Sam’s Club Clubhouse
Designing an enterprise experience hub that enabled human-centered decision-making at scale
Sam’s Club was navigating complex transformation across product, technology, and operations. Teams were moving quickly, but lacked a shared framework for problem-solving, experimentation, and experience quality.
The opportunity was not to produce more design work. It was to change how decisions were made.
IMPACT AT A GLANCE
Built Sam’s Club’s first design and innovation studio
Enabled 1,000+ associates to apply human-centered decision-making
Generated 500+ business ideas through large-scale ideation
Integrated GenAI into enterprise creativity workflows
The Challenge
Teams across the organization were solving problems in isolation.
Research was underutilized
Solutions were often defined before problems were clear
Creativity was seen as a phase rather than a capability
The challenge was not adoption. It was confidence and clarity at scale.
My Role
I led the launch of Sam’s Club’s first design and innovation studio, Clubhouse.
I was responsible for shaping and enabling:
The operating model for how Clubhouse worked across teams
The conditions and frameworks that supported experience-led decision making
Learning and enablement systems that helped teams apply design thinking in daily work
My role sat at the intersection of UX, facilitation, and organizational change, partnering closely with experience strategy, product, engineering, business leaders, and executive sponsors.
The Approach
Building Human-Centered Capability
I designed Clubhouse as an experience system, not a physical space.
It combined:
Structured learning
Applied practice
Real business challenges
The goal was to help teams move from ambiguity to action using shared language and tools.
Design Thinking Enablement
I created immersive learning programs that emphasized:
Listening before solving
Framing the right problems
Rapid experimentation over perfection
These sessions helped teams connect empathy directly to business outcomes.
“These sessions gave us practical tools to cut through assumptions and focus on solving the right problems.”
Disability Inclusion Lab used to pressure-test experience decisions with disabled users
IMPACT
Established a shared decision language across product, technology, and business teams
Enabled teams to move from abstract debate to experience-led action
Improved cross-functional alignment by grounding decisions in customer insight
Enterprise Collaboration in Practice
What I led
Facilitated cross-functional collaboration across product, technology, operations, and business teams
Designed sessions that shifted teams from positional debate to shared problem ownership
Created conditions for progress on initiatives stalled by misalignment or competing priorities
The work shifted teams from debating opinions to making shared experience-led decisions across roadmap priorities, service design, and cross-functional ownership.
How collaboration worked in practice
Framed challenges around customer experience rather than team ownership
Used facilitation techniques to surface assumptions and align on evidence
Helped teams explore options safely before committing resources
Built trust across disciplines by making decisions visible and shared
“The real value of the Clubhouse is how it takes the ‘me’ out of the conversation. Jen’s facilitation helped our team work collaboratively on the problem, not the people, leading to more productive discussions and breakthroughs where previous efforts had stalled.”
Applying Creativity Through Playgrounds
Training alone was not enough. Teams needed space to practice.
I introduced Playground Sessions, hands-on workshops where associates applied new skills to real Sam’s Club challenges.
Each session emphasized:
Collaboration across roles
Experimentation over polish
Making ideas tangible quickly
This helped teams build momentum and confidence, not just concepts.
GenAI Genius Lab
As generative AI emerged, I introduced the GenAI Genius Lab to explore its role as a creative partner.
These sessions helped teams:
Brainstorm more broadly
Visualize ideas faster
Prototype concepts in real time
“In one session, I went from playful ideas to prototyping a full VR retail experience.”
IMPACT
Accelerated ideation and prototyping by introducing GenAI as a creative partner
Helped teams explore complex ideas faster without increasing delivery risk
Expanded confidence in using emerging tools to support real business decisions
Concept Garden
To scale ideation beyond individual teams, I designed Concept Garden, a large-scale ideation format that invited associates across the organization to contribute ideas.
IMPACT
Enabled large-scale contribution without sacrificing focus or quality
Surface-tested ideas through collaborative exploration before investment
Increased confidence in early-stage concepts across the organization
Outcomes
Clubhouse became a trusted space executives relied on to pressure-test strategy before committing resources:
A shared language of experience and experimentation took hold
Teams became more confident navigating ambiguity
Creativity moved from an event to an organizational capability
This work enabled better collaboration across product, technology, and business teams, while reinforcing human-centered decision-making at enterprise scale.