Two-time founder & award-winning designer. I talk about founders' mental health and the mindset to live a joyful life. I love fixing old motorcycles 🛵

I’m a two-time founder and award-winning design director with a proven track record of leading teams to successfully bring over 50 innovative physical and digital products to market.

With 20+ years of experience across startups, consultancies, and corporate settings, I’ve developed a holistic approach that combines creative design thinking, operational and manufacturing expertise, and emotional intelligence to drive innovation and team success.

Today, I serve as Director of Products at Grizzly Industrial, where I lead three brands: Grizzly, Shop Fox, and South Bend, overseeing product strategy, design, merchandising, pricing, logistics, and development.

In parallel, I continue to coach a select group of founders and leaders, placing emotional intelligence at the core of my work to empower better decision-making, stronger collaboration, and sustainable growth. 

I also write regularly:

Advise Myself → essays on emotional intelligence and personal growth

The Design Practice → essays on product management, design, and leadership


Originally from Argentina 🇦🇷 and now based in Bellingham, WA, I enjoy life as a dad, exploring the outdoors, and restoring old motorcycles 🛵 🏍️.

Career Highlights include:

 ➜ Founded and led two startups, including one exit in 2022.
 ➜ Directed the design and launch of 50+ products across industries.
 ➜ Earned 35 patents for innovative product designs.
 ➜ Exhibited twice at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), with one design in its permanent collection.
 ➜ Created products that won more than 75 major design awards.
 ➜ Founded and built a design consultancy serving global brands such as Crate & Barrel, CB2, Club Quarters Hotels, and Herman Miller.
 ➜ Established overseas manufacturing operations for multiple clients.

Manuel Saez

Anthem

Over the last two decades, I’ve helped 36 of the world’s biggest brands across sectors achieve cultural impact through a provocative and unconventional approach that challenges the status quo.

The fruit of that journey is Anthem.
And Anthem exists to help brands unlock the raw power of their collective potential.

Sounds exciting, right? 
Hit one of the links below to find our more. 

Here’s to progress 🚀

Founder

Codec

Consulting for prestigious global brands and helping them find and amplify their cultural voice.
Top brands: Adidas, Diageo, OneFineStay, Hennessy, and Royal Opera House.
 
———

▪️ Solved insight and activation challenges for 27 global brands including Adidas, Mortlach, Durex, Urban Decay, OneFineStay, Hennessy, and Royal Opera House.

▪️ Reimagined Codec’s consulting product and streamlined the consulting practice, allowing the business to execute its core deliverables 67% faster.

▪️ Developed and successfully delivered a £250K pitch to Diageo, working at a global level across seven iconic luxury brands including Tanqueray No. 10, Cîroc, and Don Julio 1942.

▪️ Managed large cross-function project teams in delivering brand strategies across a range of verticals including luxury travel, sports apparel, FMCG, and events.

▪️ Grew existing Codec accounts and onboarded senior stakeholders across multiple brands into Codec’s unique and distinctive technology-centred consulting methodology.

Strategy Director

Think Jam

Establishing the reputation of Think Jam’s new enterprise level tech start-up, ReMake.
Top brands: Unilever, Activision, Paramount Pictures, Prime Video, and Disney. 

——— 

▪️ 	Rebuilt brand positioning from the ground up and delivered a comprehensive consumer journey across social driving a 15,000% rise in website traffic, delivering over 100 high-value B2B leads, and securing contracts with Unilever, Activision, Paramount Pictures, and Prime Video. 

▪️ 	Achieved 50,000 organic impressions, a rise of 280%, across social channels in six months with a 131% rise in clicks.

▪️ 	Executed a CRM automation strategy that transformed email open rates from 1% to 28% and launched a podcast that reached 10K organically.

▪️ 	Reported directly to Think Jam’s CEO and the Board of Directors with full responsibility for the brand, website, tone of voice, sales enablement, and positioning across social channels. 

▪️ 	Managed a large team of suppliers across paid social strategies, design, and content creation.

Head Of Marketing

PlanSpatial

Discovered the cultural opportunity and market positioning for a geo-spatial mapping tech start-up.
Top brands: Oasis Global, Goldman Sachs, Kendall Bluck Consulting, Home Office, and SafeLane Global

———

▪️	Triggered a business pivot that unlocked investment from Goldman Sachs by liaising with industry insiders to assess product requirements and conducting research that revealed new opportunities.

▪️	Investigated alternative commercial applications of Plan Spatial technologies that challenged our pricing strategy, providing access to a wider commercial market.

▪️	Led all pitches from August 2020 and redesigned recruitment and sales collateral, streamlined the acquisition process and implemented a strategy to generate case studies to support our sales pipeline.

▪️	Leveraged user-centred design approaches to facilitate feedback loops to expedite tool development for market readiness.

Chief Strategist

Bloom Behaviours

Developed the cultural proposition and go-to-market strategy for this high performing teams start up.
Top brands: TNT Sport (formally BT Sport), DPD, Visa, Deloitte, and Chivas Brothers.

———

▪️	Successfully pitched the name ‘Bloom’ and developed the brand story, enabling Bloom to successfully secure investment - Bloom has since been rolled out in DPD, Visa and Deloitte.

▪️	Developed the market proposition, including customer experience mapping, product roadmap, prototyping, operating environment, design principles and dynamic pricing strategy.

