Speakers

Meet Our Amazing Speakers

At Chicago Camps, our speakers embody the diversity, talent, and passion that characterize the ever-evolving fields of User Experience and Design Leadership. From world-renowned thought leaders to new and emerging voices, our stage is a platform where expertise meets inclusivity.

Why Our Speakers Are Special

Our speakers are not just industry professionals; they are change-makers, thought leaders, and mentors. They bring years of experience, fresh perspectives, and a dedication to enriching the community. Whether presenting groundbreaking ideas or tried-and-true strategies, their contributions make each event a nexus of learning and inspiration.

A Warm Welcome to New Voices

Are you new to public speaking? Fear not! We believe in nurturing the next generation of UX and design leaders. At Chicago Camps, we offer support in honing your presentation proposals and crafting impactful narratives. Our aim is to make room on our stage for as many different voices as possible, embracing the fresh energy and unique insights that newcomers bring.

A Standing Ovation for Seasoned Experts

To our experienced speakers—your wisdom and prowess amplify the value of our events. We cherish the opportunity to be yet another audience for your esteemed content. Whether your presentation has dazzled crowds at other venues or is an exclusive treat for our attendees, we’re honored to feature your expertise.

The Power of Community

Public speaking is an art form that requires not just knowledge but a commitment to the audience. Each of our speakers invests immeasurable effort into their presentations, making them not just informative but transformative experiences.

Join Our Esteemed Roster

We invite you to be a part of this incredible journey. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or a first-time presenter, you’re welcome here. Submit your proposal and add your voice to our vibrant and ever-growing community.

Caroline Jarrett

Caroline Jarrett is the forms specialist, helping clients to make forms easier to fill in. She uses techniques drawn from user research, service design, content design, and interaction design.

Tim Yeo

Tim Yeo (@timyeo) coaches introverts to have impact and influence without pretending to be extroverts at The Quiet Achiever. He's also a design leader, speaker and bookbinder; best known for saying complex things simply. Most recently Design Director @ IBM, formerly Head of Design at fintech startups @Finder, @OFX, @Prospa

Lori Baker

Lori has extensive experience in finding creative solutions to client needs that also meet user needs through extensive research and cross- department collaboration.

Cassidy Williams

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 Johnson

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

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

Alec Levin

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

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

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 Hunter

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 Dagostino

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 Curtis

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

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.

Danielle Barnes

Danielle is the CEO of Women Talk Design, where she’s on a mission to amplify the voices of women and nonbinary folks. She’s trained hundreds of individuals on the power of storytelling and how to become more confident public speakers. She co-founded Austin Design Week, a week-long event celebrating the design community in Austin through 100+ free community-hosted talks, workshops, and events that ran from 2016-2021.

Alison Gretz

Alison has led teams of individuals in problem-solving and creating solutions for the real world in both boot-strapping start-ups and large Fortune 100 companies. She firmly believes that her leadership philosophy and coaching approach combined create environments where people can discover, make sense of what’s in front of them, and progress forward with momentum.

Stuart Thursby

Stuart is a Creative Director based in Toronto with a 15-year track record of building and leading teams alongside rolling up his sleeves and getting the work done. His creative career has blended the hell out of the concepts and craft of advertising, digital, experiential, and the web, working at some of the best shops around — BBDO, Cossette, Proximity, Array of Stars, FCB/SIX, Teehan+Lax, Trajectory, DDB, DARE, Edelman, and many others, plus 4+ years owning and running Stack.

Yaddy Arroyo

Specializing in pioneering multi-modal banking experiences that seamlessly merge cutting-edge chatbot technology with human-centric service design.

Stephen Strong

Stephen brews his own beer and grows his own hops. Sometimes he shares. He remembers when GIFs started animating, when AOL's browser wouldn't read , when Netscape updates were an event, and waiting 15 minutes to download a Quicktime video about an exploding whale. He officially held the title Webmaster when it wasn't embarrassing.

Jessica Bertling

Jessica Bertling is an avid gardener and loves to help things grow, especially ideas. After receiving her degree in Digital Media and Design she spent eight years in e-commerce, specializing in user experience design and front end web development.

Nick Disabato

Pradeep Nayar

Alexis Finch

Lauren Colton

Josh Damon Williams

Amanda Morrow

Keith Tatum

Craighton Berman

Quite Strong

Jonathan Snook writes about tips, tricks, and bookmarks on his blog at Snook.ca. He has also written for A List Apart, 24ways, and .net magazine, and has co-authored two books, The Art and Science of CSS and Accelerated DOM Scripting.

Jonathan Snook

Adam Lupu

Adam Lupu is a learning scientist and cognitive engineer. He specializes in applying the latest scientific research on learning and development to the creation of training programs for technologists, designers, and business leaders.

Param Rengaiah

Param Rengaiah’s LinkedIn title is Solutions Architect/Experience Architect, but he considers himself a developer and a hacker.

Chris Webb

Christopher works as a User Interface Engineer at Groupon. He’s meticulous about hand-crafted HTML, carefully pruned CSS, and pushing the web forward.

Sharlene King

Sharlene King is a designer working as a senior art director at Acquity Group and living it up in Chicago. She designs on the weekend, in the after hours, and with a mouthful of food for a variety of clients from global pharmaceuticals to incorrigible start-ups.

Ryan Singer

Ryan Singer leads product design and manages the development process at 37signals.

Greg Nudelman

Greg Nudelman is a Mobile Experience Strategist and CEO of DesignCaffeine, Inc. For over 15 years he has helped his clients eBay, WebEx, Wells Fargo, PayPal, Safeway, Cisco, IBM, Associated Press and Groupon amass millions of satisfied customers.

Simon King

Simon King is a Principal Interaction Designer at IDEO Chicago where he leads both strategic–and implementation–focused work, designing macro- and micro-interactions across a diverse portfolio.

Jacey Gulden

Representing the new breed of uber-brand journalist, Jacey recently graduated from Indiana University with a BA in Journalism which included a focus on web and graphic design; she also earned two minors in Theater and Psychology.

Golli Hashemian

Golli Hashemian is a user experience architect in Chicago, currently working as a senior experience designer at R/GA. Her experience includes designing and developing web and mobile applications for companies like Accenture and IBM.

Darby Frey

Darby Frey is a software engineer and consultant who has worked on web and mobile applications for many clients including Groupon, Toyota, Paramount Pictures and others.

Shay Howe

As a designer and front end developer, Shay Howe has a passion for solving problems while building creative and intuitive products. He specializes in user interface design and front end development, working inside HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on a daily basis.

Jon Buda

Jon Buda is web developer who loves to design, or a designer who loves to code–depending on the day. He enjoys solving problems holistically, thinking about back-end, front-end, and design all as equally important parts in crafting great experiences.

Dan Shipton

Dan Shipton is the CEO of Change, a cash register app for the iPad built by BitMethod in Des Moines, Iowa. BitMethod is made up of mobile craftsmen who swoon over well-made apps and love finding ways of making complex things simple.

Dan LeBoeuf

Dan LeBoeuf is a Senior UX Architect at Manifest Digital and graduate student at DePaul CDM studying HCI and Computer Science. With 16 years of industry experience, his career began as a visual designer.

Phil Sharp

With the help of UserTesting.com’s archive of usability videos, Phil Sharp uncovers unique insights about design, UX, and conversion rate optimization, and then shares them with the rest of the world.

Tonia Bartz

Laura Creekmore

Dennis Schleicher

Clark Sell

Andy Crestodina

Samantha Starmer

Samantha Starmer is Vice President of Customer Experience for Razorfish’s national Commerce and Content practice, where she works on strategy and best practices for creating seamless experiences across all touchpoints of the customer shopping journey.

Marc Maleh

As a group director at R/GA, Marc is responsible for the Data Visualization capability as well as the Rapid Prototype Studio.

Kaitlin Yapchaian

Kaitlin Yapchaian is the Executive Producer of R/GA’s Prototype Studio where she manages the day-to-day prototyping practice.

