By Julienne Raboca
Ten years after arriving in the UK, Lady San Pedro shares how her upbringing in Manila prepared her to create innovations that resonate across cultural divides in London’s competitive design industry.
“Growing up in Manila exposed me to a broad spectrum of low-income and high-income communities,” she says. “Exposure to this economic reality helped shape my approach to design by understanding the people I design for, and being attuned to their varied needs, aspirations, lifestyles, and motivations.”
San Pedro is the Director of Innovation for Mrs Wordsmith, an educational technology company focused on empowering young people with literacy skills. Her work involves developing products, programmes and partnerships that foster meaningful engagement across the UK, US, and beyond, including adapting award-winning illustrated books for non-native English speakers in multiple languages.
Finding Freedom in London’s creative scene
When Lady San Pedro relocated to London in 2015, accompanied by her golden retriever and Persian cat after a stint in Barcelona, she entered a competitive design landscape where her unique Filipino perspective would prove to be both a challenge and her greatest asset.
“I had no network when I first moved,” she recalls. “It was jarring to be confronted by the fact that people here were unfamiliar with my provenance and credentials.”
But what might have intimidated others became an unexpected advantage. Free from preconceptions, San Pedro found her work evaluated on its merits rather than connections. “That same thing made it reassuring when people took a genuine interest in my achievements,” she says.
London’s design industry, she quickly realised, valued holistic creative identities. “I felt that the decision-makers I attracted really paid attention to my portfolio, profile, social presence and blog at the time,” she says. This perspective led her to refine her work with greater intentionality, ultimately shaping a career marked by nuance, strategy and vision.
San Pedro’s career spans global creative agencies including McCann, TBWA and Leo Burnett. These experiences, she says, “developed my acumen for strategy, which is essential for leaders in design and innovation. Any project, product, or programme needs a purpose and a plan!”
London’s dual emphasis on commercial viability and creativity provided a promising canvas. “I like to advocate for work that is both beautiful and meaningful,” San Pedro says. “London is a great city for this. With so many simultaneously cool, mission-driven startups and studios, I feel lucky being in a space that values commercial impact as much as creative achievement.”
Her ability to balance both artistic and strategic objectives has brought her notable success. Her work in children’s literacy, for example, has earned widespread recognition. Her designs for Mrs Wordsmith’s Word Tag for Schools won Children’s Home Learning Product of the Year at the Digital Education Awards in 2024 while Storyteller’s Word a Day received gold at the Parents’ Choice Awards, alongside accolades from the Mom’s Choice Awards and Tillywig Brain Child Award in 2019.
Beyond these honours, San Pedro contributed to UNICEF’s Design Toolbox for Children’s Well-being in 2024 and has established partnership programs with the NSPCC Children’s Charity to safeguard vulnerable children.
On leadership: Be less cautious, be more candid
Her experiences as a woman in leadership have reinforced the importance of confidence and decisiveness. “Men still dominate leadership because they speak and act faster, with less preparation.”
Her observations have led to personal growth strategies. “I’ve observed women feel the need to perfect their work or their language before proceeding and therein lies a gap to make an impact,” she explains. “I’ve taught myself to be less cautious and more candid in this sense. You move forward faster that way.”
This recognition has enhanced her efforts to mentor emerging female talent. In 2024, she worked with the Diana Award in 2024, guiding young women into design and leadership roles. “The young women I mentored at an East London high school planned a social action project around the theme of misogyny to highlight the pressing need to support women and girls,” she shares. “Leadership here meant paying attention to give relevant support; paying attention to the facilitators who do this for a living and paying attention to the mentees who struggle to feel seen and understood.”
Cultural fluidity as design advantage
In her work in children’s educational technology, San Pedro emphasises user-centred approaches. “It’s important for design to be influenced by the people it serves,” she says. “In the children’s space, this means gathering insights not just from students but also from their teachers and caregivers through focus groups, pilots, and other research methods.”
This approach has produced tangible improvements. “Insights from these efforts have led us to refine content in apps, the size and weight of books, and graphic elements within interfaces, making them more effective or enjoyable to use.”
Her foundational work in Manila has made her acutely aware that users from different backgrounds have diverse needs. This sensitivity has informed her work across borders. Her first design role in London, focused on sustainability at provenance.org, saw her work featured in Forbes, BBC News, Fast Company and Financial Times. Later, her contributions to children’s educational technology led her to shape UNICEF’s framework for Child Rights and Business.
Seeing success beyond titles
San Pedro’s approach to leadership defies conventional goal-setting. “On standards versus goals, it’s an approach I hold as a personal ethos rather than a checklist to complete,” she explains. “It was never a fixed goal to win any particular design award, or work in children’s literacy, or design for sustainability, or even live in London at all. Setting a standard for beautiful, meaningful work has naturally led me down these paths.”
All said and done, San Pedro’s most fulfilling project remains deeply personal. “I loved designing the Flutterby Shoes for Italian heritage brand Alberto Guardiani,” she says. The design featured “a slim butterfly wing piece propping up a red, round-toe pump,” with subsequent seasons introducing “sandal and boot versions, in a range of colours and materials.”
Her design was featured in Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle, and other titles. But the recognition was secondary to the personal significance. “Unlike everything else I design, I designed it for myself. It is beautiful and meaningful to me.”
San Pedro’s definition of success has evolved with her career. “I don’t view success as a goalpost but as an orientation,” she reflects. This perspective manifests in continual learning: “I follow a lot of industry accounts to stay up to date. I read about innovation in intersecting fields. I attend in-person talks with authors and designers and ask them lots of questions.”
San Pedro discovers novel and niche areas of practice in her quest to feed her curiosity: “I take workshops on table setting or calligraphy,” she says. “I do all these all on my own because you really cannot wait for your friends or colleagues to be free to go with you!”
Unlike her early career when she “benchmarked success on a title,” San Pedro now finds fulfilment in “the active, lived experience” – including London’s cultural offerings. “I’m a city girl and love all the cultural and culinary offerings of the city. London feeds my appetite for art, design, film, stage, wining, dining and fitness.”
Looking back, San Pedro admits surprise at her own journey. “My younger self would be surprised I’m even here! It was never a goal or plan to live or work abroad,” she says. “In spite of my strong interest in world cultures, it didn’t occur to me that I would in fact want to experience them through travel or migration.”
For young Filipino women looking to follow her path, San Pedro’s advice is simple: “Find the ideas you want to work on. Work on them and the rest will follow!”
About the author
Julienne Carlos Raboca is a London-based journalist with over a decade of international experience in digital marketing, content management, and communications. After 10 years in Hong Kong, she is now working as a commodities reporter at Fastmarkets, having completed an MA in Journalism, Media and Globalisation as a European Commission scholar at Aarhus University and City, University of London.
Updated: 2 April 2025
