Over twenty years and a lot of projects, one pattern kept repeating. The experience an organization thinks it delivers is almost never the one its customers and employees actually live. And that gap doesn't close with better technology. It closes when people are willing to see it clearly and unlearn how they've always worked. AI didn't change that. It just raised the stakes and made the gap impossible to ignore.

I run an independent practice, Kennelly Design Co, helping leaders of complex organizations close that gap. Most of it comes down to finding where AI actually pays, and proving it before you spend. I call that AI Opportunity Mapping. I show you where the experience is breaking, work alongside your team to prove what it's costing, and redesign how the work gets done so AI finally lands. I work from evidence, not opinion. I stand with you as a peer, not above you. The simplest way to start is small and low-risk. A short Experience Session where your team designs a real AI concept together and leaves knowing what's worth pursuing, and what isn't.

Before this, I spent two decades in UX strategy, research, and service design, and in the leadership of both. I helped build and lead a customer experience practice, ran teams of thirty-plus researchers, strategists, and designers, and did the work that taught me how experience actually moves a business, for McKesson, Navy Federal, Johns Hopkins, and others. I've also taught the craft as a university guest lecturer and adjunct, because teaching keeps my own thinking honest.

And I keep going deep on AI for this era, training across the design sprint method, agentic AI for research, and UX for AI, so the work stays grounded in where the craft is heading.

A few things that matter. My family comes first, always, and I've built the practice around that, not the other way around. I try to pay forward the help I've been given, through coaching, mentoring, and showing up for the people in my corner.