Tarani Duncan transforms complex technology into simple, everyday experiences. She is a strategist who thrives at the intersection of design, engineering, and product.

I'm Tarani.

I'm a first-generation college graduate who hails from a coal mining family in east Tennessee. My background shapes how I approach technology: I see progressive ideas through a pragmatic lens, leveraging the best thinking—old and new—to build simple solutions for how people actually live.

These days, I'm Strategic Operations Lead for Design at IBM, where I guide strategy for the watsonx.data team and build partnerships in accelerated computing. I work at the intersection of design, engineering, and product. My path here started as a researcher at the University of New Orleans, where I earned my bachelor's in geospatial technology. From there, I spent three years at micromobility firm Motivate (acquired by Lyft), directed operations intelligence at Uber, served as product manager of navigation at Mapbox, and spent three years as product manager and director of product at Compound Eye, a company teaching machines to see. I founded Astral Cowboy, a product studio for early-stage teams working on climate hardware, data infrastructure, and marketplaces, before going on to teach systems theory at the Maryland Institute College of Art and lecture at Harvard Business School.

Since leaving the Smokies, I've lived in New Orleans, New York City, Berkeley, Washington, D.C, and Portland, Oregon, where I currently live with my fiancée, Elle, and our dog, Morty. I spend my time learning woodworking, playing guitar, drinking wine, building small farm structures, and cultivating a meditation practice — there's something blooming in our garden every day.