Designed in Earnest
Human agency,
earned by design.
To make all stakeholders whole. At every scale.
Start in earnestWhy Now
"Humans, systems, and governments are being asked to decide faster than our current frameworks were built to handle. This is the moment for principled design — and the cost of waiting has never been higher."
— Zach Van Valkenburg, Founder
Why Now
AI products and tools tracked globally
Growing at ~27 new tools per hour · Source: Stanford HAI AI Index 2025, RankmyAI
Our Value Proposition
The outcome was never the point.
We orient around outcomes. We build our systems, our processes, and our lives to deliver an expected result. Orienting around an outcome means designing for an end outside of our control. The process serves the ends instead of enabling intentional action. As a result, we arrive somewhere we never oriented to, to begin with.
Shifting focus to the ways changes everything. It returns us to what is real, what is present, and what is within our control. It is the only orientation that allows us to be whole — not someday, but now, in the process itself.
Designed in Earnest exists to make that shift structural. We build methodologies that return agency to the stakeholder — the individual, the organization, the government. Because the ways are within our control. And the ways are the answer.
Core Beliefs
What we stand on.
The ways matter.
Outcomes are influenced by forces outside our control. Intentions cannot be verified. The process is the only thing that can be witnessed, evaluated, and held accountable.
The friction dividend is real.
Resistance is not failure. Intentional friction creates the space where deliberate choice, identity formation, and judgment live. Remove all friction and you remove all agency.
Agency is the high ground.
A system that makes choices for you — even benevolently — weakens you. True fidelity to any stakeholder leaves them more capable and autonomous than before.
Strategy is intentional.
A strategy without intention is just an idea. You only execute a strategy because you have intention. Effective strategy is the deliberate architecture that translates intention into tangible progress. It cannot guarantee a symmetric outcome — but it is your best chance of keeping the process aligned with what you actually meant to do.
Perspective requires work.
As humans, we reduce complex, multi-variable problems to their smallest form. We assign blame to a face instead of examining a system. The acceleration of AI technology deepens this tendency — and raises the stakes of getting it wrong.
Wholeness is a practice.
You do not arrive at it. Identity is the engine. You earn it daily through the rigorous, honest practice of becoming.
A Note from the Founder
I didn't build this from a whiteboard.
I built it from the inside out.
For most of my life, I measured my worth by what I was headed toward. The next role. The next milestone. The person I was going to become once I figured it out. But I was always arriving somewhere that was just out of reach.
Like most of us, life's challenges taught me the only thing they could: the destination was never the point. What I did every day — how I showed up, how I made decisions, how I treated the people around me — that was the whole thing. Not a means to an end. The end itself.
Designed in Earnest exists because that shift is not just personal. It is structural. Every organization, every system, every government faces the same gap: between what they say they value and how they actually operate. Closing that gap is the work. At every scale.
— Zach Van Valkenburg, Founder
Background
Education
USAFA · Master's, Operational Art of War · Executive MBA candidate, University of Denver
Tier 1 Service
JSOC Intelligence Brigade — DoD's only Tier 1 intelligence organization
Executive Role
Aide-de-Camp, Deputy Commanding General, JSOC
Stakeholder Reach
Heads of state · Dept. of State · CIA, FBI, NSA · NGOs · Joint Task Forces
Geographic Scope
Operations across four continents including SOCAFRICA regional advisory
Honors
Bronze Star · Air University Fellow · Schriever Space Scholar · Lipscomb Coaching Certified
How We Work
A deliverable won't solve a structural problem.
Most engagements end with a document. The document sits on a shelf. The dysfunction that prompted the engagement continues — now with better formatting.
We don't deliver answers. We build the framework your people use to find them, and to keep finding them after we're gone. The measure of a DiE engagement isn't what we hand you. It's what you're capable of without us.
Before you can make yourself whole, you have to obligate yourself to your responsibilities in the process.
Obligate
The gap between stated values and operational reality exists because no one is accountable to it. Obligate creates that accountability — surfacing the specific nodes where intention breaks down and creating a shared obligation among all stakeholders to the truth of what was found. You cannot design what you have not first witnessed honestly.
Design
Given what the diagnosis revealed, we build the operating architecture to close the gap — decision frameworks, accountability structures, and process design that make your values legible at every level. Built with your people. Owned by them. The output is not a deliverable. It is a practice.
Align
Most organizations don't have a values problem. They have a translation problem. Align is a C-suite methodology engagement that maps where stated values stop being legible to the system — internally and externally — and builds the shared language and practices that close that gap. The output is not a report. It is a framework the organization operates without us.
Scale
For governments, policy bodies, and large-scale institutions navigating structural change. We apply the DiE methodology at the systems level — where the gap between stated values and operational reality has the highest cost, the widest reach, and the greatest consequence for the stakeholders who have no seat at the table.
"To make all stakeholders whole.
At every scale."
Our Mission
"DiE isn't the only way. But it's the strategy we're ready to hold us accountable to."
Start in earnest.
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