Then we realized life was better with gravity, so we shifted our mission from actual space to digital space. And we’ve never looked back.
Then we realized life was better with gravity, so we shifted our mission from actual space to digital space. And we’ve never looked back.
Over the past few decades of growth and transformation, Neil has helped define the term “digital agility.” During that time, Propane has become a trusted partner, leading emerging brands in the automotive, fashion, financial, hospitality, health-care, and tech industries. And we’ve earned a reputation for solving difficult communication challenges in today’s modern landscape.
Neil has helped globally recognized clients that include Audi, Hitachi, Intel, Kaiser Permanente, and Sutter Health. Having worked for companies of all sizes, Neil possesses a deep strategic vision for brands that extends well beyond the digital space. His greater focus is human behavior and, as a result, user experience, content strategy, and platform architecture.
When he’s not working, Neil travels the world with his pug, his daughter, and his life and business partner Lilu.
This money man is responsible for managing agency finances, including fiscal reporting and long-range business planning. He also brings a supportive leadership that instills loyalty and comfort in the rest of us. Tom is also responsible for overseeing operational innovations that give Propane a competitive advantage, allowing us to practice what we preach to our clients.
Before joining Propane in 2012, Tom gained deep experience in retail, eCommerce, technology, and other industries. His impressive list of companies and clients includes Vinfolio, Gap, Sega, and Amoco.
Outside the office, Tom enjoys traveling, family, friends, good food, and good wine. His creative pursuits include writing, painting, cooking, and gardening.
As our Director of Digital Resources, Lilu handles our digital resourcing and agency partnerships. If that weren’t enough, she’s also the driving force behind the agency’s dedicated product-design group.
Before helping found Propane, Lilu was the design director at allbusiness.com, where she oversaw brand identity and site design for major companies including American Express and First Union. Prior to that, Lilu worked as a freelance designer, servicing brands that included Bank of America, Dun & Bradstreet, and Sempra Energy.
When she’s not fueling Propane’s creative tank, Lilu enjoys reading, cooking, and traveling with her daughter.
Rebecca’s wide umbrella of expertise includes scheduling, cost efficiencies, technical strategy, process design, resource allocation, team facilitation, client management, and documentation. She has nearly two decades of experience managing websites, applications, and interactive advertising.
Before Propane, Rebecca was an executive producer at Doremus, a senior producer at McCann, and a project manager for several web design firms. Rebecca has led design, development, and deployment teams for clients including Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Logitech, Visa, and Intel.
Rebecca is a San Francisco native who still lives in the city. And she’s not a project manager you want to mess with, because she practices martial arts in her spare time.
Michael Camara
For over 15 years, Michael has been crafting innovative brand experiences, both online and off. Prior to Propane, Michael was a creative director at Razorfish, where he led and inspired teams to solve complex multimedia problems. Michael’s unique approach to design thinking is perfect for brands designing for scale. And that approach helps bring our platform game to the next level.
Throughout his career, Michael has used his talents to solve digital challenges for clients including Intel, T-Mobile, Choice Hotels, and Visa.
Outside work, he enjoys being outdoors with his wife, daughter, and chocolate lab Charlie. Michael’s also passionate about restoring vintage bicycles, motorcycles, and VW buses.
Kim-Minh Huberwald-Leung
Kim-Minh excels at collecting insights and crafting cohesive brand experiences across multiple touchpoints that include products, platforms, and campaigns. She specializes in orchestrating behavioral changes and identifying human-centered solutions that live at the intersection of culture, technology, message, and design.
Before Propane, Kim-Minh was in the entertainment industry, working in television and film. After launching her own production company, she expanded into brand consulting, and began doing design and strategy work. Kim-Minh has worked both in-house and in-agency with notable clients that include Coca-Cola, Sony PlayStation, Carnival Cruises, and Walmart.
Kim-Minh lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter. She has a serious travel addiction, a growing sneaker collection, and an oft-indulged board game habit.
Alec uses experience-driven, human-centered design to lead the UX team here at Propane. He’s usually focused on work things like user emotion, architect intention, and bottom-line value and trying to figure out how to incorporate those into a brand’s digital ecosystem.
For 15+ years Alec has helped agencies, start-ups, and other companies research, design, and develop digital experiences that impact users’ lives. He has the unique combination of direction and contribution skills that provides empathy and experience for every job we tackle.
When he’s not crushing his UX duties at work, he’s probably annoying his wife with his nonstop curiosity—or playing the banjo.
Kevin Lee
Having a technology director is a rare luxury. And with Kevin we don’t merely have one; we have an awesome one. With 15+ years of experience, Kevin’s able to make smart technical recommendations for our clients. Those include content management solutions, ecommerce platforms, hybrid mobile apps, and enterprise solutions for digital transformation. All systems are designed with scalable architecture to allow for growth.
In his previous life Kevin mentored more than 50 engineers for high-profile clients including Yahoo, Getty Images, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Kevin is an experienced architect with scalable technology stacks utilizing React/ReactNative, BackboneJS, NodeJS, MongoDB/MySQL, and AWS cloud infrastructure. He has built dynamic reporting and dashboards to track user acquisition and measure KPIs, and he led a 10-week bootcamp for beginners to learn full-stack web development in HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript, Python/Django and MySQL.
When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys mingling with his ballet and musical theatre crew and letting his two pugs watch him drink wine.
Joe Meanor
Joe is one of the coolest people you’ll meet. His level-headed, pragmatic nature is perfect for the complex chaos of digital challenges. Joe has years of experience as a team lead and team builder for creative companies and clients. His wide-ranging talents include strategizing, designing, and producing business-building products, experiences, and communications.
With a well-rounded business background, Joe has worked in financial services, retail, wireless, consumer electronics, health care, travel, and consumer packaged goods.
