Service Design
Strategic innovation
Storytelling
Podcasting
Serena Westra, a Senior Service Designer at Koos Service Design, has been part of OLX group’s AI-by-design innovation team for the past year. She performs a leading role in the squared initiative, where she is responsible for designing a new way of working that combines machine learning, service design, and experiment design.
Specialising in service design, she collects nearly 10 years of experience in storytelling, strategic innovation, and facilitation. By collaboration with companies like ING Bank, Philips, and Cisco, Serena has built her career path towards being this year’s Service Design Network finalist for her work about inclusive design with the municipality of Amsterdam.
Serena’s passion for visual thinking, improvisation theater, and storytelling are some of her greatest assets. She applies them daily – from persuading stakeholders and giving powerful pitches to successfully training and coaching over 500 professionals in service design. Furthermore, in 2019, together with the health care organisation Cordaan, Serena had an award-winning project that focused on making health care more inclusive by combining Service Design with animation.
Serena holds a BA in Media & Culture Studies and a MA in New Media & Digital Culture from the University of Amsterdam. Before joining Koos, she worked in visual consultancy and as a lecturer at several universities, like TU Delft and Willem de Kooning Art Academy. Currently, she is running a successful side-business as podcast studio founder of Podcast Studio Amsterdam.
In her spare time she likes to go surfing (in Portugal), read sci-fi novels, organise board-game festivals, and play improv. She loves to meet new people and eat new dishes.