Talke Hoppmann-Walton

I help organisations build the design capability they actually need — not the one they think they want.I lead Experience Design at EPI (European Payments Initiative), shaping how 50 million Europeans pay with Wero. That means building a cross-disciplinary team — product design, content, research, ops, and localisation — across a remote-first, multi-country organisation, while laying the operational and quality foundations for market rollout across Europe.Before EPI, I ran UX, My Dear, a strategic design and facilitation consultancy working with leadership teams navigating product model transitions — helping organisations move from inside-out to outside-in, establish design governance, and build the conditions for sustained product excellence. One engagement at CDP involved leading globally distributed teams across five product groups to deliver data products for supply chain reporting, while establishing C-level alignment on product vision.Prior to that, eleven years at PayPal — growing from EMEA product design roles across Berlin, Paris, and London, to Senior Manager for International Credit UX, to Global Design Operations Lead. The work I’m proudest of: building PayPal’s European credit suite — revolving credit in the UK, installments across Germany, France, Italy, Spain — and integrating credit into Apple Checkout. Later, as Global Lead Design Operations, I led the company’s migration to Figma and integrated various startup teams into the global organisation, while preserving lean innovation practices.What ties it together is systems thinking applied to people, process, and product at once. My superpower is helping teams solve the right problem — through facilitation, structured discovery, and cross-functional alignment — before anyone writes a line of code or ships a pixel.I hold a PhD in Communication Science from Hamburg University, studied as a Fulbright Scholar at Temple University, and have published in peer-reviewed journals and Smashing Magazine. I’m a certified LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator and AI for Business graduate — and I use both in practice.Outside work, I’m a founding member and mentor at leadHER, invested in the next generation of design leaders.