At home, Joe’s mastered his Ninja Turtle moves and perfected his Disney Princess tea party manners. His two young kids might have something to do with that.
Tara
Whether it’s by hanging with us or greeting new clients, Tara consistently uplifts our agency spirit. After being promoted from intern to full-time employee, she spends her days being petted and sitting in the laps of employees.
After four successful years, Tara was promoted to Agency Pooch. In that role she’s helped organize partnerships with food and snack vendors, and goes on walks with employees. Tara is a constant reminder that life is precious and it’s a privilege to do what we do for a living.
When she’s not at work, Tara’s probably eating, sleeping, or barking at invisible animals. Visit her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tara.chaudhari
Our crafty team brainstorms solutions for design, strategic approach and scope. Staying cool-minded maintains active partnership between our talented team and our driven clients. As creators, we share passion for executing projects that make real business impacts for our clients.
2003
We were three people with a dream of building digital experiences, but not just run-of-the-mill stuff. We wanted to craft experiences that captivated audiences and drove business value all at once. In our first year, we cut our teeth building websites and creating brand identities for tech startups. Our OG clients had limited budgets, but they believed in us, and nearly three quarters of them sold, years later, for millions of dollars.
2004
In 2004, Flash and rich Internet applications dominated the digital landscape. Websites were known for rich motion and animation. At Propane, we took on huge conference signage projects. And we built interactive demos using green screens and 3D animation. Between web, video, and outdoor we helped clients tell stories across mediums while keeping digital at the core.
2005
To help marketers squeeze more from digital, we turned to building custom content management systems. Using Ruby on Rails, we could turn websites into marketing and operation hubs. Shortly thereafter, we incorporated Drupal and Wordpress. Then we shifted our CMS skills towards SaaS-based custom applications. We’ve never been afraid to adapt. It’s always been about what’s best for us—and our clients.
2006
In 2006 we started building application prototypes for new business concepts. We did major work for nonprofits, including the Academy of Friends. During that time we also diversified our client industries. We moved outside of tech and landed major projects for Men’s Warehouse, Intuit, 7 for all Mankind, and Sega Mobile.
2007
After diversifying into retail, gaming, and financial, our relationships evolved, and we evolved, too. We began adding value to our clients by articulating the benefits of “Pull” vs. “Push.” The former favored long-term retention over short-term results. And with that, we realized we had the power to change how clients viewed marketing challenges. We began building custom marketing applications that offered intrinsic value to a brand’s audience.
2008
Propane was the first digital agency to prototype concept cars using web technologies. This included the navigation units for Volkswagen and Audi A4s. By doing that, we shortened a four-year concept cycle to only 12 months. And we (literally) brought Google Earth, Pandora, and YouTube onto the navigation screen for the first time.
2009
Sensing an industry slowdown, we created an agency incubator called Propane Labs. At the time, Propane Labs helped several start-ups on their paths to success, so we explored how this agency incubator model could work, which favored equity over capital. The experiment provided a more holistic view of digital. We began building entire platforms, similarly complex to early-stage eBay and Alibaba. But we weren’t just building applications; we were building workflows that impacted every facet of a company.
2010
During an exciting period of growth, Propane landed a host of new, high-profile clients including Intel, Kaiser Permanente, and Hitachi. During that time we basically put all our time and energy into doing great things for those clients, producing work at a higher rate than ever.
2011
In 2011 we reshaped our internal talent and processes. We installed a more formal internship program, created our PMOs process, and staffed our account team.
2012
During that time we built SaaS-based marketing tools that integrated together as a whole. The goal was to build connected marketing systems that blurred the line between marketing and value for customers. Marketing automation, along with data exchange between companies and applications, was hot, and we were in the thick of it, working our magic to improve efficacy and ROI for marketing engines.
2013
In 2013 we solved a major challenge for Kaiser Permanente. With the mandated health-care deadline fast approaching, we helped KP deliver its Affordable Care Act project just in time. Between that massive overhaul and a new application for Covidien, we gained the confidence to call ourselves one of the few tech-enabled digital agencies in San Francisco.
2014
We moved on to design and develop responsive mobile sites for Ocean Mist, Grocery Outlet, and Blurb. Then we launched multiple eCommerce sites for major CPG brands in Magento. We also finished a massive UX/UI overhaul for Sutter Health, where we consolidated its entire website ecosystem into one main site. At the end of the year, more than 50 projects went out the door.
2015
2015 was the year of major platform and product designs. That was the year we successfully launched the Sutter Health linkAges Community. The dynamic platform combined the features of Facebook, Craigslist, NextDoor, and TaskRabbit. Overall, we committed ourselves to performance-based services, with analytics and optimization built into every project.
2016
Equinix, a global data warehouse leader, selected Propane to build one of the coolest applications out there. Complete with 3D graphics and game-like interfaces, we redefined a once-dry diagram flow into a rich and immersive experience. We also teamed with Telltale Games to launch a new online presence. And we rounded out the year showing off our full-service chops for Absorb, crafting projects for brand, digital, and tradeshows.
2017
In 2017 we made another strong push toward improving talent. We built a rock-star team capable of stronger solutions across the board, including campaigns, websites, and applications. On the client front, we had an interesting mix that included an IoT company in CPG, telematics in automotive, a new product launch in skincare, and a major health-care provider in Arizona. And we finally settled into our new space where we felt right at home.
2018
After 15 years we took a deep look at ourselves, reassessed our values, and launched this website to celebrate our newfound identity. In short, we’ve embraced who we truly are: an experienced agency that champions platform thinking. We were also proud to land a new client, the esteemed San Francisco Symphony. And we’re looking forward to helping it solve its brand and experience challenges. In addition, we’re also moving on a new project with Banner Health, helping it reimagine its overall content strategy and digital experience.