Karin Fyhrie

The lost art of connecting with your customers

In Episode #37, Ross is joined by Karin Fyhrie, Founder & CCO of Sovereign Objects.

Under 15% of global executive creative agency leaders are women — Karin Fyhrie is one of them. She confidently steers Top 50 brands, globally renowned cultural institutions, and market-leading start-ups into the future, thanks to her unconventional path. Over two decades, she’s evolved as quickly as the industry has, building a uniquely diverse perspective as expansive as the word ‘design’ has become thanks to tenures at COLLINS, IDEO, Google Creative Lab, Imaginary Forces, and even a VR residency through Stanford.

Ross and Karin discuss why it’s so important for your brand to build an emotional connection with your customers and why your company's purpose and values are probably wrong.

More about Karin

Under 15% of global executive creative agency leaders are women — Karin Fyhrie is one of them. She confidently steers Top 50 brands, globally renowned cultural institutions, and market-leading start-ups into the future, thanks to her unconventional path. Over two decades, she’s evolved as quickly as the industry has, building a uniquely diverse perspective as expansive as the word ‘design’ has become thanks to tenures at COLLINS, IDEO, Google Creative Lab, Imaginary Forces, and even a VR residency through Stanford. With this cross-specialism insight, she comfortably transitions between product and service innovation, brand strategy, storytelling, and systemic creative direction for the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Her contributions have been recognized by D&AD, The One Club, Fast Company, Graphis, Eye Magazine, Communication Arts, AIGA, the Society of Publication Designers, Type Directors Club, and the Emmy Awards.

In her most recent position, Karin was the San Francisco Managing Partner of COLLINS, the design and strategy agency responsible for notable rebrands of Spotify, Robinhood, Dropbox, Mailchimp and the San Francisco Symphony. While leading the west coast office, COLLINS was (twice) consecutively named “Design Agency of the Year” by Ad Age (2019-2020) as well as one of the 50 Places Creative People Want to Work Next by Working Not Working. In 2020, she helped launch COLLINS’ first-ever editorial site, IDEAS, while simultaneously spearheading the company’s internal DEI initiatives; helping to triple the impact of its internship program committed to creatively-inclined students of colour.

As of 2021, Karin launched her own studio, Sovereign Objects, a brand and innovation firm advancing the arts, culture, and science. Partnerships focus on ways that reimagine economic and/or organizational models to redistribute power and prosperity. Current clients include everything from stealth stage start-ups in the creator economy to high-impact non-profits like the Obama Foundation. On the side, she also consults through Mixing Board, a think tank of brand and communications leaders that provide their expertise, mentorship and help with building teams to organizations looking for advice. Mixing Board community members are CMOs, heads of comms, seasoned brand strategists, social and content experts, community builders, researchers, speechwriters and policy veterans.

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