Sara Pontoppidan

Sara is the Senior Design Lead at Clandestine Design Group, and Australia By Design’s resident Viking.

She is a T-shaped creative problem solver. Her depth is in traditional industrial design; with breadth in design strategy, innovation modelling and product management. Drawing from a passion for future tech, cognitive psychology and emotional design she strives to balance user, market and business needs to turn ideas into purposeful products and joyful experiences.

Born and raised in Norway, she came to Australia to study design at QCA Griffith University and fell in love with the industry. Over the last decade, she has worked for Tier-1 industrial design consultancies to push the bounds of innovation. During this time she has worked on hundreds of projects, delivering many successful products to market.

Eight of these have been recognised by the Good Design Awards at the highest order; with notable mention of Rapid Aim Biosecurity Management System (2019 Best in Class, Commercial & Industrial category), Field Orthopaedics Surgical kit (Good Design Gold Award, Medical and Scientific category) and Audeara A-01 Headphones (2018 Good Design Award, Consumer Electronics).

Contributions to the Clandestine Design Team were also rewarded in 2018 when her team was recognised as Design Team of the Year by the Design Institute of Australia.

Outside of the studio, Sara is a marine rescue volunteer and avid mentor within the youth and design community; taking great pride in supporting entrepreneurship and female representation in industrial design and STEAM.