• Home
  • Advisory
  • Coaching
  • About
  • Start a Conversation
Thrive Dept.Thrive Dept.
  • Home
  • Advisory
  • Coaching
  • About
  • Start a Conversation

About Stephanie Sansoucie

Stephanie Sansoucie is a senior UX and customer experience leader, advisor, and coach with more than 20 years of experience across strategy, research, organizational transformation, and enterprise leadership.

Her work has consistently focused on a central challenge: strong experience work depends not only on design quality, but on the organizational system around it.

That includes how teams are structured, how research informs decisions, how Product, Design, Engineering, Technology, and business leaders work together, and how experience capabilities evolve as organizations grow and change.

Today, Stephanie brings that perspective to organizations and senior leaders navigating complex UX, CX, and transformation challenges.

Experience at enterprise scale

Before founding Thrive Department, Stephanie held senior leadership roles including Global Director of User Experience at EY and Director of Customer Experience at Kohl’s.

Image

Her experience includes:

Building and leading a multidisciplinary CX organization of roughly 50 people, including five Senior Manager direct reports
Leading across UX research, design strategy, innovation, Design Operations, and Voice of Customer
Shaping experience strategy across an estimated $200 million technology portfolio
Building and scaling distributed teams across the United States, Serbia, and India
Working across Product, Engineering, Technology, Operations, Marketing, Analytics, Strategy, Sales, and executive leadership
Translating customer and operational evidence into roadmaps, investment priorities, and strategic decisions
Leading through organizational growth, transformation, and post-acquisition integration

Her work spans enterprise technology, B2B and consumer commerce, healthcare, financial services, education, and complex organizational environments.

Where Stephanie works best

The hardest experience problems rarely belong to one function.

They sit between functions.

They emerge when ownership is unclear, research is disconnected from decisions, teams operate with competing assumptions, or organizational structures have not kept pace with the work.

Stephanie works in that space.

Her advisory work spans UX and CX operating models, organizational design, research integration, Product/Design/Engineering alignment, governance, Design System adoption, capability development, and transformation.

She is particularly effective when the challenge crosses organizational boundaries and there is no obvious playbook.

Her approach is practical and context-specific: understand the system, identify the points of friction, clarify the decisions that matter, and help leaders build an approach that can work inside the organization they actually have.

Explore Advisory Work >

Leadership & transition coaching

Stephanie also maintains a selective private coaching practice for experienced professionals and leaders navigating meaningful change.

This work is distinct from advisory consulting.

In advisory engagements, clients are seeking Stephanie’s professional judgment, experience, and perspective. In coaching, the client remains the expert in their own life and work.

Coaching provides structured space to examine assumptions, strengthen judgment, navigate communication challenges, and make consequential decisions with greater clarity.

Stephanie is a National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach, NBC-HWC, with formal training in coaching psychology, behavior change, and lifestyle medicine.

Explore Coaching >

Start a conversation

If your organization is working through a consequential UX, CX, or experience-organization challenge, I welcome a conversation about what is happening and whether I can be useful.

Start a Conversation >

If you are an experienced professional or leader considering coaching, you can learn more about the coaching practice here.

Explore Coaching >

Experience across organizations and industries

Stephanie’s career and client work have included experience across organizations such as:

ADVOCATE
HEALTH

INTUIT

WELLS
FARGO

EY

JOHNSON
CONTROLS

KOHL’S

CARNEGIE
MELLON

PANTHEON

LOGIC
MONITOR

GALLAGHER

A practical point of view

Stephanie’s perspective has been shaped by years of working inside organizations where customer and user experience depended on more than good ideas.

Progress required clear ownership. Useful evidence. Strong cross-functional relationships. Leadership judgment. And operating systems capable of turning intent into action.

That experience continues to shape her work today.

Whether advising an organization or coaching an individual leader, the goal is the same: create enough clarity to make better decisions in situations where the answer is not immediately obvious.

Certified Wellcoach
ICF Professional Coaches Logo

Let's get in touch

Send me an email and I'll get back to you, as soon as possible.

Send Message

About us

Thrive Department is an independent advisory practice founded by Stephanie Sansoucie, a senior UX and customer experience leader with more than 20 years of experience across strategy, research, organizational transformation, and enterprise leadership.

The practice helps organizations and senior leaders address the operating challenges that shape strong experience work: how teams are structured, how research informs decisions, how cross-functional partners work together, and how experience capabilities evolve as organizations grow and change.

Stephanie’s experience spans complex enterprise environments, transformation initiatives, distributed teams, and cross-functional leadership across technology, healthcare, financial services, education, and consumer businesses.

Thrive Department also maintains a selective coaching practice for experienced professionals and leaders navigating transition, expanded responsibility, and consequential career or leadership decisions. The work is client-led and informed by formal training in coaching psychology and behavior change.

Find us here

  • Stephanie Sansoucie
  • Thrive Department
  • 1314 S 1st St #119, Milwaukee, WI 53204
  • 262-373-8927
  • stephanie@thrivedept.com
  • www.thrivedept.com

Let’s Connect

Ready to learn more? Let’s talk through your needs and how we can best address them.

Book A Call

© 2026 · Thrive Department, LLC.

  • Home
  • FAQ
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • Book A Free Call