Here we introduce the Curation director for the IA Conference 2020, Alberta Soranzo. As a former co-chair of IA Summit and EuroIA she knows the joy as well as the challenges of helping to organise a successful conference.
Who are you?
I work in London as design director at the largest British financial services group. My team specializes in large-scale design-driven transformation projects —we connect value for the business to what matters to customers and colleagues, by operating at systemic as well as service surface levels.
What’s been your favourite moment as an IA (so far)?
I think every engagement has a favorite moment, and that generally corresponds to when you can see the proverbial lightbulb go off in your interlocutors’ heads, and you know they understand the merit of what you’re proposing. In the purest IA sense, I think the most memorable episode took place a few years back, when a group of very traditional banking executives at a global firm understood the benefits of structured content and taxonomy and became their fiercest evangelist within the organization.
What made you decide to volunteer for IAC?
As a past co-chair of both IA Summit and EuroIA, I know first-hand what goes into organizing an event of this magnitude, and how crucial the role of volunteers is to success. I owe this community a lot, both personally and professionally, so not volunteering really isn’t an option for me. It’s a real privilege to be a part of the event and helping shape the program.
What does the theme mean to you – what are you hoping to see, hear, sense or share in New Orleans?
I love this year’s theme — perception and interpretation of reality are the basis of experience, and play a fundamental role in the outcomes design enables. More than anything, I am hoping to hear, and learn from, voices – old and new – exploring the different ways in which we can help shape the world by making sense of the known and embracing what we cannot yet know.
New Orleans is the perfect setting for this – a city of possibilities, where one can never be sure of the adventure that awaits next, and where anything can and will be experienced in a multitude of ways. I’m looking forward to all of this.
Where can people find you?
I travel often, so if I’m not in London (and you should ping me), there’s a reasonably high probability that I may be in a place not far from you sometime soon. Other than that, I tweet at @albertatrebla, am pretty active on Linkedin and mostly admire people’s pics on Instagram at @atrebla.
An incorrigible nomad, Alberta has lived and worked in Italy and California and is now based in London, UK. As Transformation Design Director, specializing in service design and systems thinking, she focuses on the creation and delivery of future-friendly services and outcomes that are rooted in systemic understanding and deliver value to both business and customers. She is driven by the opportunity to make a real impact, by looking after the big picture as well as paying attention to the very small things that, she says, ‘matter a lot’. Unafraid of challenging conventions, Alberta puts people at the heart of her design process and contends that you should always under promise and then over deliver. In her natural habitat, she’s sitting on the floor surrounded by bits of paper and post-its or standing in front of a whiteboard with a handful of markers. Prior to Lloyds Banking Group, Alberta was experience design director at digital agencies in London and at UCLA in California. She has a long track record of leading strategic projects for global brands, including Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, UCLA, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, RBS, BUPA, The Co-operative Group, EDF, Nuffield Health and T.Rowe Price. When she’s looking to escape the world of design, Alberta plays ice hockey, lifts weights and tries to keep up with the crazy life of her teenage daughters.