I began my career as a product designer, working on objects, graphics and brands. Then, during a stay in Madagascar, a cyclone hit the region.

I saw rescue teams making life-or-death decisions with almost nothing: few resources, little information, no time. What struck me most wasn't the lack of technology in the world. It was the distance between what technology could do and what actually reached the people on the ground.

That's when I understood that design had to come in much earlier, next to the engineers, before decisions are locked in.

So I went back to school and joined Thales in 2018, in an innovation hub full of engineers, developers and business teams, and almost no designers. I spent the following years inside aerospace and defense programs: commercial cockpits, military aircraft, helicopters, fighter jets, drones, augmented-reality helmets, pilot tablets.

I sat with engineers, mission operators and former pilots, asking one question again and again: does this actually help the person operating it?

What I learned surprised me. Engineers don't reject design. They reject design that arrives too late, too cosmetic, and disconnected from operational reality. When design comes in with real field knowledge (pilot interviews, mission scenarios, cognitive load), the whole conversation changes.

That conviction became my PhD, conducted with Thales and Université Bordeaux Montaigne across six industrial R&D programs. It started with Vision, a project for aerial firefighting coordination, where air crews, ground teams and command each saw a different fire and shared only a crowded radio channel.

From that research came the ITU Framework, a way to bring operators, technology, organizations and market reality together from the very first stages of innovation.

In aviation, landing is the moment everything designed in theory has to work in real conditions, with real people, under pressure. That's what I help organizations do: take emerging technologies (AI, automation, connected systems) and make them land in the field.