The Salt team is composed of members with diverse backgrounds, allowing us to find unique solutions to complex problems. We help you bridge the gap between good intentions and real impact.
Through collaborative process design, strategic communications, and resource alignment, Salt empowers individuals and organizations to focus on three key principles.
Time: The Long View
We acknowledge the true cost of our actions and seek solutions that surmount short term demands to embody the long view.
Scale: The Systems View
We accept that every problem is connected and embrace this complexity through a model of continuous learning and design.
People: The Human View
We must create discourse that opens up new behaviors and produces new mindsets so that our systems and organizations can thrive and help others thrive.
SALT HELPS PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
1. Systems
Key Principles: Priorities, Planning, Systems Health, Introspection, Capacity
Recognizing the true cost of actions and taking a long-term perspective in decision-making.
Salt guides the prioritization of objectives that align with the overall vision, planning with foresight, ensuring the health of underlying systems, introspecting on processes, and optimizing capacity. The focus on "Understanding" is a foundational aspect of Salt's methodology, emphasizing the importance of taking the time to deeply understand a problem before crafting solutions that look beyond short-term demands.
2. People
Key Principles: Empowerment, Communication, Agency
Embracing the complexity of systems and enhancing collaboration through continuous learning and design.
Salt empowers stakeholders, facilitating open communication, and allowing individual agency within the collaborative process. Salt believes in interconnectedness, understanding that every problem is part of a larger system, and aims to foster collaboration that recognizes these connections and seeks cohesive solutions.
3. Impact
Key Principles: Assessment, Roadmapping, Framing
Fostering human-centric approaches that open up new behaviors and mindsets, allowing systems and organizations to thrive.
Salt's efforts in impact assessment, roadmapping, and framing the objectives and strategies are all driven by the belief that the human perspective must be at the core of every solution. It involves evaluating the potential impact of decisions on people, charting a clear course that keeps human needs and behaviors in focus, and framing challenges in ways that prioritize the well-being and thriving of individuals within the systems and organizations.
WHO IS SALT?
Boris Grinkot
Working from first principles of design, continuous improvement, and systems, Boris helps leaders succeed in the face of change and uncertainty. He works with multi-stakeholder organizations to develop mindsets and processes that ensure they invest precious time and energy into the right thing; measure value and align on what the "right thing" is; and timely decide when and how to change course.
He has worked with both consumer- and internally-facing teams within enterprises in North America and Europe, including Bloomberg, The New York Times, J&J, Bayer, Munich RE, Kaplan, and Humana. In addition to consulting, he taught in the graduate management program at the Parsons School of Design, and authored or contributed to industry publications on lean UX leadership, value proposition messaging, digital product management, and design of experiments.
Judith Albert
Judith Albert bridges the worlds of large-scale operations, sustainability, and development. An investment banker for over 20 years at JPMorgan and Bear Stearns, and a corporate lawyer at Paul Weiss before that, she has extensive experience in M&A and corporate finance. As executive director of Environmental Entrepreneurs (an affiliate of NRDC), she ran a network of business executives who promote sound environmental policy on the economic merits.
She advised Latin American clients at J.P.Morgan as the capital markets re-opened to them in the 1990s, and helped found Violy, Byorum & Partners, a boutique firm focused on Latin America. Judith began her career with The Ford Foundation, based in Mexico, and has extensive experience in emerging markets. Ms. Albert is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Yale College.
Adam Hayes
In a word, Adam is a storyteller. With a background in applied design, his practice today crosses boundaries from design and strategy to education and consulting. His work ranges from experience design and strategy with New York based Openshop, teaching strategic design with a focus on economics and organizations at Parsons School of Design, strategic real estate development consulting with Threshold and coaching through Deep Play, which introduces design thinking as a model of practice to organizations and emerging leaders.
Adam Berk
Adam Berk is a lead mentor at Google Launchpad, a faculty member and consultant at Lean Startup Co. He was a Consultant at Pearson, part of the team that designed and implemented the “Product Lifecycle” and award-winning (but internal) innovation program.He is the author of Startup Program Design, a manual for corporates and governments who want to collaborate with Startups.
Adam has held different roles in the entrepreneurship, innovation, and human centered design space. Now he just wants to help people run experiments and prove hypotheses for good.
Nishant Wazir
Nishant is a generalist who leverages strategic design as a collaborative practice to drive transitions into desired states. With a background spanning disciplines and geographies, engaging with a variety of domains from retail to microfinance, hospitality to organizational culture, and social impact, Nishant has developed a practice that deploys integrated thinking with a strong focus on multidimensional value, stakeholdership, and organizational wellness. A strategist and designer at New York based Openshop, he also teaches Strategic Design & Management at Parsons School of Design.