Chicago, IllinoisDigital leader · Product thinker · Photographer

Jonathan
Sullivan.

A personal site about the work I do, the ideas I’m exploring, and the things I care about.

Jonathan Sullivan

01 / Who I am

I’m a digital leader with a maker’s point of view.

For more than two decades, I’ve worked where strategy, experience, technology, and creativity meet. I enjoy making complicated things clearer—whether that means shaping a digital platform, helping a team find its direction, or turning an emerging idea into something useful.

I’m naturally curious and comfortably multidisciplinary. My career has moved through design, marketing, ecommerce, product, transformation, and AI, but the thread has stayed the same: understand people, ask better questions, and build thoughtfully.

02 / What I do

How I lead digital.

My role is usually to connect the pieces: customer needs, business ambition, creative thinking, technology, and the people responsible for making it real.

01

Set the direction

Turn business goals and customer insight into a clear digital strategy—deciding what matters, where to invest, and what to do next.

02

Build connected experiences

Bring product, marketing, commerce, and technology together around experiences that work for customers and deliver business value.

03

Turn strategy into progress

Connect priorities, platforms, and ways of working so teams can move from plans to delivery, learn through experimentation, and scale what works.

04

Lead teams through change

Create shared purpose across functions, develop people, and build the trust and accountability needed to move complex work forward.

05

Shape what comes next with AI

Translate AI and agentic commerce into practical choices for brands—how to adapt as people and AI agents discover, evaluate, and buy.

See how this comes to life

03 / Selected work

A few things I’ve helped build.

These are selected stories from a longer career—work that combined strategy, teams, systems, and persistence to create something meaningful.

01100+Websites

Kaplan digital ecosystem

Enterprise strategy, architecture, CMS, design system, and product ownership for a multi-year transformation.

Read the story →
02$500M+Ecommerce Revenue

Ecommerce growth

Digital product, experience, experimentation, and commerce strategy across a major education portfolio.

Read the story →
03AI-nativeProduct Development

From portfolio to product

How I used agentic development to build this production website, its publishing tools, connected APIs, and human-reviewed AI workflows.

Read the story →
Explore selected work →

04 / Latest from the blog

What I’m seeing. What it means.

Observations on AI, marketing, products, and customer experience, informed by the work of leading teams and putting digital strategy into practice.

Dark engraved illustration of many product signals converging through a single AI-mediated threshold into a commerce system

AI · AI Search · Brand Strategy · SEO · Digital Strategy

When AI Becomes the Front Door to Your Brand

As AI turns search results into answers, brands must become understandable, trustworthy, and worth choosing before a customer ever visits.

Read →
Black-and-white engraved cutaway of a human hand and AI signal meeting above a vast hidden foundation supporting a single parcel

AI · Agentic Commerce · Product Strategy · Customer Trust · Digital Experience

Trust Is Becoming Product Infrastructure

AI turns trust from a brand message into product infrastructure built through accurate data, clear permissions, transparency, and human control.

Read →
Black-and-white engraved illustration of a human customer and an AI agent approaching the same brand commerce system through different paths

AI · Agentic Commerce · Brand Strategy · Customer Experience · Product Strategy

Every Brand Is About to Have Two Customers

Brands increasingly serve two customers: people and the AI agents acting for them. Each needs a different experience built on the same promise.

Read →
Explore the blog →

05 / A note from a colleague

Jonathan is a creative, data-driven, and collaborative leader. His ability to quickly explain anything—to any audience—regardless of how technical is a rarity in this business.

Chad BallewCreative Director · Kaplan

06 / What I love

Looking closely.

Outside the workday, I’m a proud beagle dad, photographer, and frequent traveler. Photography gives me another way to notice people, places, architecture, and the small details that are easy to pass by.

Visit my photography site
Oliver the beagle, photographed by Jonathan Sullivan
Oliver · Photographed by JonathanExplore Oliver

07 / Keep in touch

Thanks for stopping by.

If something here sparked a thought, you can find me on LinkedIn or send a note.

Find me on LinkedIn ↗Send a note →