Victoria Pater

Victoria Pater is a digitally-focused creative in Chicago. She currently works as a senior mobile designer at Orbitz Worldwide.

Smith Schwartz

Smith Schwartz is a digital nomad who cascades with style around U.S. and the globe while working as a front-end developer and designer.

Dave Kiss

Dave Kiss branches from the designer/developer model and is interested in shifting the paradigm that learning always has to be from the top down.

Max Temkin

Max Temkin is a designer from Chicago, Il. He’s worked for good causes like Obama for America and the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation, and makes the games Cards Against Humanity, Humans vs. Zombies, and Werewolf.

Mari Luangrath

Mari Luangrath is best known for her dynamic speaking style, in which she shares stories about starting and growing Chicago’s Foiled Cupcakes.

Jason Ulaszek

Jason Ulaszek leads the customer experience strategy practice at Manifest Digital. He has worked with some of the biggest and most influential brands in the country, including Allstate, Cardinal Health, Kohl’s and Mattel.

Brandy Agerbeck

Brandy Agerbeck believes that drawing is a powerful thinking tool. As a graphic facilitator, Brandy supports clients by mapping out their complex conversations onto giant sheets of paper.

Dan Klyn

Dan Klyn, co-founder of The Understanding Group (TUG), teaches information architecture at the University of Michigan School of Information and serves on the board of the IA Institute.

Dennis Kardys

Dennis Kardys is a Chicago based UX designer and author with an affinity for all things mobile. He’s the author of the recently published Mobile Web Triage, and a contributing author to Smashing Magazine’s The Mobile Book.

Andy Hullinger

Andy Hullinger is a design professor and the Program Chair for Web Design and Development at Harrington College of Design.

Tom Greever

Tom is a user experience designer, consultant, and trainer for Bitovi.com–a mobile and web-app design agency based in Chicago

Matthew Doty

As a UX guy, Matthew Doty crosses the streams of his artistic roots, technical savvy, business acumen, and his fascination with human behavior to create really awesome interactive experiences.

Philip Likens

Philip Likens is the Principal UX Designer for Sabre Labs, a travel-focused emerging technology incubator.

Arthur Kay

Arthur Kay has been working with the Web since the late 1990s, when GeoCities and scrolling marquees were all the rage.

Anthony Armendariz

Anthony is a Partner and Experience Director at Funsize, a mobile product design agency in Austin, TX that crafts native mobile applications and web applications for some of the largest (and smallest) product companies.

Mike Gibson

Mike is the lead designer at Table XI. He enjoys semantic markup, modular CSS and long-walks on a moonlit beach.

Rose Robinson

Loren Norman

Jessica Cherok

Brad Weaver

Amy Ellis

Marina Lin

Marina Lin is a Senior Interaction Designer for Mobile Apps at Cars.com where she uses Axure for prototyping Android and iOS apps. She holds a Master’s in Information Architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Brandon Satrom

Brandon Satrom is the Director of Product Management for Telerik, the world’s greatest developer tools company.

Jonathan Ozeran

Jonathan is a product designer, software engineer, team builder and startup evangelist who enjoys contributing to the growth of the Chicago and Detroit startup communities.

Jon Hadden

Jon Hadden is the founder of NiceUX, a user experience design and development consultancy in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Ross Belmont

Ross Belmont gave up a life of code to build the design practice at Appiphony, a Chicago-based consultancy focused on Salesforce.com apps

Brett Schilke

Brett Schilke is an education designer, storyteller, and self-proclaimed man-of-making-things-happen.

Ben Lister

Ben built his first website, a Nirvana fan page, in the late 90’s (on GeoCities) and hasn’t looked back since.

Brittanie Crain

Brittanie is an Axure-pro and part of the User Experience team at Manifest Digital.

Kyle Soucy

Jenn Downs

Dustin DiTommaso

Dana Chisnell

Boon Sheridan

Svetlin Denkov

Svetlin Denkov is a UX Prototyper at GN ReSound in Chicago, where he builds highly interactive prototypes for mobile and tablet devices using different technologies

Nick Finck

Misty Weaver

Marianne Sweeny

Nishant Kothary

Kalpita Kothary

Christian Manzella

Russ Unger

Russ Unger is an experience design leader who has built teams across enterprise, government, and private organizations.

Brian Lee

Brian is the Lead Android Engineer at Trunk Club, helping Trunk Club members get an awesome styling experience from their stylists.

Alyssa Burke

My name is Alyssa Burke and I am a User Interface Designer at ÄKTA, a digital experience and engagement consultancy based in Chicago that works with leading global brands and emerging growth companies.

Ashley Phillips

Ashley is a product enthusiast who is fascinated by how technology translates across different countries and cultures.

Zac Siegel

Zac Siegel is the lead Android engineer at ÄKTA and has been helping companies both large and small craft top notch mobile applications for the past 4 years.

Sharon Bautista

Sharon is a user experience designer passionate about strategy and organizational change. Currently, she leads digital design and front-end development for Discover Card, overseeing the online experience for over 20 million cardmembers.

Mark McEahern

Mark started Adorable IO a software consulting firm based in Madison, Wisconsin. A software engineer with a passion for simplicity and quality, he was delighted by the power and leverage that frameworks like Ruby on Rails brought to the web development world.

Mark Meeker

Mark is a Principal Front-End Developer for Hyatt Hotels. He is a client-side developer at heart, but spends a lot of his time finding better ways for front-end code and UX to play well within large web applications and the teams that build them.

Dylan Richard

Dylan Richard is the full-bearded technologist who, as Director for Engineering, quietly led the 40 engineers of Obama for America’s Technology team to victory in 2012.

Kamaria Campbell

Kamaria Campbell is a User Experience consultant for IBM Interactive Experience and Mobile. She began her career as a Usability Auditor at ForeSee, a customer experience analytics firm.

Ryan Wynia

Ryan leads Emmi Solutions’ interdisciplinary design team responsible for creating interactive experiences that empower patients and influence healthy behavior.

Dimple Rao

Dimple leads the Digital Pharmacy Product team at Walgreens. She is responsible for driving digital innovation to improve adherence and build consumer engagement through a seamless omni-channel experience for Walgreens’ patients to get, stay and live well.

Nathan Hinshaw

Nathan Hinshaw is the Lead Front End Engineer and a Product Owner at Threadless, where he brings his passion for data-driven, cross-device development to the best platform for supporting artists worldwide.

Travis LaFleur

Travis LaFleur is an information architect at The Understanding Group, an IA consultancy focused on creating good digital places.

Courtney Roberts

Courtney Roberts has over five years of user-centered research experience in a variety of industries including healthcare and mobile.

Carl Beien

Carl Beien also has over five years of user-centered research experience. He started his career doing community development, and will eagerly make the case that the precepts of UX are equally applicable in poverty reduction as they are in web design.

Mike Kornacki

Mike’s 20 years of work in the creative arts field has brought him to Johnson Controls, Inc. (JCI) where, over the last five years, he has built a team of User Experience specialists.

Beth McKeever

Beth McKeever is a UX Engineer at Software for Good where she works with clients — like Biovest, Fair Trade USA and DIVI — who are making the world a better place.

Daniel Zarick

Daniel runs #33cc77, a product+design studio based in Chicago. He designs+codes web apps, mobile apps, and games.

Jared Caponi

Ameeda is a co-founder and product lead of CodeArtScience, a startup focused on redefining quality and relevant learning experiences at scale.

Ameeda Chowdhury

Ameeda is a co-founder and product lead of CodeArtScience, a startup focused on redefining quality and relevant learning experiences at scale.

Marcin Treder

Marcin Treder is a designer, psychologist, philosopher, and founder and CEO of UXPin — UX Design Platform, SaaS company funded by some of the best investors in Silicon Valley.

Anna van Slee

nna makes toys and games, because toys and games are awesome. There’s not one recipe for awesome sauce: Anna has led teams that have produced everything from comic books, to virtual worlds, to augmented reality mobile experiences.

