Fay M. Johnson
Fay founded Red Balloon Ideas in 2010 to bring the principles of human-centered design, behavior change communication and business best practices to the social impact space. Over the last decade, she has helped countless nonprofits and social enterprises scale their initiatives through effective product design, positioning, marketing and staff training.
Fay's expertise sits at the intersection of business, technology and social impact. From human rights research and government policy, to humanitarian assistance and public health, her career has always focused on how shifting behavior to create social change. Fay has founded multiple consumer-facing technology products and advises entrepreneurs and governments on the launch of new initiatives.
Today, Fay leads the firms product and innovation efforts, working to improve and scale products and services by applying behavior change and design thinking principles.
Fay holds degrees in International Development from UCLA and a master's from Georgetown University in PR and Communications, with a focus on Behavior Change Communication.
Mark Resch
Mark has more than 30 years of experience at the intersection of technology, business, and culture. Having worked with Fortune 500 companies and small universities alike, Mark's greatest passion is helping companies and organizations get "unstuck".
Mark leads our Business Optimization work, using Jedi-like interpersonal skills to help organizations engage their stakeholders to achieve momentum. Having lived in Silicon Valley through boom and bust, Mark is fascinated by emerging technology and taking problems at scale.
Elle McGraw
Elle is a passionate creative, who brings design to bear on social, environmental, and public health issues. Elle is trained in public health and medical anthropology, and lends her expertise to our ethnographic research, training, experience design, and consumer product innovation.
A native of Oregon, a mother of 6, and always the last one on the dance floor – Elle brings the best of Portland's weirdness to our San Francisco team. She is the co-founder of HERE Collective.
Sean Goss
Trained as an industrial designer, he uses rapid visualization, 3D prototyping and an unrelenting attention to detail to uncover insights and propose elegant solutions to perplexing social problems.
A SEED Network certified designer, Sean brings experience working with several Fortune 500 companies, the Mayo Clinic, Audi and the Children & Nature Network to envision and implement transformative experiences for real people around the world.
Stephanie Choo
Stephanie is a talented business designer who helps lead our human-centered design work in Asia. She is an entrepreneur and artist in her own right, having launched several successful consumer-facing products. Prior to joining our team Stephanie was a senior manager at GAP.
Stephanie is a graduate of MIT and U.C. Berkeley, and applies creative systems thinking to help unearth new ways of thinking about entrenched problems.
Jess Munro
Jess loves grokking big systems challenges, like reimagining the future of higher ed or redesigning professional learning, as much as she loves working with young leaders to discover their purpose through her company Entrepreneurs by Design.
She has led global innovation work with Fortune 500 companies, honed her product skills at IDEO, and teaches course for design program at Stanford. Jess is an expert in Human-Centered Design, our first call for innovation and systems change.
Brett Johnson
With over three decades of experience working with businesses to maximize their impact through innovation, Brett is an invaluable resource for our clients facing tough business practices. Brett began his career at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and has since worked with thousands of clients around the world, from fortune 10 companies to heads of government through The Institute.
We are lucky to have Brett involved in our large-scale projects. His experience helps our clients develop effective strategies while avoiding common pitfalls.
