Zulu Hires First Head of Design to Lead Human-Centred Brand Experiences

Zulu Alpha Kilo has today announced the hiring of Stephanie Yung as head of design. Stephanie is a globally recognised design leader. She joins the agency after spending 10 years at Smart Design New York, where she focused on innovation and the strategic translation of brands into new products and experiences for clients including PepsiCo, Sephora, P&G, Sanofi, Amex and Under Armour.

Since day one, design has been an integral part of Zulu, highlighted by the agency’s 2018 Strategy Design Agency of the Year win. Stephanie’s arrival will help take Zulu beyond traditional branding and graphic design and deeper into how brands behave across products, experiences and services. She will also be part of the agency’s senior leadership team.

Stephanie’s expertise in designing for the full consumer journey is most evident in her three-part series on the Future of Fertility that was published in Fast Company. Dubbed 'Project Junior', the series outlines how Stephanie redesigned the fertility treatment experience to solve for the fact that more women than ever are undergoing the process on their own.

“It’s a big win for us to have Stephanie back”, said Zulu’s founder and chief creative officer, Zak Mroueh. “Steph is among the world’s best design leaders and she’s done incredible work leading international brands. We’re thrilled to bring this experience to our current clients as well as some new ones outside our borders."

In the beauty category, Stephanie worked with Sephora to re-invigorate relationships with consumers through experiences like the Beauty Insider Digital Community - recognised by Allure, Business Wire, Popsugar Beauty and Refinery 29 as one of the world’s most trusted beauty platforms. Equally important is Stephanie’s work with non-profits, such as Power to Decide and Upstream USA, where she helped to reposition birth control to reduce the stigma and the rates of unplanned pregnancies across the U.S., and to increase access to birth control for all.

This is a reunion for Stephanie and Zak. They originally worked together in the early 2000s at TAXI on MINI, where she won acclaim for her digital design, and where she started the design and interaction departments for TAXI NYC and TAXI 2. Stephanie was also one of the original teams members of Zulu who worked on the Bell rebranding as the agency’s first client. Before TAXI, she worked in Toronto at Bløk Design.

“I’m thrilled to be rejoining Zulu. The agency has evolved in so many exciting ways and I can’t wait to bring back to Canada my learnings from working with global brands on bringing innovation to market. Our design mandate is to create the world’s most meaningful and memorable human-centred design products and experiences” said Stephanie.

Zulu’s previous design lead was Ryan Booth who left in the spring to join Hudson’s Bay Company after five years at the agency. Zulu is actively looking to fill a design director role to support Stephanie as they expand their design offering.