Carl Smith

Carl Smith is an irreverent ditcher of the nine-to-five and mortal enemy of the overworked lifestyle.

Danny Schuman

Danny Schuman is a writer, thinker, and idea creator. He spent over 20 years writing memorable marketing campaigns that built iconic brands like Coors Light, Life Cereal, and Gatorade.

J Cornelius

J has been making websites and software for the web since 1998, and has been credited with creating several software features web designers and developers take for granted today.

Hillary Hartley

Hillary Hartley is co-founder and deputy executive director at 18F, a digital services consultancy inside the General Services Administration.

Clay Parker Jones

Clay is the Managing Director of Undercurrent, an organizational design unit of Quirky, where he and his team work to restructure organizations for an uncertain world.

Milissa Tarquini

Milissa Tarquini is VP, Product UX and Design for Food Network, HGTV, DIY, and The Travel Channel — which are conveniently owned by one company that no one has heard of: Scripps Networks Interactive.

Hannah Donovan

Bridget Weis-Urbain is the Chef and owner of Cook from Scratch, where she offers a variety of cooking classes as an opportunity to help broaden people’s horizons in the kitchen.

Bridget Weis-Urbain

Bridget Weis-Urbain is the Chef and owner of Cook from Scratch, where she offers a variety of cooking classes as an opportunity to help broaden people’s horizons in the kitchen.

Braden Kowitz

Braden Kowitz is a product designer, prototyper, and storyteller. He’s also a Design Partner at Google Ventures and founded the team’s Design Studio.

Denise Jacobs

Denise Jacobs is a Speaker + Author + Creativity Evangelist who speaks at web conferences and consults with tech companies worldwide.

Rizwan Javaid

Rizwan is a UX Designer at Closed Loop in Roseville, CA. He creates intuitive, persuasive, and profitable user experiences.

Phil Balagtas

Phil has been a Visual and UX Designer since 2001, and has experience designing across a variety of devices and platforms within non-profit, retail, advertising, and enterprise software organizations.

Dennis Ellis

Dennis studied and graduated with a philosophy degree from Indiana University, then hung around and earned an M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction from Indiana University School of Informatics. His approach to UX blends humanism, aesthetic philosophy, and a deep respect for design process and collaboration.

Rachel McClung

From a young age, Rachel knew she wanted to create digital experiences. The educational computer games at her local library were intended to teach kids a few things about colors and numbers, but for Rachel, the takeaways were even bigger.

Will Hacker

Will Hacker is a Manager of Interaction Design at Cars.com, where he leads a team responsible for experience design and usability for a portfolio of consumer-facing automotive shopping, research, and financing products.

Jamie McAtee

Jamie McAtee is a Senior User Experience Designer with Deloitte’s Innovation Lab working on enterprise and consumer applications. Prior to Deloitte, she worked for Turner Broadcasting System, designing enterprise applications for the entertainment division.

Sean Johnson

Partner at Digital Intent and Founder Equity. Professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Kellogg. Pale person.

Cornelius Rachieru

Cornelius is Managing Director at Canadian UX consultancy Ampli2de Inc. and is the co-chair and lead curator of CanUX, Canada’s largest and longest running UX event.

Michael Lopp

Michael Lopp is a Silicon Valley-based engineering leader who builds both people and product at companies such as Borland, Netscape, Palantir, and Apple.

Ian Swinson

Over the past 20+ years Ian Swinson has balanced his time between agencies, startups and enterprise software companies. As the first designer at Salesforce.com he was instrumental in growing the UX team to over 100.

Adam Cutler

Adam Cutler is the Design Practices Director with IBM Design and one of the first three Distinguished Designers at IBM. He is responsible for the IBM Design Studio in Austin, TX.

Tanseela Molani

Tanseela leads the design research and universal design efforts at United Airlines. The research team informs the vision, experience and execution of inspiring, useful, and profitable travel products and services.

Cennydd Bowles

Cennydd Bowles is a digital product designer and writer. He has a decade of experience helping companies realise the benefits of good design, most recently as design manager at Twitter.

Randy Hunt

Randy J. Hunt is VP of Design at Etsy, where he leads a team of designers, researchers, writers and artists creating the end-to-end experience, both online and off.

Amy Cueva

Amy Cueva believes that design can improve the human condition. It was with that mission and vision that she co-founded Mad*Pow in 2000 and has built an award-winning design and digital agency which serves industries from health to financial services and beyond.

Austin Govella

Austin creates award-winning employee experiences that make work wonderful. Austin Govella has built products and services for some of the world’s largest organizations, including global industry leaders like ExxonMobil, Comcast, Verizon Wireless, Ashley Furniture, and The World Bank.

Amanda Schonfeld

Amanda Schonfeld is a talent acquistion nerd. Hiring designers is her true love, but she also spends quality time with technologists, strategists, product folks, and client services people too.

Xavier Wynn

For the past 25+ years, Xavier has driven successful brand solutions for a range of Fortune 500 companies.

Kristin Skinner

Kristin Skinner is Managing Director at Adaptive Path where she established and leads the Design Program Management practice.

Erin L. Thomas, PhD

Erin Thomas is Diversity Manager for Grant Thornton LLP, responsible for diversity and inclusion strategy, programming and evaluation in all 60 US offices.

Tim Frick

Tim started Mightybytes in early 1998 to help nonprofits, social enterprises, and purpose-driven companies solve problems, amplify their impact, and drive measurable business and marketing results.

Daniel Orbach

Daniel brings an affinity for math and science to his process as designer. He takes a systemic, strategic approach to solving digital design problems, and the variety of projects he worked on before joining Moment – from warehouse optimization to homes of the future – illustrate the adaptability of his techniques

Wilson Lee

Wilson is a developer at Broadway.com in NYC, working on web and Android development. He is very passionate about building clean and intuitive UI on web and mobile platforms, especially presenting complex data and information.

Mike Gorgone

Currently I am working in Cox Automotive’s Enterprise Operations Center helping them with the redesign of their IT Scorecard website. My role is varied depending on the what the project needs.

Jayne Spottswood

Jayne Spottswood is a UX Architect – or “UX Swiss Army Knife,” depending who you ask – at Paylocity, which develops industry-leading, cloud-based payroll and human capital management software solutions for medium-sized organizations.

Nikola Ranguelov

Nikola has been obsessed with technology since he was about five years old and his father brought home a computer from work. He quickly learned how to break it… and then, in turn, fix it (else he couldn’t play his games).

Zeke Binion

Zeke is a UX designer and developer based in Chicago. He is the Director of UX Design at Table XI, a custom software development company in Chicago that delivers business value through mobile applications, UX design and web development.

Margot Harrington

Launched at the height of the 2008 recession, Pitch Design Union makes brands, websites, and publications for community-focused organizations, non-profits, small businesses, and contemporary art spaces.

Lauren Lucchese

Autumn is a Senior Product Designer and Researcher at Trunk Club in Chicago.

Autumn Schultz

Autumn is a Senior Product Designer and Researcher at Trunk Club in Chicago.

David Farkas

David is a User Experience Designer in Philadelphia, PA and co-author of UX Research: Practical Techniques for Designing Better Products.

Rudy Rigot

Rudy is brand new to Chicago, and loving every bit of it! In a previous life, he was a software engineer at Apple for a while, founded his own startup (Holberton School, a 2-year software engineering school in San Francisco that is still running today), wrote a technical book in French about responsive web design before it was cool, is currently writing a second one about the Go language, and gave a lot of conference talks when he was in France, where he’s from.

Arlo Bryan Guthrie

Arlo Bryan Guthrie is Sprout Social’s Lead Design Developer, focusing on the design system for our flagship web application and other online properties.

Brad Larson

Brad comes from a background in Flash, animation, and video and originally made his living through Flash work.

Kavitha Krishnan

Kavitha Krishnan aka lifelong champion for UX is a passionate UX professional who enjoys solving problems, organizing information and designing interactions.

