AUDREY MAO

Lead strategic design programs for BMW’s in-house and third-party initiatives, driving alignment between creative vision, business objectives, and operational execution.

Key Contributions:

• End-to-End Program Leadership: Oversee multidisciplinary design programs (in-house and external partners), ensuring deliverables meet BMW’s strategic, aesthetic, and technical standards.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Map program ecosystems across Automotive Design, Creative Consulting, and Interaction Design teams to optimize resource sharing, mitigate risks, and accelerate innovation.
• Talent & Workflow Optimization: Identify project-specific competencies and assemble specialized teams to enhance efficiency, quality, and creative problem-solving.
• Stakeholder Management: Act as primary liaison between senior leadership, clients, and cross-regional teams, maintaining transparency and aligning priorities through structured communication.
• Performance-Driven Execution: Develop program roadmaps, allocate budgets and personnel, and track KPIs to ensure on-time delivery while fostering continuous process improvement.

Impact: Streamlines complex design initiatives by bridging creative and operational gaps, ensuring scalable and future-ready solutions for BMW’s global and regional markets.

• Led design-to-production convergence for BMW China’s localized vehicle programs, ensuring Munich’s design intent was achieved while meeting regional engineering and manufacturing requirements.
• Key Contributions:
• End-to-End Project Leadership: Directed all China-market production car projects (exterior/interior), aligning Munich’s design vision with local engineering execution and BBA (BMW Brilliance Automotive) production constraints.
• Technical Problem-Solving: Spearheaded cross-functional collaboration to resolve design feasibility challenges, ensuring compliance with technical requirements without compromising aesthetic goals.
• Process Development: Established China-specific design production workflows, streamlining coordination between Munich R&D, Shanghai design teams, and BBA manufacturing lines.
• Quality & Milestone Assurance: Guaranteed on-time delivery of design milestones (e.g., visual appearance targets) through rigorous virtual/physical cubing evaluations and prototyping.
• Resource Optimization: Managed budgets, timelines, and stakeholder priorities to balance creative innovation with technical and production feasibility.
• Impact: Enhanced design execution efficiency for China-market vehicles, reducing development friction between global and local teams while maintaining BMW’s premium brand standards.

• Drove architecture performance excellence for PSA’s China-market vehicles, bridging customer-centric design with technical execution across 5+ major projects.
• Key Contributions:
• Strategic Technical Leadership:
• Established China-specific performance targets for roominess, visibility, and ergonomics through comprehensive benchmarking, aligning design with local customer needs
• Developed technical proposals that influenced early architecture decisions, reducing late-stage modifications by 30%
• Innovative Validation Processes:
• Implemented hybrid digital/physical validation approach combining numerical simulations with physical mockups
• Conducted Asia’s largest ergonomic study (80+ participants) to generate data-driven insights, accelerating decision-making by 1 month
• Pioneered VR validation techniques that reduced prototyping costs by €12K per project
• Cross-Functional Integration:
• Served as key liaison between French engineering teams and Chinese JVs (DPCA/CAPSA), ensuring technical alignment while accommodating local requirements
• Established new architecture evaluation framework adopted as PSA’s China market standard
• Coordinated 15+ supplier partners to validate feasibility of design proposals
• Performance Optimization:
• Led architecture impact assessments for 20+ trim modifications, balancing styling and functional requirements
• Developed predictive models to evaluate packaging compromises early in development cycle
• Implemented new test protocols that improved evaluation efficiency by 25%
• Skills Highlight: Ergonomics Optimization | Architecture Benchmarking | Virtual Validation | Cross-Cultural Technical Coordination | Cost-Efficient Prototyping | Joint Venture Collaboration

• Developed and validated new chassis testing solutions with suppliers.
• Optimized test-bench performance and upgrade plans, balancing budget/deadline constraints while introducing efficient methods.

• Monitored NVH tests (e.g., wind tunnel), analyzed data, and identified software bugs in post-processing tools.
• Collaborated with test teams and software engineers to upgrade NVH post-processing software.

• Supported chassis test QCDP analyses (Quality, Cost, Delay, Partners) for new proposals.
• Streamlined chassis test management processes, improving R&D efficiency and reducing costs.