Dynamic. Insightful. Unforgettable.
Whether delivering keynotes, hosting fireside chats, or joining global panels, I bring energy, candor, and hard-won perspective to every stage. My talks draw on 25 years of building design organizations at companies from Apple to AI startups: the decisions made, the organizations built, and the outcomes I've been accountable for. The topics span design leadership, product innovation, and the transformative impact of GenAI — all with a focus on what actually matters: bold thinking grounded in real experience.
Future of Design Leadership
Most design organizations are built to execute. The ones that matter are built to lead. This topic makes the case that design's value is not craft or aesthetics but judgment: the ability to understand the business, own outcomes, and keep the work anchored to the people it serves.
Design as a business driver, not a support function
Building organizations that own outcomes
The role of judgment, accountability, and integrity in design leadership
Future-proofing teams in an era of rapid technological change
Generative User Experience
The graphical user interface has been the primary medium of digital products for fifty years. That assumption is ending. Applications will no longer be launched: they will be generated from a prompt, and that prompt will be your environment, your intent, your needs.
The death of the static interface
Context-aware and multimodal experiences
What generative UX means for designers, product leaders, and enterprise software
The new elements of user experience
Designing the Future of Business
Innovation fails not because companies lack ideas but because they lack the organizational conditions to act on them. Leaders who acquire a designer's mindset can create those conditions: reorienting product development around customer insight, de-risking investment through prototyping and validation, and building the cross-functional trust that turns strategy into execution.
Building organizations that act on ideas, not just generate them
Customer insight as a strategic asset
Prototyping and validation as risk management
Design fluency as a leadership capability
The business case for investing in design at the organizational level
Presentations & Podcast
Design Executive Council
As a founding member and advisor board member of the DXC, I shared my views that while design leadership has embraced the need to focus on the business value of design, it is still vital that they don’t loose the thing that got them to the table: the ability to design.
Brave UX with Brendon Jarvis
I was privileged and honored to be interviewed by Brendon for his podcast. We discussed how to build and scale design organizations, in both large global organizations and early stage start-ups. And the critical role design plays in defining company strategy.
“Design Your Strategy”
I was the keynote speaker at the Strat Conference. My talk focused on how designers need to ramp up their business skills and understanding to help design their company’s strategies. Including metrics that are meaningful in your organization and your CEO. And how you build alignment around design’s success its impact on the business success.
“How Tangible Is Your Strategy? How Design Thinking Can Turn Your Strategy into Reality”
I was invited to contribute an article describing my team’s approach to expressing SAP’s strategy not as numbers or frameworks or even a rhetorical narrative, but as something concrete; a prototype of the future.
Nodes of Design Interview
We talk about how you scale design for large organizations, while maintaining effective innovation and collaborations. Including metrics for meassuring design’s impact
“Emerging Role of VP of UX”
I was interviewed for an article along with other recognized design leaders to share our insights about the evolving role of design executives, specifically how to make the transition from designing things to designing processes and organizations that enable great products to be created.