Chris Courtney

Chris Courtney Chris is the Director of the Design Program at Bloc.io, an online education startup based in San Francisco, California.

Rebecca Miller-Webster

Rebecca Miller-Webster is a software engineer, conference organizer, and educator. She is the founder of Write/Speak/Code and Practice Lead at DevMynd.

John Polacek

John Polacek leads front end at Gesture, the mobile fundraising platform for charity events, and is the author of many open source projects like Expressive CSS, Stacktable, Responsivator, BigVideo.js and Scrollorama.

Kurt Cunningham

Kurt is a motivated and adaptive innovative thinker who enjoys data-driven design and development.

Taylor Poulos

Taylor is a designer and writer, currently working at Moment in New York, New York. He started making software when he was twelve, eventually focusing in UX design and research.

Stacy Kvernmo

With over 15 years of experience, Stacy takes the lead at OddBird on interface design and development, architecting accessible and maintainable front-end code using a styleguide-first process.

Jim Remsik

A world-renowned hugger, community instigator, and speaker who genuinely desires success in those around him and does what he can to make that happen.

Jen Myers

Jen Myers is a technologist, speaker and educator, and currently a Curriculum Director of Software Developer Content at Pluralsight.

Sunni (Sun) Brown

Sunni (Sun) Brown is the founder of creative consultancy Sunni Brown Ink and recently reincarnated the Center for Deep Self Design (getting its second life after a tragicomic opening in March of 2020!).

Jane Ruffino

Jane is a research-driven UX content design consultant who has worked across a range of industries, including fintech, healthcare, mobility, HR tech, enterprise SaaS, travel tech, and retail, with clients across Europe, Asia, and North America. She’s been a journalist, documentary producer, and professional development educator. She is passionate about storytelling, plain language, and strong collaboration. With her one-person content studio, Character, she specializes in workshops and facilitation, but she'll also happily write the words and stories that make your software go.

Steve Portigal

Steve Portigal is an experienced user researcher who helps organizations to build more mature user research practices.

Michael Carrick

Michael Carrick CEO & Co-founder of XDS | Experience Design Systems Inc.

Guadalupe Aguilera

Guadalupe commenced her professional journey in the realm of architecture, where she developed a deep appreciation for space, form, and user interaction within physical environments

Meghan Casey

Meghan Casey has more than 20 years experience in communications, marketing, content strategy, and stakeholder whispering.

Haley Stracher

Haley Stracher is the founder of Iris Design Collaborative, and an expert designer and marketing strategist. ? Haley loves playing with her young son, yoga and being outdoors.

Design Thinking

DESIGN THINKING! is a weekly webcomic about being a creative in an increasingly uncreative tech-first world.

Eytan Mirsky

Eytan Mirsky is a New York City-based singer/songwriter best known for the songs he contributed to the indie films "Happiness," "American Splendor" and "The Tao of Steve."

Steven Kellert

Steven Kellert is a Chicagoan with a penchant for hitting all the right notes—be it on paper or a ukulele.

Shannon Leahy

Shannon has worked at the intersection of words, strategy, design, and people for almost 15 years. Currently, she is a senior content design manager at Adobe.

Jesse James Garrett

Jesse James Garrett has been one of the most prominent voices in digital product design for more than 20 years.

Simon Conway

Simon is a specialist Journey Management consultant.

Upma Singh

Upma Singh is a Lead User Experience Designer at IntelliBridge. She loves the challenge of working through a particularly complex mess and she encourages her teammates and clients to think holistically.

Amy Bucher

Amy Bucher, Ph.D., is Chief Behavioral Officer at Lirio, where she designs AI-powered behavior change journeys to drive better personal and population health.

Jenae Cohn, Ph.D.

Dr. Jenae Cohn writes and speaks about online teaching and learning for international audiences. She currently works as the Executive Director for the Center for Teaching and Learning at UC Berkeley, and has held prior roles at California State University, Sacramento, Stanford University and University of California, Davis.

Billie Mandel

Billie Mandel is a multidisciplinary social scientist, leadership coach and team collaboration expert with 30 years’ international business experience leading software R&D teams to innovate, grow and create more effectively together.

Michael Angeles

Michael Angeles is an interface designer at Balsamiq.

Leon Barnard

Leon Barnard leads the education team at Balsamiq. He uses his extensive experience as a UX designer to teach user interface design basics and wireframing to an audience of mostly non-designers via the Balsamiq Wireframing Academy.

Allison Herbert

Allison Herbert is a curiosity advocate and product professional passionate about building successful customer and product experiences.

Zinnia Sophia

Zinnia is a Content Strategy Director, Speaker, Women’s Leadership Mentor and 6x best-selling author in women’s empowerment based in New York City.

Adam Tramposh

In his 12+ years of experience in digital product innovation, design and consulting, Adam has partnered with fortune 500s, startups, and mid size companies alike to bring human-centered software experiences to market.

Erin Malone

Erin Malone is principal at Experience Matters Design, specializing in designing systems, complex tools, user research and social interfaces and is currently working with the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society working on research and tools to help mitigate hate in online social spaces.

Joie Chung

Joie Chung is a senior product design leader based in Austin, TX, who's passionate about mentoring future leaders and helping designers achieve their best work

Jason Mesut

Jason helps people and organizations navigate their uncertain futures.

Jonathan McFadden

Jonathan McFadden is a senior content designer at Shopify, where he partners with a team of designers to create better experiences for users on the Shop app.

Christina Goldschmidt

Christina Goldschmidt is an award-winning design leader who is known for transforming product design teams to work at enterprise scale while fostering cultures that drive both business and social impact.

Ian Smile

Ian Smile is a Principal UX Designer at Veritone in Orange County, CA working with AI in the Enterprise Synthetic Voice and Ad Tech spaces.

Josh Christopher

Josh Christopher Josh Christopher is the UX Practice Lead at geniant with over 15 years of experience helping companies transform experiences for their employees and customers.

Emily Parcell

Driven by a passion to make the workplace more human, Emily's work as a leadership coach and facilitator focuses on how strong leadership, process, and culture support teams to do their best work. She specializes in helping leaders navigate work with confidence by applying design skills such as creative thinking and an experiment-oriented mindset.

Jillian Hudson

Jillian Hudson is NN/g UX-certified in Research and Management. She worked as a UX Product Designer/Usability Expert at American Airlines and as a UX Strategist and Researcher for both Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

Tutti Taygerly

Tutti coaches cofounders and tech leaders to embrace their unique leadership style to achieve professional impact and a sustainable company culture.

Erin ‘Folletto’ Casali

Erin Casali, known as “Folletto”, is a senior product design director and coach. She has a hybrid background in design, psychology, business and technology — with a people-centered approach.

Jason Julien

Jason Julien is a seasoned, multi-disciplinary digital design veteran specializing in creating beautiful, human-centered design solutions. He has spent the last 20+ years creating design solutions for a wide variety of brands and people in agency and corporate environments.

Fred Beecher

Fred Beecher has worked in User Experience since 1998. He is an established contributor in the field, having authored the first official Axure training program in 2007 and having written and spoken extensively on prototyping, design process, design education, and UX career development.

Eli Silva

Eli Silva is a Sr. Product designer at Pivotal labs. Eli is best known as a diversity advocate with practical insights drawn from the design discipline. Unlike traditional approaches to org design that focus on charts and work distribution, Eli emphasizes studying the way people interact with an organization as a product.

Jared Spool

Jared Spool is the founder of User Interface Engineering (UIE), the largest usability research organization of its kind in the world. If you’ve ever seen Jared speak about usability, you know that he’s probably the most effective and knowledgeable communicator on the subject today.

Tami Evnin

Tami Evnin is the Director of Portfolio Design Strategy at Nasdaq, where her team is changing the way a fintech leader builds products. She has established design best practices and helped scale the team from 3 to over 25 designers.

Sofia Millares

Sofia Millares is the Creative Director of Product Design at Nasdaq. For the past four years she has been overseeing the styling and global functionality for the entire product suite offering.

