Jamila Parham

Tech Leader, Diversity & Inclusion Champion

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. One of her many passions is advocating on behalf of under-represented communities in order to address the lack of diversity in STEM.

The Tech Unicorn has been featured by Verizon as 1 of 10 brilliant men and women breaking stereotypes in their professions. The Root highlighted Jamila as one of “The 10: These Black Women Are Changing the Face of Tech.” She was honored as a 40 Under 40 Awardee and featured by MADE Magazine as “A Millennial to Watch in 2018.” The Tech Unicorn has been recently been nominated by the Editorial Board of Women In IT Awards USA as “Future CIO of the Year 2018.” Stay tuned, The Tech Unicorn has big dreams and even bigger plans!

For more, keep up with Jamila at jamilaparham.com or on Twitter as @JamilaParham.

The Truth About Diversity & Inclusion and The Unicorn Experience in Marginalized Spaces

In this powerful talk, STEM advocate and tech leader, Jamila Parham shares her story to inspire audiences to seize their maximum potential, champion tech equity and move beyond inspiration to actionable change.

Scott Berkun

Author & Speaker

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. His work has appeared, or been mentioned, in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, Wired magazine, USA Today, Fast Company, National Public Radio, The Huffington Post and other media. He studied philosophy, computer science and design at CMU, was a manager at Microsoft (’94-’03) and WordPress.com (’10-’12), and currently works full time as a writer and speaker.

For more, keep up with Scott at scottberkun.com or on Twitter as @berkun.

The Design & Power Playbook (aka Why Designers Hate Politics & What To Do About it)

Even with a grand seat at the table, big decisions hinge on two overlooked factors 1) who at the table has the most power? and 2) how can they be influenced? Designers notoriously overlook how their lack of political acumen cripples their ability to make good design happen. But fear not: this fast paced talk based on the critical situations that impact designers teaches a situational playbook for turning things around.

Stephen P. Anderson

Founder, The Mighty Minds Club

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. Through custom-designed toolkits, training, and via The Mighty Minds Club, Stephen helps teams and individuals work through difficult situations. Stephen currently works in the Labs/Ventures group at MURAL, exploring new ways an increasingly digital and hybrid workforce might collaborate together. As a keynote speaker, Stephen continues to challenge and inspire audiences as he exposes the quirky connections between games, play, learning, interactive visualizations, and other exciting topics.

Stephen’s newest book Figure It Out: Getting From Information to Understanding has been described as an epic journey that will “change the way you see the world” and “required reading for designers and anyone else who needs to explain things.”

For more, keep up with Stephen at poetpainter.com or on Twitter as @stephenanderson.

Facilitating Structures

Changing times require new kinds of leadership. This talk will explore “Facilitating Structures”, a different lens for all we do—especially as designers and design leaders, where our role increasingly resembles that of an educator, as we work through and with cross-disciplinary teams. Stephen P. Anderson will share the learning journey he’s been on and why it’s time to reboot how we think about shaping organizations.

Todd Zaki Warfel

Executive Coach

As an executive coach, Todd Zaki Warfel works with individuals and companies who are interested in personal growth, leadership development, and organisational transformation. Having held leadership roles at Twitter, Cisco, and Workday, he’s learned a lot about building teams, developing purpose-driven leaders, and navigating the seas of change.

For more, keep up with Todd at zakiwarfel.com or on Twitter as @zakiwarfel.

Keynote:

The Design Career Journey

Everyone wants to hire great talent. But how do we define great? Does that change over time? How do you know you’re recruiting and hiring the right people? How do you retain and develop talent, giving your team meaning, purpose, and ownership?

In the Design Career Journey, we’ll explore a framework for recruiting, retaining, and developing top talent—including the common question of “Should I go into management?”

Workshop:

The Design Leadership Playbook

Have you ever tried to be the leader someone else expected? Found yourself not measuring up to expectations—either your own or someone else’s? Ever asked the question “How do I become a better leader?”

Whether you’re transitioning into a new role or have been managing teams for years, design leadership comes with a unique set of challenges. In this half day workshop, we’ll tackle the most common questions and challenges faced by today’s design leaders. You’re guaranteed to walk out of this workshop with your very own leadership playbook ready to tackle new leadership challenges.

Participants will take away: Principles and techniques for becoming a more effective leader Personal leadership values and vision How and when to adjust your leadership style (situational leadership) Leadership roles for both individual contributors and managers Identifying and developing leaders within your team.

Andrea Mignolo

VP Product & Design, Movable Ink

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.Andrea is currently the Head of Design and UX at Movable Ink where she helps craft product strategy, innovation, creative direction, and development. She holds an MBA from the Weatherhead School of Management where she concentrated on enhancing mutual intelligibility between the realms of design and business. She also holds a BA in Technocultural Studies from Oberlin College.

