Caitlin Steele

Caitlin Steele helps the people who build software get clear on what they are actually building and why. She was a founding team member at MasterClass and has led design on Trello, Confluence, and lululemon. She now works with design leaders on vision and clarity through Object-Oriented UX and narrative methods. She has keynoted SwiftCraft and spoken at iOSKonf, PragmaConf, and UX Scotland. She writes at thoughtfulapes.com.

Presentations

Leadership By Design 2026

Defensible Space

You have probably seen the survey results by now. Design has the lowest manager ratings in tech, and you are doing the opposite of failing: holding your team together, protecting work that is being hollowed out, trying to hand down judgement fast enough that quality survives the speed. That is prevention work, done by people who are only ever handed emergencies; like forest rangers fighting fires.

In fire country, defensible space is the ground you clear in advance so that something survives. It is not the same as saving everything. It is deciding, before the season, what you are going to protect and what you are letting go.

This talk reframes what has happened to design leadership over the last two years: why the conditions changed rather than the people, what you lose when you cannot see past the end of the week, and what can still be protected from the ground you already stand on.