Tamara Alsheikh

After successfully making the business case and getting management's commitment to establish the user experience (UX) in the organisation, I built and currently lead the newly formed in house UX team at Siemens Building Products (BP) - Smart Infrastructure. We are a global horizontal team of 8 UX professionals across three locations (Switzerland-Zug, Chicago-US, Pune-India) covering both UX design and research for the three business segments.

My mission at Siemens Building Technologies, international headquarters, is to establish and lead the UX practises with emphasis on Systems and Room Automation (SRA) including Engineering commisioning tools. My ultimate goal is to establish integrated processes and build our organisational capabilities to enable product teams to bring the voice of the users into our global product portfolio and to confidently steer the product strategy and direction using a user centric approach.

After nearly a decade of amazing full time employment (six of which were at Google) and successfully completing an MBA, I am currently taking a career break. I am focused on personal projects, volunteering and mentoring during that time, before embarking on my new career adventure shortly after the break. I am currently volunteering my time at the Impact Hub Zürich, beside contributing to other professional development projects and causes in Switzerland.

I have initiated, lead, managed and conducted UX research projects and initiatives in 5 continents (24 countries, 33 cities), especially in Asia, and the Middle east. Those projects included cultural immersion activities to stakeholders across global offices. My two major expertise is in the following areas: - User research and strategy for Enterprise and productivity - User experience research lead for International and Emerging Markets research

I strongly believe that UX professionals should have deep expertise of business beside UX to be able to confidently steer products on the right direction from both the user and business perspectives. Therefore, I decided to embark on an MBA journey.