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Rod Farmer

Associate PartnerSydney

Rod Farmer

Associate PartnerSydney

Leads customer experience and design in APAC for McKinsey Digital and is a recognized thought leader in human-centered design, customer experience, and digital transformation

Rod leads customer experience and design in APAC for McKinsey Digital. He is a recognized thought leader in human-centered design, customer experience, and digital transformation. Rod helps clients build new businesses and capabilities, deliver new products and services, establish new ways of working, and drive design-led transformations. He also possesses deep expertise in multichannel digital marketing, product design, and organizational capability development.

Prior to joining McKinsey, Rod was APAC executive strategic design director for Isobar (part of Dentsu Aegis), leading over 400 digital specialists and accountable for over $20 million in direct profit-and-loss contributions. He has successfully advised many of Australia’s largest organizations at strategic and executional levels on digital and customer-centered transformations. As a successful entrepreneur, Rod founded an award-winning digital agency that specialized in mobile strategy and design.

Examples of Rod’s recent projects include the following:

  • leading customer-experience transformations for multiple clients in telecommunications, from design research through to organizational design and capability building
  • developing new customer value propositions and integrated digital-marketing operating models in telecommunications, artificial intelligence, oil and gas, and financial services
  • serving as program advisor on design and customer experience for the end-to-end digitization of a multinational travel company

Rod sits on the board of directors for SANE Australia—a leading Australian not for profit that helps Australians affected by mental illness. He also actively supports socially oriented businesses in a pro bono capacity to help build stronger Australian communities. Rod is a regular speaker at design, digital, and customer-experience conferences.

Published work

Nurturing supply and demand: How Asia’s energy players can accelerate green growth,” McKinsey & Company, November 2022

Capturing growth in Asia’s emerging EV ecosystem,” McKinsey & Company, June 2022

As physical doors close, new digital doors swing open,” McKinsey & Company, May 2020

Emerging from COVID-19: Australians embrace their values,” McKinsey & Company, May 2020

Past experience

Isobar
General Manager

Mobile Experience
Cofounder and director

3 Mobile
Head of user experience

Telstra
Senior digital specialist

University of Melbourne
Lecturer

Defence Science and Technology Group
Senior software engineer

Education

University of Melbourne
PhD, engineering
BA, BSc, software engineering

University of Lyon
MA, sociology