Everything is designed, including careers.
"The most important thing is that you love what you are doing, and
the second is that you are not afraid of where your next idea will lead."
— Charles Eames
Most design leaders reach a point where the skills that got them here stop being enough. The craft that made them exceptional individual contributors. The execution that made them effective managers. None of it fully prepares them for what comes next: the organizational complexity, the political reality, the shift from doing the work to shaping the conditions in which others do it.
And in most organizations, there is nobody inside who can help them navigate that transition. Not because the organization doesn't care, but because nobody has been there before them.
That is where I come in.
I've spent 25 years making that transition, repeatedly, at companies from Apple to AI startups: from individual contributor to manager, from manager to executive, from employee to founder. I've built design organizations from scratch and inherited ones that needed rebuilding. I've navigated skeptical CEOs, organizational politics, and the particular loneliness of being the most senior design voice in a room full of people who aren't sure design belongs there.
I draw on all of it. The wins and the losses. The decisions I'd make again and the ones I wouldn't. My coaching sessions are candid, direct, and grounded in the specific reality of what design leadership actually requires: not the version in the books, but the version you encounter on Monday morning.
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Reflection: Often overlooked, but fundamental to growth, is the need for leaders to think and reflect. I will help you develop the self-discipline of making space to pause, breath, and take inventory. This will also include strategies to improve time management and work-life balance.
Personal development: Great leaders know themselves, where they get motivation, where they get distracted. They use mindfulness and situational awareness to address bias and assumptions. I will help you practice those skills, and others, as part of a personalized development program.
Leadership Skills: At the core of leadership is the ability to align expectations across the organization. I will help you reflect on your strengths, weaknesses, biases, and help you find your super powers as a leader.
Effective Conversations: Whether your goal is inspire, provide critical but constructive feedback, bridge across silos, or manage upwards, I will help you learn the keys to plan, be present, actively listen, and reflect in the moment, to consistently achieve your desired outcome when you are faced with a difficult conversation.
Storytelling: Storytelling whether it’s presenting solutions, making a business case, or evangelizing the value of design, I will help you develop simple, humanistic, and memorable narratives that will be both understandable and memorable.
Design Led Innovation: Orchestrating a combination of process, skills, and organizational structure are foundational to delivering innovation programs. As a design leader, I will help you explore how to deliver greater value to your organization.
Organizational Design: Talent acquisition and retention are the table stakes. I will help you understand how to effectively manage creative teams, structure trans-disciplinary project teams from kick-off to delivery, including frameworks, tools, processes, etc.
Creative Direction: each new level of design management requires developing new skills for setting the scope, providing guidance, offering feedback, helping them get unstuck, and tracking accountability. I can help you develop the capabilities to move teams forward with structure and purpose.
Mentoring & Team Development: As a leader, you are responsibility for developing the next generation of design leaders. I will help you understand how to work with them to develop their management skills, dealing with difficult situations and people, delivering business value, budgeting resources, etc. while developing their own presence and authority as leaders.
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Are you uncertain of how to take your career to the next level?
Do you need help facing a personal leadership challenge?
Are you uncertain about creating a career path for your team?
Are you uncertain how to set up (or consolidate) design teams?
Do you know how to manage locally, regionally, globally?
Do you struggle with (re)framing design in terms of its business value?
Struggling with providing tangible development goals for your team?
Are you unable to resolve bring both a leader and a designer?
Do you need help preparing the case for your next promotion?
Do you feel unseen working in a trans-disciplinary organization?
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First we will have a 30-minute conversation to make sure we are the right fit for each other.
Second, we will set-up two 90 minute exploration sessions to do a deep dive so I can understand where you are at, really flesh out the areas you want to focus on, including your desired outcomes. The second one of these will focus on our work together. There will likely be some homework that will help us work together on.
From there, we schedule a recurring one-hour coaching sessions. These will be combination of consulting sessions, as well as some experiments, activities and readings. These sessions are about your needs, so we will tailor them around what will help you achieve your goals.
For coaching to result in change and growth you will need time. I offer packages of 4 or 8 sessions, either biweekly or monthly the frequency really depends on your needs and timeline.
Single sessions are also available for just-in-time input or with a clear focus point, like a presentation or proposal.
Drop me a note for more information on pricing or to book a session. It’s useful to tell me a bit about where you’re at and whether this something you’ll be paying for privately or out of a company training budget.
I also believe, as Charles Eames did, that the best work comes from people who love what they are doing and aren't afraid of where their next idea will lead. Which means my coaching tends to focus on more than your growth as a leader. It focuses on your growth as a person: finding the clarity, confidence, and conviction that makes the leadership sustainable rather than just survivable.
If you are a design leader at the director level or above, navigating a transition or simply ready to operate at a higher level, I'd like to help.