# Cristina B. **Independent Consultant & Product Designer** — London, United Kingdom > London-based consultant with 15+ years in management consulting, architecture, and product design. Now focused on early-stage product discovery, UX, and AI-assisted development. ## Links - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/cristinabro - Portfolio: https://cristina-brodu.lovable.app/ ## Experience ### Independent Consultant & Volunteer, Independent Consultant & Volunteer (2020-11 – present) London Area, United Kingdom · Mapped and improved workflows for early-stage SaaS platforms and built a telehealth eCommerce app from platform configuration through user-feedback iteration. Led product discovery for multiple concepts, conducting user interviews, validating assumptions, and defining MVP scope. Designed and tested prototypes using Figma, Visily, and AI tools, and advised founders on product-market fit, commercial modelling, and go-to-market strategy. ### Senior Consultant - Enterprise Risk Management, AON UK (2019-03 – 2019-05) London Area, United Kingdom · Introduced structured role allocation (RACI) to improve project planning and quality assurance on a Corporate Governance restructuring project. Supported PMO functions and contributed to pricing models and RFP delivery. ### Consultant - Business Performance Improvement, Ernst & Young Global Consulting Services (2015-08 – 2017-05) London · Delivered process optimisation projects achieving up to 70% time and 50% cost savings across UK&I wide risk management and other processes. Documented business models and operating models for maturity assessment. Led stakeholder interviews, produced risk reports for senior leadership, and managed a team of 10 colleagues coordinating internal communications. Contributed to a £24Bn portfolio optimisation generating £300K in sales and supported a £4Bn restructuring transaction. ### Analyst - Strategy and Business Transformation, Linklaters LLP (2015-06 – 2015-07) London, United Kingdom · Supported analysis for M&A and divestment transactions involving distressed targets. ### Ltd director, planning, eng, arch, MCB PROFESSIONAL SERVICES (2007-01 – 2015-01) Greater London · I left my first career in architectural–engineering design by changing career at EY through a training scheme employment, but I value the experience and responsibilities I held before EY: my work involved project design (from concept and schematic planning - that can look like boxes, to show footprints and heights of the required footage, by function - to the design of the actual shape of the buildings). Some clients however don’t get that schematic design isn’t the final output but an initial visual tool to discuss functions size and location in the land to develop). I have a post‑MSc professional licence as both an architect and an engineer. Since 2006 I reported to director‑level team leaders, and from 2007 to VPs, before retraining in consulting at EY from 2015. I worked collaboratively across multidisciplinary teams. My responsibilities included client liaison, design development, problem‑solving, planning, and PMO‑related activities. — Since I worked at EY, some malevolent people have been spreading the rumour that I was a “drafter” in this career, because even firms often tell to clients that foreigners do drawings only, but this is completely false: only who works in the delivery phases of a project produces a lot of vector-based construction drawings, but that was a role I held only for three months at FPL and at LOA while my many years of practice and studies involved design origination, using a wide range of software as well as hand sketching. Why undermining a profession that requires years of university study and practical experience? Is it envy? Why otherwise diminishing the value of my past work, even after I changed career? — My technical stack at the time (used up to a decade ago, before EY) included: 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Revit, CATIA, Rhino, SolidWorks, ArcGIS, GaBi, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, Acrobat, SketchUp, ArchiCAD, MicroStation, AutoCAD & BIM, Excel, PowerPoint, I Word, Outlook, MS Project, and others ### Assistant Director and Project Designer, RTKL, HOK, ARUP (2006-08 – 2014-11) London · Delivered high-value design solutions reporting directly to directors and VPs. Project managed design iterations for milestone workshops and final delivery, tracking cost, time, and quality across departments. Managed own Ltd to invoice architectural, engineering, and planning firms. ## Education ### Engineering Architecture (for buildings & cities in not software), Universidad de Sevilla (2023-01 – 2024-06) ### 200 hours yoga teacher training, Shri Kali Ashram, Yoga Alliance® Accredited School (2017-12 – 2018-01) Hata and Ayurvedic yoga ### CIMA certificate, Kaplan (2016-01 – 2017-01) ### Master's degree, Harvard University (2010-09 – 2012-06) NVQ Level 7 ### MSc + BSc in Architecture Engineering, Sapienza Università di Roma (2000-09 – 2006-06) Graduated magna cum laude; NVQ Level 7 ### Upper Secondary School Diploma di Maturità, Liceo Scientifico (1993-09 – 1999-06) Maths 15/15, Science 14/15, English 14/15; NVQ Level 4 ### Interdisciplinary courses with exams (on campus in cross-registered), Massachusetts Institute of Technology ### Courses from MBA curriculum (on campus in cross registered), MIT Sloan School of Management ### Google UX Design professional certificate in UX research and design, Google pour les pros Completed over 260 hours of coursework in 3 weeks, with 100% marks in each of the 7 courses, refining my UX research and design skills to originate human centred apps with delightful micro-interactions: + User Research + User Defining + Information Arch + Prototyping + Lo-Fi wireframing + Hi-Fi wirerframing + User Testing + Stakeholder Presentations Example of app project with process book: www.evolution-consult.com/cbuxpreview ## Projects ### Dynamic dashboard for insights on UK immigrants' socio-economic patterns 90% of this project’s value (and work to build) lies in what static slide decks simply can’t do: the exploratory, interactive features of Tableau, which differentiate it from PowerPoint. All it takes is a hover, click, or tap on mobile, wait for the dashboard refresh, and read the unlocked insights that disappear in static screenshots. I’ve built this dashboard to explore how country of birth and ancestry influence levels of qualifications, occupational access, and wealth-building opportunities in the UK. Key interactive features • Dashboard-level parameter highlighter that lets you select a country of birth and instantly blue-highlight relevant elements across charts at multiple granularity levels • Filters to include and exclude the British group for comparison, dynamically re-scaling axes when zooming out to include it, and when zooming-in to exclude it and view migrant groups, which are otherwise dwarfed • Chart-level parameters, page controls, and search highlighters to switch categories or find specific countries or ethnicity (given that the Census inconsistently tracks a mix of country-of-birth and ethnic-origins per topic) Key findings • Visa, settlements, and the under-tracked population in Census surveys reinforce South Asian concentrations • Origin-country population size weakly predicts UK migrant representation and doesn't justify concentrations • Census Level 4+ aggregation and under-coverage mask inequality: many foreign-born groups are more highly qualified than the UK-born, yet face persistent underemployment and low access to wealth building factors • Larger migrant groups have higher access to housing ownership • High-income role access doesn't correlates with qualifications • UK-born retain the strongest advantages: highest median wealth, ownership, high-income concentrations • Clear stratification: entrenched advantage for UK-born White; upward mobility for Indian and Irish-born; • Small-population minorities face the steepest barriers ## Skills Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel, Problem Solving, Team Leadership, Critical Thinking, Strategic Planning, Communication, Mentoring, Negotiation, Interpersonal Communication, Teamwork, Management, Leadership, Statistical Data Analysis, Management Consulting, Start-ups, Business Strategy, Research, Data Analysis, Business Planning, Contract Negotiation, Project Management, Real Estate Development, Comprehensive Planning, Training Delivery, Recruiting, Operations, Evidence, Business Development, Human Resources (HR), Agile Project Management, Product Management, Product Road Mapping, Product Strategy, Technical Product Management, User Experience Design, Product Discovery, User Research, Prototyping, Figma, Visily, Uizard, Python, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, AI-assisted Development, Process Optimisation, PRINCE2, Business Modelling, Stakeholder Management, UX Design, UI Design, SaaS, eCommerce, M&A Analysis, Risk Management, RACI, Tableau, Data Visualisation, Cybersecurity Foundations, Public Speaking, Contract Law, Business Accounting, Procurement Strategy, APIs, LLMs, RAG, Vector Databases, AI Agents, LangChain, Cloud Concepts, DevOps, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Lovable, Wabi, Adobe Creative Suite, Notion, NotebookLM, Whisper AI, Otter AI, Fireflies AI, Canva, Flux, Flow, Veo, Kling, Hedra, Veed, ElevenLabs ## Credentials - **Replit Agent** - **Lovable** - **Air** - **Aha! Product Management Professional Certificate** — Aha! (issued 2024-09) - **Cert Prep: PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)®** — LinkedIn (issued 2024-09) - **Google UX Design Professional Certificate** — Coursera (issued 2024-04) - **9. CCAT results in the top 5% - www.criteriacorp.com** — Criteria (issued 2021-03) - **8. Negotiation _ Yale University** — Coursera (issued 2020-07) - **7. American Contract Law _ Yale University** — Coursera (issued 2020-05) --- Source: https://saywise.com/crib3001 (last modified 2026-07-29T12:04:43.476Z)