248: Curiosity is Your Superpower with Ehab Bandar

Ehab Bandar is a sought-after product design consultant for startups and fintech. What's amazing about his career is that he's managed to do it while being both an outsider and an insider in remarkably distinct ways. Ehab attributes credit to his early life as an immigrant to the US from Lebanon at the age of six. His family moved yearly until he was in seventh grade. Ehab was a shy kid with a stutter, yet he was also a natural observer and listener, taking in different cultural norms and personalities. He recalls endearing himself to fit in with new people by throwing a joke into random conversations, noting how fortunate he was to be warmly received as he started the year at each new school. Ehab describes these characteristics as shy self-reliance while being quietly engaged. Ehab had to invent his own career to become a design leader himself. Educated as a city planner, Ehab started his career as one of the youngest technology managers at Wells Fargo. He then left corporate and went on his own to advise and lead design at fast-growing startups in Silicon Valley, digital agencies, and corporate giants.  Ehab uses city planning tools and curiosity to hone his craft in the tech world. He explains how a quarterly print newsletter he started in grad school out of boredom led him to work in the dot-com boom and how being an outsider as an immigrant from Lebanon made the act of observation and discovery a daily habit.  Today, he's the founder of , an experience-led design agency that partners with product teams to build human-centered designs at scale. They merge hands-on product knowledge, customer insights, and experience strategy to transform ideas into a tangible product vision.   In this week’s learn more about Ehab’s journey: Ehab conquered his stuttering by joining the radio station in college as a news reporter. He has helped dozens of organizations, including Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo, Bank of the West, Boost Mobile, Intuit, and Airbnb, design new digital products and successfully launch them into the market. Learn more and connect with Ehab here:     - by Lorne M. Buchman