Meet your culture designer.
Culture Design was founded by Jason Burnham, who has spent more than twenty-five years leading enterprise transformation from every side of the table: as a founder who built and sold a company, as a practice leader inside professional services firms, and as the senior advisor a C-suite calls when the strategy depends on the culture underneath it. Culture Design is where that experience became a method.
Most advisors have seen transformation from one seat. Jason has led it from four.
The perspective that shapes this work came from operating in four very different roles, each of which teaches something the others cannot.
- 01
Founder and operator
Co-founded a digital media agency and grew it to $40 million in billings and a 65-person team across three offices before its acquisition by Horizon Media, then one of the largest independent media agencies in the country. He has run a P&L, met a payroll, and lived with the consequences of his own decisions, so he advises leaders as a peer who has sat in their chair.
- 02
Practice builder
Recruited as a principal to build the experience-innovation, communications, and design practices inside a management consultancy, where firm revenue tripled during his tenure and the firm was acquired by Material+. He knows how to build a capability, not just deliver a project.
- 03
Embedded advisor
Brought into a global systems integrator to embed transformation design capability and lead multi-million-dollar Fortune 500 pursuits. He has worked inside the machinery of enterprise change at scale.
- 04
Independent principal
Founder of Culture Design, serving as trusted advisor to the C-suite of Fortune 500 and global enterprise clients on cultural transformation, experience innovation, and AI-enabled operating models.
Across a twenty-five-year career, the work has moved real numbers.
Over more than twenty-five years and four operating roles, Jason has led transformations across utilities, pharmaceuticals, automotive, healthcare, financial services, the public sector, and cultural institutions. The pattern holds: culture designed with intention produces measurable strategic outcomes.
Selected outcomes from across his career
- A luxury automaker moved from #7 to #1 in J.D. Power's sales and service ranking; another manufacturer rose from #12 to #3 in Forrester's customer experience ranking within two years.
- A customer and employee experience transformation across a 3,000-person healthcare organization.
- Five experience and culture governance bodies stood up inside global enterprises, each of which sustained delivery after the engagement ended.
- Current work includes leading the AI-ready cultural transformation of a 2,000-person global energy research enterprise, advising its CHRO and full C-suite, including counsel to the CEO on scaling AI adoption.
Recognition
Culture Design has been named a "Top 10 Organizational Development Company" (HR Tech Outlook, 2020) and "Most Outstanding Change Management Consultancy, USA" (Acquisition International Global Excellence Awards, 2020).
What leaders say about working with Jason.
Endorsements gathered across Jason's career, from the executives, directors, and partners who have worked alongside him. They speak to the practitioner, not to any single engagement or firm.
“When you are serious about initiating authentic culture change within your organization, look no further than Jason Burnham. He is wicked smart, presents transformational ideas with simplicity and ease, and is passionate about inspiring brands, companies, and people. He is a great partner to have on your side.”
Elaine B. Coleman, Ph.D.
Director, CX Design & Strategy, CA Technologies
“Jason led several design workshops for us during our customer experience transformation. He is a high-energy guy with great insights in change management and culture design, able to take abstract ideas and concepts and turn them into actionable plans that generate quick wins. Our team really enjoyed working with Jason and achieved some great results in a short period of time.”
Matthew Boretti
Director of Marketing, Strategic Programs, and Service, Teleflex
“Jason has outstanding vision and is a great partner who invests himself entirely in your success. It was an absolute privilege working with him.”
Lawrence Chao
Regional General Manager, Mazda North American Operations
“Jason came in as a consultant to help my organization wade through some very complex challenges and workplace issues. The subject matter was very sensitive, and so was Jason's approach to delving into it. His expertise and personality blended well in presenting material and giving us guidance.”
Carolyn Van Brunt, M.A.
The Music Center
Twenty-five years of practice, distilled into frameworks you can run.
The work is not improvised. Over his career Jason has authored a body of transformation methodologies, including Purpose-Centered Design and a family of frameworks for brand experience, strategic design, and performance management. Culture Design turns that IP into a repeatable method: the six-dimension Cultural Maturity Assessment, the four-stage approach, and the design tools behind every engagement.
That method now extends to the pressure most organizations feel first. Jason holds executive education credentials from MIT in Applied Agentic AI for Organizational Transformation and in the Dynamics of Complex Adaptive Systems, and his current flagship engagement is an AI-ready cultural transformation at enterprise scale. Culture Design treats AI adoption as a culture problem before it is a technology problem, because that is where it succeeds or fails.
Founder-led, delivered through a trusted network.
Culture Design is led by its founder and delivered through a curated network of partners and associates, assembled to fit the engagement rather than staffed to fill a bench. You work directly with the principal, not handed down a hierarchy. It is a deliberate model: senior judgment on every engagement, with the right specialists brought in as the work requires.
He also serves his community, advising local economic development and strategic planning efforts, and has contributed transformation advisory to the United Nations Development Programme. The same belief runs through all of it: purpose, designed into a system, is what lets people and organizations thrive.
Why this work.
“Strategy gets the attention, but culture decides the outcome. I have watched brilliant strategies stall because the culture underneath them could not carry the weight, and I have watched ordinary plans succeed because the culture was built to deliver. Culture is your organizational operating system. My work is to help you design it with intention, so your people and your strategy can thrive together.”
— Jason Burnham
Bring your hardest culture challenge to the table.
Start with the complimentary Cultural Maturity Assessment, or get started and let's work together to solve your greatest cultural challenges.