Bobby Burdette

I grew up in Beckley, West Virginia, went to WVU, and have been making things for a living ever since. These days I live in Carnegie, outside Pittsburgh, and lead the Creative Innovation Studio at Thermo Fisher Scientific, an in-house creative organization with people in Pittsburgh, India, and Europe. Before that I spent time at Marc USA, DICK’S Sporting Goods, PNC, and Michael Baker International, and picked up a master’s in UX design from Kent State along the way.

My job is mostly about making good creative work happen reliably, at scale, for a company that doesn’t always think of creative as a business function. I care about craft first. I also care about building teams that people want to stay on, and about making the Studio the partner a business group calls early, not the one that gets handed a brief at the last minute.

AI is a big part of that right now, and I’m practical about it. Use it to sharpen the brief, not to pre-design the answer. The tools are fast and getting better, but taste, judgment, and a clear point of view still come from people, and I’d like to keep it that way.

Outside work, I’m a Deadhead. I saw the band with Jerry in the early ’90s, and I recently built a site called First Last Best that tracks the first, last, and best versions of their top songs. I play left-handed golf, which means I spend a lot of time admiring courses I’m not scoring well on. And I’m happiest with a good bourbon and a cigar once the work is done.