Suzanna Bierwirth

Consumer-first through-the-line thinker. Empowering Leader. Passionate Business Builder. Mother. Maker. Instigator.

Kathi Kaiser

Kathi Kaiser is co-founder and partner at Centralis, a Chicago-based UX consultancy. She leads a top-notch team in creating great user experiences for global clients, start-ups, and cultural institutions.

Dan Brown

Together with Nathan Curtis, Dan Brown founded EightShapes in 2006. Though specializing in information architecture, user research, and design discovery, Dan’s career spans most aspects of UX design.

Dr. Steve Julius

Dr. Steve Julius is the founder and chief executive of HRCG, a Chicago based firm specializing in executive leadership, high performance teamwork, organizational effectiveness and strategic human capital solutions.

Mike Davidson

Mike most recently spent three years as Vice President of Design for Twitter. Prior to joining Twitter, Mike was Vice President at NBCNews.com, where he managed social news products and technologies.

Lisa Welchman

For the past two decades, the leaders of global 1000 companies, NGOs, and other organizations have turned to Lisa to analyze and solve their digital governance challenges.

Nicole Maynard

Nicole Maynard is the Head of User Experience at Hyatt leading a team of researchers, interaction and visual designers, creating solutions that elevate Hyatt’s digital footprint and enhance the guest experience. She has taken the helm as president of the Chicago chapter of UXPA (User Experience Professionals Association).

Julia Keren-Detar

Julia Keren-Detar is a game designer and developer based out of Chicago, IL. Currently she is the Creative Director for Untame, a studio shared by her and her husband.

Matthew Milan

Matthew is a complex systems specialist with a focus on software innovation. He has degrees in Ski Area Management, Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Planning, and has spent most of his career helping organizations make concrete decisions about the future through the integration of strategic design and technology prototyping.

Jay Newton-Small

Jay Newton-Small is cofounder of MemoryWell, which tells the life stories of those suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Elizabeth Goodman

Elizabeth’s writing, design and research focus on product, service, and interaction design for organizationally complex products and services.

Bennett King

Ben is the Managing Partner of Konrad+King, a San Diego based human-centered design studio that focuses on enterprise, healthcare, mobility and smart cities.

Debra Gelman

Debra Gelman is a leader, strategist, author, and practitioner in the digital design and user experience space. Throughout her 20-year career, Deb has used customer behavior to drive the design of experiences for the telecommunications, financial services, healthcare, education, and publishing industries.

Beth Zwolski Tobias

Beth has been drawing since her mom placed a crayon in her hand. Over the years, she picked up passions for drawing, painting, animation, special effects makeup, and fabrication. She earned a B.A. in Film/Video with a concentration in Traditional Animation from Columbia College Chicago.

Romke de Haan

Romke de Haan has been in the DJ world since he was 13 years old. First under DJ greats like DJ QuickMixx and Opie Cuttingham of Illinois Mixx Mob. Romke became more of a performing DJing in his late 20s after the passing of his friend DJ Roc Dee.

Meg Lewis

Meg Lewis is a designer creating experiences for happy companies and a one-on-one educator creating happier lives for humans of all kinds. Meg is the founder of Ghostly Ferns, a collective of designers & commercial artists and is the co-founder of Fool Proof, a shared workspace for creativity & collaboration in Minneapolis.

Peter Merholz

Peter Merholz has been active in digital design and product for 25 years, most notably in building Adaptive Path, and now a design executive and product leader.

Kara DeFrias

Adam’s passion is the exciting world of Tabletop Gaming! In 2016 he co-founded XYZ Game Labs and created the card game called RobotLab with his team. He currently spends most weekends playing, talking about or designing tabletop and board games.

Adam McCrimmon

Tanya Snook

Tanya Snook is a user experience designer who builds citizen and employee experiences in the Government of Canada. She is best known for popularizing the phrase "UX Theatre" to describe the superficial posturing that some organizations do in the place of proper user experience design.

Lou Rosenfeld

Lou Rosenfeld is Rosenfeld Media’s founder and publisher. Like many user experience folk, Lou started somewhere (library science), made his way somewhere else (information architecture), and has ended up in an entirely different place (publishing).

Antionette Carroll

Antionette D. Carroll is the Founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit social enterprise designing healthy and racially equitable communities for Black and Latinx populations.

Andy Budd

As a renown Design Leader and agency CEO, Andy helps companies like Virgin Holidays, John Lewis and Penguin Random House with issues of customer experience, product strategy, and digital transformation.

Brian Montana

Brian Montana has an MFA in New Media and works as a Creative Technologist at Conversant. He’s a former Marine, cancer survivor, organizer of CodePen Chicago and museum adventurer.

Dale Sande

Dale Sande has worked as a Senior UX Engineer with companies like Getty Images, BestBuy, Microsoft, REI, AppDirect, and others. He currently leads UI development for the Orion Design System as a Senior Design Technologist with Alaska Airlines in Seattle

Claire Mallory

Claire Mallory is a User Experience Specialist at Centralis, where her endless curiosity, critical thinking, and deep listening skills make her a valuable asset on research and design projects.

Snigdha Sah

I combine my passion for user-centered qualitative research with my ability to work effectively in collaborative spaces to propel my commitment to enhance the everyday experience of users.

Karmen Kaufmann

Karmen is a Lead Designer at Moment where she helps clients envision, create, and evolve digital products through research and strategy.

Katie Swindler

Katie leads the experience strategy for Allstate online marketing products including the Allstate.com quoting experiences and My Account. Originally educated as a theatre director, she brings a unique perspective to digital work.

Fei Ren

Fei is a UX designer and researcher at Cappex in the Chicago area. He likes to hear and share stories and tips regarding UX.

Alina Cvetkova

Alina Cvetkova is a product designer with a passion for user-centered design and setting up UX processes. Originally from Latvia, Alina has at the moment settled in the sunny Barcelona.

Jen Blatz

Jen Blatz is a Principal UX Researcher at BECU. Jen's path to UX started in journalism and graphic design to UX design and finally at UX research and strategy. She has worked in a number of fields including finance, mortgage, cloud storage, security and pet health.

Neil Jacobsen

Neil is a Chicago transplant working as a podcast producer as well as a teacher’s assistant and design mentor with Designation. He loves the design research process, talking to users, then bringing back ideas to them for testing.

Alissa Ampezzan

Alissa is Director of Design at Tempus. Her work has always been driven my impact—currently it’s cancer, but before it was progressive politics, K12 educational technologies, and non-profit marketing.

Don Bora

Don Bora has been a professional software developer in Chicago since 1990. In his career, Don has started 6 companies two of which he sold and two of which are still alive and making a lot of noise.

Jason Kunesh

Jason Kunesh finds simple solutions for gnarly problems wherever people meet technology.

Danielle DuMerer

Danielle is CIO and Commissioner of the Department of Innovation and Technology. Most recently Danielle was the City’s Chief Technology Officer, leading efforts to leverage data and technology to make government more effective, efficient, and innovative.

Jon Yablonski

Jon is a Interactive Design Lead at Vectorform, where he invents digital products and experiences. His passion lies in exploring the intersection of design and development, and often merges these two disciplines into a hybrid approach for solving digital problems.

Garrett Polifka

Garrett Polifka is a User Experience Team Lead with fifteen years experience in the creative industry; ranging from marketing to front-end development as well as software design.

Julie Morycz

Julie Morycz is a Senior Designer at Grand Studio where she focuses on visual/UI design and digital UX. She is an adaptive, inquisitive designer, and is passionate about creating human-centered solutions to common problems… with a side interest in all the crime shows.

Diana Deibel

Diana Deibel is a Lead Designer at Grand Studio in Chicago, a multidisciplinary product design consultancy where she focuses on VUI design, UX strategy and research. Her favorite work combines behavior theory, dialogue writing, and creating a useful, enjoyable experience – while hopefully avoiding breaking any UX laws.

