Commn Oddities
About

About Maya Madhusoodan

With 25 years of experience spanning media, advertising, consumer research, cultural strategy, and futures thinking, I bring a rare cross-domain fluency to strategic challenges. I've built and scaled three insight consultancies across Asia-Pacific, working with organizations from P&G to Google, Singapore government ministries to climate-focused startups.

My specialty is process mastery — knowing which tools to deploy for what problems, interrogating briefs to find where the real issue lies, and creating actionable roadmaps grounded in how cultures actually evolve. I've pioneered cultural semiotics and speculative futures practices in APAC, now teaching these disciplines at SUTD while advising organizations on regenerative innovation strategies.

Maya Madhusoodan
Experience

25 years across FMCG, tech, finance, luxury, healthcare, and public sector.

Geography

Based in Singapore, specializing in Asia-Pacific markets and cultural dynamics.

Academia

Adjunct Faculty at SUTD; guest lecturer at NUS.

Network

Collaborative practice with regional specialists in design, ethnography, and systems thinking.

Teaching

Adjunct Faculty at Singapore University of Technology & Design, where I co-teach cultural research and futures for the Master's in Technical Design and Executive cohorts. I also guest lecture at universities like NUS on futures work. I enjoy bringing the skills of 'problem-seeking' and critical thinking into the classroom, so budding designers can infuse these skills into their real-world practice.

Giving back

I contribute pro bono strategy and foresight work to organisations working on climate and systems change, including AlterCOP and WWF.

Let's talk.

Whether you have a design or research brief that needs cultural depth, an innovation pipeline that needs future signal, a team that wants to build cultural and futures capability, or a boutique consultancy ready to grow — I'd love to hear from you.

Get in touch →