Partner, McKinsey Design
As one of McKinsey & Company's first design partners, Jeff Salazar is passionate about building a world-class creative engine that fuels unrivaled design impact for industry. In leading the growth of McKinsey's design practice, he's driven to continually elevate the value of design, and to evolve the definition, practice and delivery of design across a broad range of highly complex industry challenges.
A graduate of ArtCenter College of Design with a degree in Product Design, Salazar is currently the North American leader of McKinsey Design's Customer Experience Design practice, and is energized by the opportunity to weave together deep analytics and operational insights, with human-centered design approaches, to craft and deliver highly relevant and impactful brand experiences. He joined LUNAR in 1994 and has received numerous awards for his work including a Gold award from the Industrial Designer's Society of America (IDSA) for the Nova Cruz eX3 Electric Scooter, the Chicago Athenaeum's Good Design Award and an iF Hannover award for projects like the Phillips Velo Handheld PC and Intuitive Surgical's DaVinci Robot.
In 2011, he was honored as an IDSA Design CATALYST award winner for the Oral-B Cross Action toothbrush considered the most ergonomically designed mass market toothbrush ever created. The toothbrush has remained in production and virtually unchanged since 1999. The product has contributed to continued category dominance for Oral-B and better dental health and hygiene for millions of people around the world. The CATALYST award recognizes products that exemplify how design can be leveraged to better serve realizable impact for business.
He enjoys life in Palo Alto with his wife, Sandra, and their Tibetan Terrier, Ginger. Salazar is on a continual learning journey to explore and discover the convergence of art and science in life through the practice of yoga and West African drumming in conjunction with a deep curiosity in the quantified-self.
Founded in 1984 in Palo Alto, California, LUNAR has worked with many leading companies, including Apple, Nike, Siemens, Motorola and Oral-B. LUNAR's vast and influential body of work has recently been recognized by a 2014 U.S. National Design Award for Product Design, from the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. In 2015, LUNAR was acquired by McKinsey, the preeminent business consulting firm, creating a synergy for unprecedented business and design impact.