Scott Sanchez is an Innovation Leader, with extensive experience in innovation, product management and design, with a history of making simple, yet impactful products and experiences that delight users. Scott recently became the Chief Innovation Officer for Nationwide, to drive innovation across the company. He’s responsible for leading transformational innovation, enterprise innovation (in partnership with businesses and teams), as well as venture capital and open innovation for the company. Scott also is responsible for making innovation a part of everyone’s job, bringing both innovative mindsets and behaviors into the culture of the company. Scott brings a user-centered approach to innovation (also known as “design thinking”) to create products, services, experiences, and businesses that delight people in solving their needs in ways they can’t imagine. Prior to Nationwide, Scott was Vice President, Innovation and User Experience, at First Data, a global leader in commerce-enabling technology solutions serving more than six million business locations and 4,000 financial institutions in 118 countries around the world. He joined First Data in early 2011 to enable innovation throughout First Data across products, clients, and employees. He founded and ran the Innovation Lab, a cross functional team of product managers, designers, researchers, technologists, and client innovation leaders, whose goal is to disrupt the future of commerce in collaboration with clients and partners. Scott is also passionate about building innovators in all walks of life. He is on the faculty of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (the d.school), a hub for innovators at Stanford, where students learn “design thinking” to tackle the world’s messiest problems together. He also serves as an adjunct faculty member at Emory University, teaching innovation to students, executives, and faculty, as design thinking and an empathy-driven mindset become key parts of the University. In addition to teaching, as a founder of Innovators Atlanta, he spends time with companies, schools, organizations, and individuals around the Southeast and beyond nurturing and unleashing innovators of all ages. Before joining First Data, Scott spent two years at Visa running Commercial Marketing and driving innovation strategy. Before Visa, he spent 8 years at Intuit (makers of Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax) in product management and the innovation lab. Scott grew up in Atlanta, GA and has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University.