▪️	Extracted market insights to validate the market opportunity in the organisational culture space. This included competitor analysis, market segmentation and focused research on high-performing cultures.

▪️	In a consulting capacity with the sales function, successfully closed contracts with BT Sport, Chivas Brothers, ICAS, and Visa.

Brand Strategist

The Observer Effect

Strategic branding lead working with clients to establish a coherent brand and market proposition.
Top brands: Team GB, Deloitte, Domestic & General, All Good Things, and ICAS.

———

▪️	Consulting lead on the design of an interactive marketing campaign about how the ambitions of Olympic athletes had been realised thanks to Deloitte solutions. 

▪️	Transformed online user engagement for Deloitte Impact Reports by completing a UX redesign process. 

▪️	Contributed to the business expansion of high fashion retailer, All Good Things, from two to 60 projected stores, by delivering a highly influential customer communication strategy. 

▪️	Designed a modular framework for Domestic & General’s email correspondence, targeting its passive customer base to unlock millions in revenue growth.

Brand & Culture Consultant

Let's Go.

Marketing and Design Lead in addition to the successful execution of bespoke consulting projects.
Top Brands: HSBC, Lindt UK, Lindt USA, BBC Studios, and Cancer Research UK.

———

▪️	Collaborated with all business units of Lindt UK & USA, gaining insight to align over 15K employees with organisational objectives and cultural values. 

▪️	Developed leadership training for 120 high-potential leaders across BBC Studios that encouraged productive team dynamics, maximised output, and positively directed cross-function collaboration.

▪️	Designed and implemented a long-term strategy to help the world’s largest cancer research charity unlock seven million pounds in fundraising revenue from payroll giving.

▪️	Instrumental in the successful pitch to HSBC followed by the design and deployment of a bespoke collaboration toolkit launched at Director level and then distributed to over 100K staff around the world.

Consultant & Marketing Lead

Oasis Community Learning

Pioneered a new strategic role that enhanced donor engagement and cultivated new relationships. Managed brand development, website design, cross-function marketing, fundraising and PR support to attract investment from corporations, high-net-worth individuals, and mid-level supporters. Functioned as Brand Manager for the Parliamentary launch of Oasis Foundation, the new fundraising and policy unit.

Campaigns & Innovations Manager

Led a complex program of activities and events that appealed to at-risk young adults and families. Directed a large team of front-line employees and a volunteer programme. Mediated with partners and stakeholders throughout the life cycle of project development and acquired of £300K investment from Barclays, Boultbee LDN and London borough Councils to support youth leadership projects.

Head of Engagement

Developed a holistic activity program and support structure for children, young people and families in Central London. This included running a football project to support and engage hundreds of ‘at risk' children & teenagers and the development of a pioneering new secondary school.

Project Manager, Children, Young People and Families

The Stone Yard Centre

Primarily focused on delivering a weekly program for the young people already attending the centre and setting up a 'start-up' program for community outreach. This included managing volunteers to deliver a diverse weekly programs, developing cross city partnerships, and delivering coordinated events.

Community Development Strategist

Let me ask you three questions:
1️⃣ Founders: Are you brilliant, but not enough people know it? Build your authority with Anthem Studio.
2️⃣ Leaders: Is your team alive with trust, creativity, and ownership? Help your team grow, together, with Anthem Teams.
3️⃣ Visionaries: Do social platforms leave you feeling tired or judged? Feel seen and heard with Anthem Symphony.

Whether you’re leading a team or launching your own business, remember this: leadership is a creative act.

The pressure of the bottom line often makes building credibility, trust, and connection hard. Where we need courage and creativity, many default to org charts, titles, and vanity metrics. Teams get neutralised by cultures of control, and founders find themselves racing against time and getting lost in a sea of tools, tactics, and compromises.

These are the reasons so many businesses fail to create a sense of belonging and why so many employees feel exploited. It’s why I launched Anthem.

I’ve been building communities since I was a teenager. From mentoring troubled teenagers to collaborating with CEOs, I’ve spent over 20 years helping people craft stories worth belonging to. I’ve helped some of the world’s biggest brands achieve tangible cultural impact. Today, I work with founders, leaders, and teams to reveal a purpose that resonates, take practical action to bring it to life, and build communities around their brand where trust, connection, and alignment can thrive.

I’m here for the courageous. The visionaries, founders, and leaders who are ready to make things work for themselves by working for the people around them. If that’s you, I’d love to connect.

Curious to know more? Let me tell you about our work:

Ⓢ Anthem Studio Anthem Studio’s proven Authority-Building Pathway is part strategy, part execution—a process that helps fast-track a founder’s credibility without cutting corners or compromising who they are.

Ⓣ Anthem Teams When teams are disconnected from each other and their purpose, creativity stalls, workplace drama thrives, and unhealthy competition takes root. The best leaders build community. We’re the guides who help you make that happen.

Ⓢ Anthem Symphony In just a few months, over 1,000 people joined Culture Crush, revealing a harsh truth: change-makers are lonely. They’re tired of algorithms dictating their visibility and frustrated that networking calls often feel like a lottery, rarely leading to meaningful connections. The Symphony is our next step: a referral-only network where every conversation is valuable, and every voice matters.

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The Battle

Manuel Saez

Dan Dowman

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