04 Case Study
Leadership Highlights
Alongside leading Design Operations and Research Operations, I invest in the people and culture behind the work — coaching designers, growing managers, shaping community, and standing up for inclusion.
Coaching designers to growth
Managing a diverse set of designers — in culture, seniority, and aspiration
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Coaching designers to successful promotion.
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Reinvigorating motivation in long-term employees.
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Supporting designers on the verge of burnout.
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Facilitating internal transitions to avoid talent attrition.
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Coaching career transitions from User Research to Product Design.
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Leading teams through organizational change.
Design Manager Development Program
A support network for managers in a remote, post-COVID org
Design Managers at Zalando often felt isolated, with stunted growth and no support network. I developed a curriculum and ritual for safe-space discussion and professional development — covering bar-raising teams, management career paths, managing up, leading for neurodivergence, report motivation, and difficult conversations.
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Bar Raising Teams
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Management Career Paths
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Managing Up
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Leading When Nobody is Normal
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Report Motivation
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Difficult Conversations
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Bridging Skill Gaps
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Making Invisible Work Visible
Participant Feedback
"I felt less isolated, which gave me more confidence in myself, my management 'style,' and my willingness to try out different tactics — being able to sense-check things with the larger group."
Design Community & Thought Leadership
Sharing the craft on stages, podcasts, and in mentorship
From conference stages across Europe to on-site masterclasses and three seasons of my own podcast, I've built a practice around one central question: what does design strategy actually look like when it's working?
Designers have a unique toolkit — research, pattern recognition, facilitation, conceptual thinking. Most organisations don't know how to deploy it at a strategic level. I make the case for why they should, and show what it looks like in practice: how to sense what's hype, what's here to stay, and what risks are forming on the horizon before anyone else has named them.
The themes I keep returning to: decision-making velocity, the discipline of knowing what not to build, and how to tell the difference between a passing fad and a business-critical pivot.
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Learning
Leadership compounds — the time invested in growing people, managers, and community is what lets the work scale beyond any one team.