Smart Design for Fast-moving Ideas

The Story

I’m Gina Charalambides, an Executive Design Strategist and Founder with deep roots in digital innovation, consumer healthcare, and human-centered design. My career has spanned global organizations, emerging platforms, and everything in between—with one unifying focus: helping businesses create meaningful, scalable experiences that put people first.

Over the past 15+ years, I’ve led design and innovation strategy as well as digital product development for some of the world’s most trusted healthcare and wellness brands. I’ve partnered with teams at Pfizer, Sanofi, Opella, Amgen, and Eli Lilly to deliver innovation at scale—building and evolving platforms that serve patients, healthcare professionals, and caregivers across the globe. I hold a U.S. patent in digital health and have experience collaborating directly with the FDA on new drug applications and software as a medical device (SaMD)—helping teams navigate regulatory complexity while staying grounded in patient experience and design integrity.

At Pfizer, I founded and scaled a global hackathon program focused on solving really tough challenges—an initiative that bridged marketing, R&D, enterprise and medical teams to bring ideas to life through rapid experimentation and co-creation. Outside of the corporate walls, I’ve led hackathons for incredible organizations such as Girls Who Code, Google, Harvard, and MIT, helping teams tackle systemic problems through design thinking and rapid prototyping.

Throughout my career, I’ve led orgs of all shapes and sizes to deliver digital experiences that are not only achieving business objectives, but are truly serving the humans that use them.  Now, through my consulting practice, I partner with organizations who are ready to think forward— sitting at the intersection of design thinking, digital transformation, and strategic storytelling, helping businesses move faster, smarter, and with greater purpose.

My transition into consulting was also strategic and intentional—driven by a desire to live more fully in every part of my life. I want to be the kind of mother who’s there for the morning bus stop, the after-school game, and everything in between. I want to show up as the supportive wife to my rockstar husband, and to spend more time being inspired by the brilliance of my friends and collaborators. Consulting has given me the space to go deeper—not just as a strategic design leader, but as a whole person. It’s allowed me to work with purpose, choose projects that align with my values, and lead with clarity, creativity, and care.