Nancy Birkhölzer

IxDS connects academic research, industrial product development, and insights gained through artistic work to develop innovative and interactive products and services. In 2011 IxDS was selected as one of Germany’s 100 most groundbreaking and inventive companies.

Before becoming a partner at IxDS Nancy was Fjord Group Director and established Fjord's global Service Design Academy, a strategic unit, focused on thought-leadership, training and organisational transformation across Fjord teams and within client organisations. From 2007 to 2011 Nancy has been responsible for developing and managing Fjord’s Berlin studio. 

Previous to Fjord, Nancy played a key role in the development of Yahoo! Go and she led global innovation and user research projects across European markets in her role as User Experience Manager at Vodafone. 

Nancy was recently recognised as one of the "100 Women of the Future" by Deutschland – Land der Ideen, a joint initiative between the German government and German business and industry leaders.

Her expertise lies in creating value for businesses and society through service design identifying how design can be transformative by empowering people, businesses & society to change in order to become more sustainable. She specialises in finding simple solutions for complex problems that are technically feasible, economically viable and desirable from a user perspective.

Nancy studied design at the Köln International School of Design and Rhode Island School of Design and has more than 12 years professional experience in designing digital services. Nancy is a Fulbright Alumna, Alumna of the Studienstifung des deutschen Volkes (Germany's largest and oldest sponsorship organisation) and a member of their admission commission selecting excellent future scholars. Nancy loves the outdoors, mountaineering & nature.