Our mission is to empower companies to innovate holistically by keeping humans at the center of everything they do to grow responsibly and sustainably.

Our values drive us every day to create, collaborate and innovate with each other and our clients.

We are Payal Vaidya and Priya Gopal, co-founders and managing partners of

The Thinking Hats. We come from a world of design, advertising, marketing communications, and leadership coaching, having worked with global brands and leaders in industries ranging from health and wellness, beauty, media, CPG, finance, technology, and not-for-profits. 

As we discussed growth and innovation challenges faced by companies today, we realized a holistic approach that includes a strong brand, customer-centricity, and employee investment was essential. Combined with the proven principles of design thinking used by companies such as Google, Apple, Airbnb, Amazon, PepsiCo, Nike and Netflix, innovative approaches can easily be customized for companies of any size across different industries.

Using our collective knowledge and experience in design thinking, organizational development, communication, behavioral sciences, and marketing, we conceived The Thinking Hats to help companies offer better services and products, design powerful customer experiences, and engage employees by aligning them with a strong sense of purpose.

Payal is the chair of the Service Design Speaker Series for The International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP).

Priya serves on the Leadership Team of the NYC FinTech Women, a community to support, empower, and sponsor women in their professional advancement in FinTech. 

We are proud to be a women-owned business and serve ALL with openness, curiosity and a spirit of learning and partnership.

Experience