Aura has deep expertise using design methods to help companies rethink how people engage with their products and services in the broad landscape of customer ex¬perience. Over the past 25 years, clients have include Fortune 100 companies, cultural institutions and small businesses such as HP, Apple Computer, Steelcase, the Tech Museum of Innovation, SFMOMA, Smith+Hawken and Esprit de Corp, where Aura spearheaded retail design at the beginning of her career.

Since 2002, Aura has been a principal of her firm A+O, located in San Francisco. Whenever possible, she also works from her new home (project) in Bonny Doon and hopes to open an office in Santa Cruz eventually. A+O works collaboratively with senior management to apply design thinking to their business challenges. This includes reframing problems to see new opportunities for growth, gaining deep insights about customers, and developing experience specifications and plans.

Past experiences have included Design Principal at Stone Yamashita Partners, and a senior management post at IDEO, the global innovation consultanacy,where Aura started the Environments practice and then headed up the SF office, developing a broad offering across products, services and environments. From 1987 to 1995, Aura led A+O Studio in SF, with a focus on the design of retail environments, museum exhibitions and analog products such as tableware. This was a natural transition from her role as Director of Retail Design at Esprit during their explosive growth in the mid-80’s.

In 1987, she founded and chaired the Industrial Design program at the California College of Arts in San Francisco. She returned to CCA in 2006 as an adjunct professor in the Graduate Program in Design.

Aura holds an MFA in Design from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA degree in Industrial De¬sign from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Aura was on the Board of the American Center for Design and Worldesign Foundation, has lectured widely, chaired conferences and juried (and won) many design competitions.