Our Story

Styleized group shot of founders, Ana Monroe, Aaron Meyers, Felecia Edwards, and Scott Kellum

 

Ishmael Interactive WhoIs

Ishmael Interactive is a human-centered design firm specializing in digital governance. We work with organizations to replace years of digital clutter with a sustainable, cross-functional governance system that compounds internal efficiencies and cost avoidance opportunities.

The result is organizations released from the drag of digital disorganization, seeing substantial productivity gains, and realizing meaningful, annually compounding cost avoidance. With the time, money, and cognitive overheard tapped by this work, the organization can then re-center on brand legacy, mission, and customer. 

We implement this system with organizations in 12 weeks with executive support, a timeline we can adhere to because we built our methodology in one of the largest, most dysfunctional organizations in the world: the U.S. federal government. 

Company background 

Ishmael Interactive is an imprint of the Service Design and Enterprise Digital Experience team in the General Services Administration. The team was fired during the DOGE era in late 2025 and launched as a company in January 2026 to continue our legacy of service and our passion for building a human-centered technology future. 

The methodology Ishmael Interactive built and tested in the federal service resulted in a 36% decrease in digital footprint for the General Services Administration, an organization of 12,000, which translates to $11 million in annually compounding cost avoidance for the agency—without drama, reorgs, or rebrands. Our foundational human-centered design methodology also contributed to a 35% increase in Trust Scores at the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

The core team

Ana Monroe serves as the Chief Executive of Ishmael Interactive. She was a founding member of the General Services Administration’s AI Safety team, where she researched and produced the first principles-based, platform-agnostic AI training in the federal government and red-teamed the agency RAG model, focusing on the development of ethical guardrails on the AI product. She graduated with honors from Art Center College of Design (MFA-STEM) and Columbia College, Columbia University (BA). 

Aaron Meyers is Ishmael Interactive’s Chief Data Officer. He brings decades of experience in data analysis and strategy to the team, having built his career in the Environmental Protection Agency and the General Services Administration. He is a Peace Corps alum who served international & US interests in Honduras. 

Scott Kellum is the company’s Chief Design Officer. He is an internationally recognized authority on technology & design for the web, holding multiple patents in digital technologies. While at Vox Media, he played a key role in launching SB Nation while leading conferences focusing on the emergence of SaaS tools in the technology ecosystem. He is an alum of Parsons the New School in New York City.