Speakers

Cassidy loves to make memes and dreams and software. She's currently the CTO at Contenda. She's worked for a variety of companies, large and small, advises startups, and she's had the honor of working on the board of various non-profits.

Bryce is an inclusive designer for Microsoft Devices where he is devoted to ensuring Microsoft products are accessible. Bryce initiated and designed the Inclusive Tech Lab at Microsoft, which has now hosted over fifteen thousand visitors; it is a facility where people can explore how people with disabilities interact with Microsoft products and services.

Shannon Soper, Senior Product Designer, mentor, and former Head of Learning, brings 10+ years of experience in leadership and team development.

Alec is the CEO and cofounder of Learners, a platform and community for UX professionals aiming to make career learning free for everyone. Prior to that, Alec has extensive experience in user research roles in startups of all kinds, and specializes in bridging the gap between founders and their early users.

Katrina Alcorn is a global product design executive and award-winning author. She has built the UX practice at Hot Studio, a boutique agency that was acquired by Facebook, and then at Autodesk, where she centralized the digital design and research teams and her team's work led to a 5x increase in global ecommerce. Most recently, Katrina led one of the world’s largest design practices at IBM.

Sheetal T. Patel was named the Assistant Director of the CIA for the Transnational and Technology Mission Center in January 2022. Prior to that position, Sheetal T. Patel was the Assistant Director of the CIA for Counterintelligence in 2019. Ms. Patel served as Deputy Chief of Station and Chief of Analysis in South Asia.

Phillip figured out in 2023 that he was supposed to be a designer after all. Fortunately, even while uncertain, he worked in interesting spaces like some of the earliest commercial conversational NLU/NLP applications, nurturing enterprise services toward becoming enjoyable tools, and applying analytics to UX design decisions.

Tiziana is a UX Psychologist, with more than 20 years of experience in the design industry. She combines psychological insights with good UX/UI practices and a solid ethical framework to create inclusive designs that will persuade without manipulation or dirty tricks. She strongly believes that ethical design can change the world for the better. She is a member of the Ethical Design Network and maintains its blog.

Nathan co-founded EightShapes with Dan Brown near Washington, DC in 2006. He's passionate about information architecture, user experience design, and front end development, and leads and consults with design systems teams to chart a strategic path and optimize operations. He wrote Modular Web Design in 2009, blogs about design systems regularly, and speaks at events worldwide.

Christine Perfetti is the Founding Principal of Perfetti Media, a user research and product consultancy based in Washington, D.C. She has spent 20 years refining the qualitative and quantitative research practices she leverages to help her clients understand their users and customers.