Cyndee Sugra

From stage to strategy.

I'm Cyndee Sugra, a product and technology strategist based in Los Angeles. For more than 20 years, I've helped companies decide what to build, align the teams who build it, and explain why it matters to customers, leadership and investors.

I started as the lead guitarist in an all-girl band with an indie record deal. From the stage, I moved to the strategy team at a major music label at the height of the dot-com era, a moment a lot like AI today. We were handed the internet and told to figure it out, while the labels sued the very customers who were showing them what they wanted. It was my first lesson in what happens when a business loses sight of its customers. It was also the start of the work I still love most: building clarity when there's no playbook.

Founder, designer, strategist

At 24, I launched a self-funded innovation agency in Los Angeles and ran it for nearly 15 years, through recessions and market shifts, working with brands including 20th Century Fox, Nike and Sony. In the middle of Hollywood's move to digital, we created a streaming standard that Apple, Google and Microsoft adopted.

I'm a product designer at heart. I've designed the interfaces, mapped the flows and built the prototypes myself, so I know what it takes to turn a strategy into something real.

In Amsterdam, I built a product consultancy and mentored start-up founders. At Digitas Health, part of Publicis, I was a senior experience design strategist for global pharma brands including Roche, Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim. Then I went inside a global enterprise to lead product strategy at scale.

Nearly a decade in Amsterdam gave me deep business experience on both sides of the Atlantic. I know how US and European companies decide, sell and scale, which matters when you're entering a new market or leading teams across both.

In the room with leadership

I've sat in the founder's and CEO's seat, so I know what leadership needs to see before they commit, and how to bring them in early. A strategy should earn buy-in, not chase it. Inside the enterprise, I saw how hard it is for smart teams to move when decisions are tech-led, disconnected from customers, and nobody is aligned. That's the problem I solve today.