About Us.
MADO is a boutique consumer insights and strategy studio based in Portland, Oregon. We offer close partnership relationships with our co-founders and hands-on collaboration with our vibrant team of global researchers, designers and strategists, which can shift and expand to the needs of each client and program.
Kat McMillan
Co-Founder
Kat combines the skills of a tactical production designer with the mind of an international traveler and the curiosity of a philosopher.
She sweats every detail of an ideation workshop or future-trends report. It has to be thought-provoking and engaging, “because who wants the future to be flat?”
HOW SHE GOT HERE:
Kat spent nearly a decade overseas at design consultancies in Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain before focusing on product design, strategy and trend research for Portland-based organizations. While serving as design lead at Cinco Design, she met Jaclyn and the two realized they were both informally bringing future-based analysis, creativity and strategy to their client teams. Soon after, MADO was born.
IN HER OWN WORDS:
“My perspective is that it's not about the blender; it’s about the way that people want to nourish themselves. It's not about the chair; it’s something in the chair’s tactile quality that adds beauty and comfort to their life. That kind of perspective has primed me for future thinking. I want to be a part of that bigger understanding of where we're going and why.”
Jaclyn Suzuki
Co-Founder
Jaclyn is hard to define, which is kind of her super power. She’s able to talk to engineers and creatives in their own languages, while giving each one a dose of the curiosity and courage necessary to dream big.
She once asked product designers to imagine what a vacuum would look like if it could fold up like origami. Another time, she created a 50-year roadmap for the future of toothpaste. That’s right. Fifty years of toothpaste!
HOW SHE GOT HERE:
After working as a semiconductor processing engineer for a global tech firm and researching new materials for an artisanal glassmaker, Jaclyn found a home at Ziba Design, where she led product design and innovation programs for major brands — and spent a few years in the Tokyo office to boot. She was already incorporating future-forward approaches as a creative director when she and Kat decided to make foresight their sole focus at MADO.
IN HER OWN WORDS:
“My dad’s an engineer and my mom’s an artist, so I bounce back and forth between the right brain and left brain a lot. I try to bridge creative vision for the future — let’s be bold and go farther — with a practical, engineering mindset. Then we figure out how to bring the vision to life.”
Collaborators
MADO maintains an extended network of world-class researchers, designers, strategists and creative producers— allowing us to customize the right team for your program’s needs.