Brian Santiago

Brian has 15+ years of experience across all design disciplines from a wide range of industries including supply-chain, data science, and internet infrastructure.

Cynthia Gelper

I’m a content strategist and practitioner of human-centered content design. Based in Chicago, I got my start as a marketing and technical writer for digital agencies but was drawn to the usability side of things when I saw the sometimes profound disconnect between marketing goals and user objectives.

Amy Johnson

Amy Johnson is a Senior Product Designer at Sprout Social in Chicago, IL. She is a late-diagnosed autistic female and a neurodiversity and product accessibility advocate.

Ryan Page

Ryan Page serves as the VP, Product Design for Cars.com. In his role, Ryan leads a team of talented and multi-disciplinary product designers across the organization.

Natalie D. Hanson, Ph.D.

Natalie D Hanson is a Principal and partner at ZS, where she built and now leads the User Experience team. Prior to ZS, she worked at SAP, where she also built a User Experience team supporting Board-level projects.

Hope for the Day

Suicide is a preventable mental health crisis. The primary obstacle to suicide prevention is the silence of stigma. Stigmas are social and cultural factors that try to dictate how we express ourselves and compel individuals to be silent on their internal experiences.

Christian Spinillo

Christian, a New Jersey native, is an award-winning technology leader, previously holding leadership roles at multiple start-ups and award-winning advertising agencies like Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Doner.

Pasha Moore

Pasha Moore is the founder of Holland Taucher Consulting Group (HTCG), a full-service political and not-for-profit fundraising and event planning firm. Pasha covers all aspects of fundraising and strategy, with a focus on major donor cultivation and corporate partnerships; event production and execution; public affairs and advocacy in various roles.

Jennifer Tress

Jen Tress loves helping people and organizations realize their potential. She’s the author of You’re Not Pretty Enough, which sparked a self-esteem movement for women and girls, and was featured in Marie Claire, The Washington Post, and the Netflix series The Mortified Guide.

Emileigh Barnes

Emileigh Barnes is a poet and design strategist.

Eduardo Ortiz

Eduardo is a designer and an engineer. He has over 17 years of experience working as a software engineer, information architect, and user experience designer.

Andrea Mignolo

Andrea is a designer who has been exploring interactions between humans and technology for the last fifteen years. Her research interests center around the role of reflective practices in organizational design and development.

Todd Zaki Warfel

As an executive coach, Todd Zaki Warfel works with individuals and companies who are interested in personal growth, leadership development, and organisational transformation.

Scott Berkun

Scott Berkun is a bestselling author and popular speaker on creativity, philosophy, culture, business and many other subjects. He’s the author of seven books, including The Myths of Innovation, Confessions of a Public Speaker, and The Year Without Pants.

Jamila Parham

Jamila is very active in Chicago’s Tech Community as a STEM Advocate and Diversity and Inclusion champion. You will find her speaking on panels, working with teachers and students and uplifting her community.

Laura Materna

Laura is a UX designer with a professional background in both graphic design and Spanish translation; these days she mostly translates user needs into graceful software solutions.

Janelle Ward

Janelle has led UX research at digital product companies, both as a founding lead and as a manager upskilling and growing existing research teams. She has a background in psychology and digital communication and spent 15 years in academia before transitioning to the tech world.

Veronica Naguib

Veronica Naguib is the MD at ImpactSense, an insight company who are disrupting the way research and Experience Measurement is done today.

Farai Madzima

Farai Madzima is a UX Manager at Shopify in Ottawa, Canada. He’s an interaction designer and organiser of Pixel Up! meetups and conferences.

Alex W. Castellanos

Alex is a veteran political strategist turned UX researcher who has a love for technology and design. He has deep experience in project management, qualitative research and loves the opportunity to empathize with User stories.

Gina DeConti

Gina started her art training early in life when her mother taught her to draw before she could barely hold a pencil. Since then she’s continued to love all things related to art and design.

Gabby Hon

With 20+ years experience in UX, and having worked with Fortune 100 companies and top agencies, Gabby has seen things you people wouldn’t believe.

David Antognoli

David Antognoli is a game developer and professor of game design at Columbia College Chicago. A game industry veteran with experience in both programming and game design roles, he has worked on projects with companies like Microsoft, Sega, 2K Games, and Nickelodeon.

David Gerding

Dave Gerding has been called a “gifted motivational speaker” and “energizer bunny” by his consulting clients. Dave is an Associate Professor in Interactive Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago where he teaches both media theory and advanced software development courses.

Rocio Werner

Rocio is a Senior User Experience Researcher at ZS Associates, conducting studies and collaborating on strategic initiatives across 5 product verticals in the Software Development Group.

Danyell Jones

Danyell is the UX Research Lead at ZS Associates in Evanston, IL, where she oversees and conducts research across 5 different verticals in the Software Development group that helps teams develop software applications that support pharmaceutical clients.

Gail Swanson

Gail Swanson helps people solve product and service problems without blowing themselves up. Throughout her design career across many industries, she’s been dedicated to helping talented folks be effective at their jobs. Gail built the strategy practice at 18F, and has returned to public service improving the experience of disaster survivors as they recover and rebuild. Gail speaks and writes about all manners of design, strategy, and digital innovation.

Colin MacArthur

Colin MacArthur is the former Director of Digital Practice, and Head of Design Research, at the Canadian Digital Service. Now he’s an Adjunct Professor of Design and Digital Government at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. He also advises several organizations on design and research strategy. Colin was once described as a “die-hard artificial intelligence hater,” but has been teaching students to use AI to do UX reseach for several years now.

Sunny Stueve

Sunny Stueve is a Senior User Experience Architect in Washington, DC. For the last several years, she has focused on incorporating human centered methodologies, intuitive design, and research into the agile processes of complex, large-scale, enterprise applications in support of National Security missions

Michelle Schulp

Michelle is an independent graphic designer and frontend developer in Minneapolis. Prior to beginning her career, she studied Visual Communications, with minors in Psychology and Sociology.

Michaela Hackner

Michaela is passionate about using words and stories to make the world a better place. She started her career designing content in the nonprofit space where she worked with women entrepreneurs in Cambodia and East Africa, and led the design of web experiences for the Gates Foundation and Red Cross.

Matthew Eng

Matt is a Design and Research Lead for IBM Design. He has worked on projects for companies such as American Airlines, AT&T, Ogilvy and Symantec. During these projects, he has conducted numerous design and research efforts that helped to align and focus stakeholders with diverse needs.

Kim Goodwin

You may know Kim Goodwin from her bestselling book, Designing for the Digital Age. Kim is a consultant who helps organizations build their UX capabilities. She has served as VP of Product & UX at PatientsLikeMe and as VP Design & General Manager at Cooper, leading an integrated practice of interaction, visual, and industrial designers and the development of the acclaimed Cooper U design curriculum.

Scott Sullivan

Scott is the Head of North American Design Group at Ascendum, and helps to build products and services to assist people in making positive long-term changes to their behavior.

Tanner Christensen

Tanner Christensen is the Head of design at Gem.com, where they’re building the platform for the future of recruiting.

Jasmine Friedl

Jasmine is the Director of Design at Intercom, and previously led product design at Udacity, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Facebook.

Alyssa Boehm

Alyssa is the Vice President of User Experience at Forrester. She has established UX practices, career ladders, and built high-performing, cross-functional teams in a variety of spaces including customer science, healthcare, financial services, and education.

De Nichols

De Nichols is a designer, activist, social entrepreneur, and lecturer addressing racial inequities within the built environment through the production of interactive art experiences, digital media, and social interventions.

Jabali Williams

As Director of User Experience, Jabali’s impact spans both clients and disciplines.

Lena Trudeau

Lena Trudeau is the COO at Fu Associates. Lena served as a member of the U.S. Federal Government’s Senior Executive Service. As Associate Commissioner at the General Services Administration (GSA), she was mandated to leverage technology to modernize procurement practices and transform business operations.

Donna Lichaw

Donna Lichaw is an executive coach, speaker, author, and tin robot collector serving leaders in the product, design, and tech community at large.

