
D5's CMO built her case for AI from the least glamorous place in software: the hours between an idea and a finished scene. Her answer is practical, creator-first, and rooted in years spent close to users.
Ellie Cunningham is the CEO of Canoa, a Brooklyn-based design-technology company building a browser canvas that unifies mood boards, scaled floor plans, real product data and FF&E schedules for interior designers. A Pratt-trained interior designer who spent years running global design operations at WeWork, she stepped up from COO to chief executive in October 2024 and is steering Canoa toward a circular, low-carbon future for commercial furniture, where good pieces get reused instead of dumped.