ABOUT DR. HILDA CARRILLO

The work before
the work.

I teach people and organizations how to frame the problems worth solving—before they spend time, attention, and authority solving the wrong ones.

BOOK HILDA ↗READ MY STORY ↓

CHILECANADAUNITED STATES

HOW I GOT HERE

A life shaped by
movement and questions.

I was born in Chile. My family moved to Canada as political refugees, and I came to the United States as a teenager.

I finished my bachelor’s degree convinced I would never go back to school. Then the questions kept pulling me forward: through work as a CPA with public and private clients, a Fortune 500 corporate accounting role, an MBA, and eventually a PhD in accounting with training in psychology.

That path taught me to see the whole system—not just the number, the symptom, or the decision at the end. My research now examines cognition, behavior, and affect: how the way information is presented changes judgment and decision-making.

THE TURNING POINT

One academic framework.
Three very different rooms.

I first encountered the Kinney 3 in my opening PhD seminar, where a clear problem, meaningful stakes, and a credible response were the price of admission to a serious research conversation.

Years later, my husband Felix used the questions while leading 430 airmen and 24 aircraft. I saw them work again while advising a technology startup. The settings changed; the need for clarity did not.

That experience became the foundation of my What | Why | How framework. I realized that ideas, problems, recommendations, and proposals are different entry points into the same disciplined inquiry: What is the problem? Why does it matter, and to whom? How should we solve the problem?

RECOGNITION & SPOTLIGHTS