Product designer · Consulting executive
Darrell Whitelaw
I've traded a life on airplanes for a simpler rhythm split between the beach and the mountain — turning university research into companies, and building things with my own hands again.
Today I'm a founding partner at Tandem, where we commercialize university research and IP into venture-worthy companies and licensed technologies. I also advise our sister nonprofit, Tandem Commons, which identifies and philanthropically supports university labs shaping the next era of innovation across artificial intelligence, robotics, energy, biotech, and advanced materials.
Previously you could catch me wandering the halls of “Fortune One” in the Strategic Exploration Group — a low-visibility, high-impact operating unit inside the Walmart product org focused on AI, computer vision, and robotics. Before that I spent 2019–2020 defining how virtualized D2C cannabis sales work as Chief Product Officer of Proper, and helped a group of stellar women bring the NWSL to Los Angeles as founding creative director at Angel City.
I like to advise and invest in companies I believe will reinvent unexpected categories, fundamentally change how products are manufactured, or have interesting takes on what a modern consulting firm looks like.
In 2013 I founded Siberia, a product design and engineering consultancy serving clients from startups to Fortune 500s. We expanded from our first studio in New York City to San Francisco, London, and Berlin, leading to our acquisition by Medialink (now part of United Talent Agency) in 2017.
In previous lives I was Executive Creative Director of IPG Lab, Technology Experience Lead at Co:Collective, and founder of the mobile and emerging-platforms agency MIR, acquired by Publicis in 2011.