process mapping
  • Journey mapping
  • Vision & mission workshop
  • Futures mapping

Research & Insights

Identify opportunities, understand context, map landscapes, and reduce risk.

  • Discovery
  • Human centered design and customer/employee experience research
  • Strategic positioning research
  • Field studies

Coaching & Advisory

Support and advisory to get perspective and maintain clarity amid complexity and change.

  • Personal and leadership coaching and advisory services
  • Individual, one-on-one
  • Group structures, facilitated

WHAT DRIVES US

At WHOLE Innovation and Design, “whole” is an ethos that underscores all we do, as a principle for our ways of working, and the quality of outcome and experience we seek to create.

New futures become possible when working toward wholeness. It’s an act of imagination and of integration. To be whole is to hold complexity and to acknowledge the parts of a system. To create with those that are impacted by the problem and the solution. To create whole offerings is to be values- and value-driven. Whole futures are built in context, in relationship and through practice.

Founded by Lauren Sinreich, WHOLE is a network of designers, artists, strategists, and technologists seeking to create more whole futures in this era of change, uncertainty and opportunity. Drawing on more than two decades of experience working across social innovation, technology, systems change, and human-centered design, Lauren has guided Fortune 500s, foundations, government agencies, and cross-sector coalitions through moments of transformation.

I was continuously impressed by Lauren’s ability to quickly and deeply understand the user problems at hand using both quant and qual methods, to effectively communicate her findings, and make data-informed strategic recommendations to a wide variety of stakeholders. I’ve worked with design and research professionals a lot in my career; Lauren was one of the first who seamlessly leveraged both academic intellect and intuitive insights to help the team remain focused on desired but realistic outcomes, define an actionable strategy for achieving those outcomes, and measure meaningful success. As a product person, it’s like finding gold to have a creative partner who understands the broader business and technology at hand. She quickly became an invaluable partner to me and to the client not only for her skills, but also for her enthusiasm for the work and positive attitude and relentless focus in the face of obstacles that were often quite frustrating. I was especially appreciative of her ability to build strong relationships across a variety of stakeholders and teammates, gaining the trust of some of the most challenging personalities easily. I learned a lot working with Lauren.

Lauren’s ability to take in a huge amount of information, synthesize it, and share insights while maintaining high quality standards is both a skill and a behavior that I greatly admire about her. Her brain never seems to lose focus! … I was consistently impressed by the amount of knowledge she both gained and retained in what was an absolutely chaotic environment..Discussion among the program team and stakeholders were all over the place – it felt impossible to discern any real value from the numerous interviews and seemingly disconnected conversations taking place. But then Lauren would show up to a workshop with a neatly laid out mural, an in-depth notes document, and key synthesis points. Her focus and commitment to high standards was critical to keeping that team moving forward…. Lauren is like a machine – she consistently delivers high quality work on time, even when there seems to be an impossible amount of distractions and other things going on.

Samantha Smith

Head of Product, Bellese Technologies

Thanks again for the work that went into your deliverables. I wanted to update you that they have become immediately useful, with the Advisory Board this morning deciding we have to take a focused approach (as opposed to a full scale approach) based on your research and conversations. Slide 17 – the different capacities of the org – has already become a topic of hot conversation, and we’re parsing out different parts to different subgroups that are seeking to be answering some of the foundational questions. Your work did a nice job of distilling the main things to be thinking about and giving the next thinking shape. Really looking forward to continuing to use the work to support the program.

Angie McPhaul

Program Director, Gary Community Ventures

Lauren is an accomplished leader skilled at using user research to create clarity and translate that clarity into actionable organizational strategy. While design strategy and innovation sometimes seems amorphous, Lauren possesses the ability to drive concrete changes and business results. She has the ability to engage and influence executives in organizations at the enterprise level while at the same time building and mentoring teams who are deep in the trenches. Complexity is the standard for businesses and organizations today, and Lauren’s ability to find and communicate the meaning behind the complexity is invaluable. 

Jeremiah Fellows

Service Design Lead, Bank of America

You have a wonderful ability to lead others and interface with senior executives, leaving them feeling confident in you and the team. Your ability to recognize unique personalities, spend the time to hear them out and ensure they feel heard is phenomenal. 

Jeff Brauer

Program Manager, CoPilot (at Veterans Affairs)

Lauren is a thoughtful listener, and she pairs it with broad business acumen and a native sense of how to reframe your thinking to productive ends. She understands that to lead involves the whole person, so she follows my whole life [as my coach] – whether that involves my role as a CEO or as a parent, spouse, child, or friend. She’s helped me think through my leadership style, where I find excitement and where I find frustration, and how to improve. This has had a measurable impact on my business, my happiness, and my life. 

Mike Smith

CEO, Aclymate

GET IN TOUCH

hello [at] wearewhole [dot] com

Send us your information and a bit about what you’re interested in, and we’ll be in touch within in two business days.

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DESIGNERS, RESEARCHERS, STRATEGISTS, TECHNOLOGISTS, UNICORNS: Are you in becoming a contributor in the WHOLE network? Share a bit about your work and interests here.