About me
Benjamin Giese
A portfolio is an elegant form of controlled self-disclosure you show yourself, but choose carefully what you reveal.
Here is what I choose to show: I don't look for tasks, I look for real impact. Not the next title but the moment when someone realizes that something has genuinely shifted.
My best insights emerge in conversation, in the field, in motion where people show up as they truly are.
A bit about myself
Someone who is at his best in the morning, outside, before the world gets too loud.
I cycle because it gets me anywhere, on my own terms. I boulder, because it's the only thing that occupies my head and my body at the same time. The moment before you almost fall brings more clarity than most meetings ever do.
And I'm a father. It turns out that's also where I learned the most about patience, improvisation, and what it actually means to be present. In the kitchen, I'm in my element as long as someone else does the dishes. Food is attitude. Cooking is craft. Washing up is an affront.
And then there's my most serious socio-political concern: the afternoon nap needs to be rehabilitated. Not as a luxury, but as common sense. What does any of this have to do with my work? Everything. I bring the same curiosity, the same tenacity and the same willingness to say uncomfortable truths into every project just without the washing up.
This is my working Persona
I ask the questions others have quietly stepped around and I stay with them until something shifts.
I've learned that the right form of communication creates clarity. Not a tagline a realisation that came from translating complex architecture into something a team could actually own. From making space for ideas that didn't fit the existing structure yet. Different contexts, same underlying instinct: find where the real blockage is, and name it.
What I've noticed is that people leave conversations with me feeling understood rather than assessed. I don't always have the expected answer. But I usually have the question that opens the right door.
My Motivations and ambitions
I am not motivated by titles or by being in the room where decisions get made. I am motivated by the moment someone understands something they couldn't see before. My ambition is not vertical. It's depth.
I care about how things are done, not just what gets delivered. Whether it's a process, a product, or a conversation the human on the other end is always part of the equation. That's not a value I added later. It's how I read every situation from the start.
The thread running through everything IT transformation, design research, facilitation, parenting, UX is this: I believe the most underused resource in any system is honest, empathetic analysis. I intend to keep being exactly that.