Maggie Hsu

Maggie Hsu is a Co-Founder of Gold House, a nonprofit collective of pioneering Asian leaders dedicated to systematically accelerating the Asian diaspora’s societal impact while enhancing the community’s cultural legacy.

Celia Hodent

Celia Hodent is an expert in the application of cognitive science and psychology to improve products, systems, services, and video games. She currently leads an independent UX consultancy, working with a wide range of international media and enterprise companies.

Stephen P. Anderson

Stephen P. Anderson is a speaker and author who spends too much time thinking about visual collaboration, how people learn, and board games; not necessarily in that order. Oh, and he’s on a mission: To make learning the hard stuff fun, by creating ‘things to think with’ and ‘spaces’ for generative play.

Michelle Y. Bess

Michelle Y. Bess serves as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Director at Sprout Social, focusing on efforts to ensure all people feel a sense of belonging and that their voices are heard.

Alesha Arp

Alesha Arp is a Senior User Experience Researcher whose work has informed the design of software platforms, digital and physical spaces, and business processes.

Melinda Kilner

Melinda is a Senior Product Designer at Gem, helping teams nurture top talent. With a background in front-end development, she also has extensive experience designing for the learning and training space, and helping worldwide organizations build their digital content design systems.

Sup Suh

Sup Suh is an experience designer at Bounteous, where his work encompasses everything from user research to human-centered design.

Tricia Okin

Tricia Okin is a lead user experience designer and service designer who uses design thinking for the public good and the good of her clients’ businesses.

Margo Stern

Margo Stern, a Content Strategist at Level, has been making the rounds in Silicon Valley content circles since it became a thing (about ten years ago). After stints at Google, Twitter and Facebook, she made the switch to the start-up world in September 2020.

Saskia Videler

Saskia Videler is a senior content strategist in Belgium. She helps organizations streamline their content and communication efforts.

Lauren Liss

Lauren Liss coordinates the Interaction Design major and the User Experience and Web Development minors in the Interactive Arts and Media (IAM) Department at Columbia College Chicago and has been a faculty member in this program since 2006.

Clifton Simmons

Clifton is a senior content strategist for Allstate, focusing on claims and roadside service. He’s dedicated to inspiring a diverse generation of UX design professionals, working as a mentor and instructor in various programs.

Jatin Gupta

Jatin is a product designer at T-Mobile currently designing the T-Mobile for Business self-service platform. He is passionate about problem-solving in the digital space while keeping sustainability and ethics in mind.

Lindsey Gates-Markel

Lindsey leads content strategy at Pixo, working with teams of clients, designers, and developers to explore the space between what exists and what is possible. She loves dumb questions and metadata.

Nikki Espartinez

Nikki Espartinez is a designer of digital experiences and products. The core themes of her work are User Experience, Design Operations and Design Evangelism. Nikki is very passionate about all three of them.

Billy Carlson

Billy Carlson Billy Carlson is a design educator at Balsamiq, where he helps new and non-designers learn best practices for all phases of user interface and digital product design.

Lis Hubert

Lis is an acclaimed design and strategy thought leader, writer, and speaker with extensive expertise in Digital Strategy, Customer Experience, Information Architecture, and Design Thinking.

Diana Sonis

Diana is a passionate believer in holistic, 360 strategy and design, with extensive expertise in UX Design, CX Design, Service Design, and the Design Thinking methodology.

Megan Machamer

UX research specialist and ethnographer with 10 years of social science research experience in both professional and academic contexts.

Amanda Weller

Amanda has over 10 years of experience designing and executing custom projects that deliver creative, insightful solutions to complex problems to create intuitive, innovative, useful, fun experiences for people around the world.

Barkha Sharma

Barkha is an experience designer at TO THE NEW, a digital transformation services company in Delhi, India. Academically, she holds a bachelors in computer science engineering and is pursuing masters in psychology.

Jeff Eaton

Jeff Eaton helps large organizations understand, model, and manage their content. For 25 years, he's tackled digital publishing, web development, and content strategy problems for organizations large and small.

Ian Fenn

Ian Fenn is a Senior Product Designer at tails.com. Since 2014, he has been advising other designers on how to represent their value effectively to potential clients and employers. He is the author of Lobster Book, the definitive guide to UX Portfolio design, and creator of the popular UX Portfolio Essentials course.

Margot Bloomstein

Margot Bloomstein is a speaker, strategic adviser, and the principal of Appropriate, Inc., a brand and content strategy consultancy. For two decades, she’s helped organizations improve communication through brand-driven content strategy.

Carolyn Chandler

Carolyn Chandler has been working in the field of User Experience Design for over 20 years, after finding it due to a driving interest in psychology and anthropology. As Director of UX at Eight Bit Studios, her areas of specialty include design strategy and leadership, interaction design, and user research and modeling.

Lisa Dance

Lisa D. Dance is a UX Designer/Founder at ServiceEase, a consultancy that helps businesses and non-profit organizations “be easy to do business with” by using user centered research and design.

Justin Dauer

Justin is a multi-faceted, multi-pierced, multi-tattooed designer, author, and speaker. He wrote the celebrated book “Creative Culture,” speaks internationally on culture and design, and is the Vice President of Design at bswift, a CVS Health company.

Jessi Shakarian

Jessi Shakarian got her start in tech as a developer, but found that she loved everything that happens before it’s time to code. She works as a freelance UX and accessibility consultant, and is currently the accessibility lead at DIA Design Guild.

Ana Peralta

Ana V Peralta is a User Experience Designer, CSPO and User Experience Strategist based in Austin, Texas. Ana is known for her work with the Dell IT Support site, Facebook’s Transparency reports and Disney’s Corporate Retreat e-brochure website where you can build magical itineraries with your colleagues.

Jess McPheron

A tinkerer at heart, Jess McPheron is an ideating and problem-solving enthusiast. Curiosity and a passion for creating led him into the world of product management seven years ago when building his own ecommerce concept.

Jason Cranford Teague

Jason is a creative strategist, writer, and speaker who has written numerous books and articles about digital design and creative development. His books include the best selling CSS Visual Quickstart Guide and Final Cut Pro and the Art of Filmmaking.

Dani Nordin

Dani Nordin works for athenahealth as the Product Design Architect for athenaClinicals. There, she uses her superpowers in user research, pattern recognition, and snark to help the organization unpack big, gnarly problems related to EHR configuration, clinical content, and specialty support.

Natalie Kurz

Natalie Kurz has spent the last 20 years helping elevate digital experiences from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Her unique skill set bridges the gap between strategy and execution, manager and designer, analytical and creative thinker.

Amy Jiménez Márquez

Amy Jiménez Márquez is the owner and Publisher of Boxes and Arrows, devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design—including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture, and the design of business.

Adam Polansky

Adam Polansky is not a new face in the UX Community having been a regular fixture at events and meet-ups around the world for a long time.

Ashleigh Axios

Ashleigh Axios is a speaker, strategic creative, and an advocate for design’s ability to break barriers and create positive social change. She is Chief Experience Officer and a Partner at Coforma, a digital consultancy and design firm that crafts creative solutions and builds technology products that support communities.

Derek Featherstone

Derek Featherstone is an internationally known speaker, practitioner, and authority on accessibility and inclusive design. He has been working on the web since 1999, when he left his career as a high school teacher to start his own web design company.

Loriah Pope

A self-described what-iffer, Loriah is passionate about working across disciplines and teams to clarify complex problem spaces. She finds everything endlessly fascinating, asks way too many questions, and writes about those questions sometimes on Medium.

Kathy Wang

Kathy is the US-born daughter of Chinese-born parents. As an Asian-American, she experienced her childhood as a third culture kid.

Dean Schuster

Founder and partner of truematter, a user experience strategy firm, Dean has created user-centered digital products for 25 years. He oversees truematter’s UX practice, leading engagements for regional organizations as well as the Fortune 100.

Cristina Simonetto

Cris is a content designer in Toronto with about 15 years experience writing for UX. Currently, she’s a content chapter lead at RBC, Canada’s largest bank.

Colleen Pellissier

Colleen is passionate about collaboration, human-centered research, and a holistic approach to creating products. She’s currently a UX Researcher at Groupon; bringing a customer-focused lens to teams and initiatives across the organization with a fiery heart and quick wit.

Cliff Seal

Cliff is a Principal Designer at Salesforce, helping build world-class customer experience tools. For him, experience design is a strategy for creating positive change in the world for others—not in a vague sense, but a literal one.

Betsy Freeman

Betsy is a curious creative currently working as a Senior Experience Designer at Intuit.

Karen VanHouten

A curious skeptic and expert snark, Karen has a deep love for beautiful messes fostered over 20 years of work in UX and product.

Adam Connor

Adam’s work focuses on helping teams and organisations strengthen and grow their human-centered design and innovation capabilities. As a design leader, Adam’s work blends systems thinking, HCD, anthropology, and organisational behaviour to foster more collaborative, creative and customer-centric organisations.

Abi Jones

Abi Jones leads a team of designers and researchers in Google Health, an organization that works across a variety of medical specialties to dramatically improve the availability and accuracy of medical services, with a focus on cancer, skin conditions, and diabetic eye disease.

Aaron Irizarry

Aaron Irizarry, aka “Ron,” is the Head of Credit Solutions Design in Capital One’s Commercial Bank. Aaron is also the co-author of Discussing Design: Improving Communication and Collaboration through Critique.

Lindsey Latiolais

Lindsey is a former UX Researcher with over 10 years in the field, and most recently a former Product Manager with about a year and a half of experience. After severely burning out and losing her job a year and a half ago, she's been on a path of recovery and self-discovery, finding new passions and drives in a completely new mental landscape.

Christian Lane

Marc leads content strategy, content design and copywriting at U.Group. His team cuts through the cruft to drive action and simplify services.

Carmen Medina

Carmen is an organizational heretic and all-purpose troublemaker whose only real expertise is asking stupid questions and noticing odd, new things that might amount to something…or maybe not.

Carmen Bocanegra

Over the past decade, Carmen has led teams through the process of research, strategy, and design.

Chris Avore

Chris is a Vice President, Head of Design who leads teams, drives product strategy, and helps executives understand the value of design. He has championed design, research, and content strategy to improve the services people use every day in organizations of all sizes and industries around the globe.

Megan Kellie

Megan Kellie is a writer, actor, improviser and illustrator. She lives in Chicago where she regularly repurposes cardboard and goes to Blick.

Susan Salvi

Originally from (sincerely) wonderful Pittsburgh, Sue Salvi is an actor, improvisor, and writer who now lives in Chicago.

Meena Kothandaraman

With 30 years of experience, Meena has consulted to emphasize the strategic value and positioning of qualitative research in the design of product, space and service.

Maria Pereda

Maria leads design at Clio, helping increase access to justice while improving the lives of lawyers. Previously, she’s led teams at Roadmunk, Schoology, Critical Mass and GE.

Marc Rambeau

Marc leads content strategy, content design and copywriting at U.Group. His team cuts through the cruft to drive action and simplify services.

Helen Keighron

Helen Keighron, Director of Product Design at HubSpot, is focused on leading and scaling multi-disciplinary UX teams.

Christine McGlade

Christine McGlade has been a digital media producer, designer, and educator for over 20 years. She is a sessional lecturer in the Digital Futures faculty at OCAD University in Toronto where she teaches topics in user experience design and user research, data visualization, futures thinking, and the ethical issues that arise when we step into design leadership roles in the digital economy.

JR Miller

JR Miller is a Caribbean-American writer, designer, and speaker in the Bay Area. He’s worked on design and brand initiatives for companies such as Google, cPanel, and Grooveshark.

Eva PenzeyMoog

Eva PenzeyMoog is a Chicago-based UX designer who focuses on the emerging space of safety design. Before joining the tech field she worked in education non-profit and volunteered as a domestic violence educator and rape crisis counselor.

David Dylan Thomas

David Dylan Thomas, author of Design for Cognitive Bias, creator and host of The Cognitive Bias Podcast, and a twenty-year practitioner of content strategy and UX, has consulted major clients in entertainment, healthcare, publishing, finance, and retail.

Dr. Temple Grandin

Dr. Temple Grandin, a world-renowned autism spokesperson, scientist, and inventor, has served as an inspiration and role model to hundreds of thousands of families and persons with autism. In this unique presentation, Temple eloquently and candidly describes the challenges she has faced and offers glimpses into her own childhood, with ideas on how others dealing with autism can meet these obstacles and improve the quality of their lives.

Julia Beauchamp Kraft

Julia Beauchamp Kraft is the founder of the public speaking training company, Speak To Inspire. Founded in 2014, Speak To Inspire has trained 1000’s of entrepreneurs and professionals as well as 100’s of companies like LinkedIn, Salesforce, ZScaler, Twitter, etc.

Joanne Wang

Joanne is an extremely thoughtful designer who thinks iteratively. She has a sharp eye for design and can quickly connect the dots on complex workflow products.

Emily Wachowiak

Emily has worked with digital content for 10+ years, shifting from marketing copywriting and content strategy to UX writing and content design. She founded the UX writing practice at Peapod Digital Labs (the e-commerce provider for grocery brands such as Stop & Shop) before practicing content design team at Upwork and Mozilla.

Casey Hald

Casey Hald has been doing web design & user experience since 2008. He has worked mostly on enterprise software—developing rapid prototypes and conducting usability sessions to determine usability for designs.

Jaime Ventura

As a user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design professional, Jaime Ventura is an expert in implementing government procedures and requirements to digital platforms.

Christian Crumlish

Christian Crumlish is a product and UX leadership consultant at Design in Product, where he also hosts a product/UX community.

Lisa deBettencourt

Lisa is a product strategy and design leader. She works with organizations in healthcare and life sciences to discover, develop, and operationalize innovative ways to improve the patient and clinical experience.

Carol J. Smith

Carol Smith has been has been improving the human experience across industries for 20 years and working to improve AI systems since 2015.

Emily Haines Lloyd

A copywriter, magazine contributor, and novelist—Emily Haines Lloyd has been telling stories her entire life.

Natalie M. Dunbar

Natalie Marie Dunbar is a UX-focused content strategist with a unique blend of skills as a journalist, content writer, and user researcher

Liya James

Liya is co-founder of The Center for Deep Self Design. She joined the Center as it was re-incarnating post-pandemic, bringing a welcome set of insight and expertise that is harmonious and complementary to the mission.

Brad Nunnally

Brad Nunnally is the Senior Director of User Experience at Intellibridge and a co-author of “Designing The Conversation: Techniques for Successful Facilitation” for New Riders (Voices That Matter) and “UX Research: Practical Techniques for Designing Better Products” for O’Reilly Media.

Anne Hjortshøj

Anne Hjortshoj is a product design leader with an accidental specialty in spinning up new teams. During her 20+ year career, she’s successfully led design and product teams in industries as disparate as automotive, cybersecurity, online education, financial services, politics, and advertising.

Wil Reynolds

Wil has been helping Fortune 500 companies develop brand marketing strategies since 1999. As Seer’s Vice President of Innovation, Wil develops strategies and innovations to help clients build traffic and make money.

Mags Hanley

Mags Hanley is a career and executive coach for UX designers. Using her over 25 years as a Designer and UX Leader, she works with designers at all stages of their careers.

Wendy Johansson

Wendy Johansson is a founder, entrepreneur, and Product Experience leader who has spent her career building equitable teams and products in tech.

Kevin Klos

Kevin Klos is a Senior Experience Designer (The Star Wars equivalent of a Jedi Master) with Best Buy, where he uses human centered design, testing and analytics to vanquish deceptive design and make easy-to-use experiences for Best Buy customers. For more, keep up with Kevin at klosencounters.com or on Twitter as @kevinklos.