Prior to Movable Ink she was the Chief Design Officer at SimpleReach, a local leader for both the Vancouver and New York branches of the Interaction Design Association, and the Creative Director of NabeWise, a neighborhood-centric start-up acquired by Airbnb in 2012.

In previous lives she’s been a video game tester, an English teacher at the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, and was the developer of the once-popular Oulipo Wordpress Theme.

For more, keep up with Andrea at pnts.us or on Twitter as @pnts.

Don’t Forget the Design!

Stepping into leadership positions heralds a change in our roles and responsibilities, and often includes a shift from hands-on design to more strategic and operational management. At this level our success depends on a thorough understanding of the business and partnering with departments across the organization. But what does design look like when we’re no longer designing products and services? What are we designing?

As we navigate these new realms it can be hard to find the language to bridge the logic of business with the sensemaking of design. How can we be good business partners and designers? Faced with a lack of intelligibility between the two realms it can feel like we have to choose one or the other. Together we’ll explore the relationship between business and design, examine ways to resolve tensions between the two realms, and check out a new lens through which to understand the value of design.

Anne Hjortshoj

Senior Director of User Experience, CarGurus

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. Anne is currently Senior Director of UX at CarGurus, where she’s leading the team she founded three and a half years ago.

For more, keep up with Anne at annehj.com or on Twitter as @annesaurus.

Baby Shark: Leveraging Organizational Politics for Design Team Success

It can be a struggle to make the practice of design truly influential. Between engaging with engineering methodologies, negotiating the boundaries of design ownership with product management, and arguing for the value of design-led business decisions (not to mention managing their own people), design leaders find it difficult to gain ground for their team.

There are approaches you can learn from and/or use to train your team to detect and leverage underlying organizational systems by tuning in to competing goals and process nuances. Armed with this—and a healthy sense of collaboration and allyship with other groups—your sharks can achieve influence in their own right and magnify yours.

Chris Avore

Product Design Manager, Facebook

Chris is a design manager 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. He is the co-author of Liftoff! Practical Design Leadership to Elevate Your Team, Organization, and You! and regularly speaks at major conferences and local meetups regarding topics from design management, scaling design, and design operations.

For more, keep up with Chris on Twitter as @erova.

​Leveling Up Design Leadership

Sometimes you ask for something for so long that you’re not quite sure what to do with it once you get it. Many design leaders now find themselves with more responsibility, greater influence, and improved autonomy to lead their practices as they see best–and all while under the watchful eye of people who were willing to take the risk (and who also might not be willing to see it fail even the slightest). It’s a lot–there are relationships to manage across teams and departments, leadership to manage and keep informed of progress, and then the Human Resources obligations that frequently feel less-than-human and that take more time than anyone every thought.

When we understand how to scale our teams (up AND down), how to elevate our design maturity within our practices and within the organization, we can set ourselves up to better succeed as design leaders. These aren’t new challenges–they’re only new to us, and there are approaches to explore from successes and failures within the design industry and from those who came before us, as well as those who are alongside us now.

Eduardo Ortiz

Partner, Product, &Partners

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. For the past 10 years he’s been focused on developing design within social impact practices in order to help make a positive difference in the world. He’s co-founded Project 100, an organization dedicated to helping get progressive women elected to Congress, and PRTNRS, LLC a social impact design and engineering studio working with organizations that are helping improve their communities. He previously held several titles (Executive Creative Director, Director, Designer) at the US Digital Service, a White House startup launched under President Obama to use design and technology to deliver better services to the American people; he focused on immigration reform and developing new capabilities for NATO, prior to that he focused on helping veterans achieve financial security through technology and development of financial literacy at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a Technology and Innovation Fellow. He is the a Founder and Partner of &Partners. He is also a retired and decorated Marine Corps combat veteran.

For more, keep up with Eduardo at ed.uar.do or on Twitter as @eduardoortiz.

We Work This Way on Purpose: Habits, Accountability, & Technology Foundations for Successful Teams

The foundation for good work is established by creating an environment that sets people up for success. We all need to be held accountable while being creatively stimulated and having strong guidelines around our work ethics and habits, and how we work together, regardless of our location.

As leaders, we’re responsible for establishing this foundational bedrock. We’ll explore a series of thoughtfully designed pillars that you can use as your foundation to enable the full potential of your teams to be realized.

Emileigh Barnes

Design Manager, Capital One

Emileigh Barnes is a poet and design strategist. These days, she leads financial empowerment projects at Capital One, where she’s a member of the Bank Design Senior Leadership Team. Before that, she worked at 18F and in the Department of Justice.

Emileigh is a lover of plain language and the Oxford comma, Emileigh led the content strategy for everykidinapark.gov and the Federal Election Commission’s digital transformation. She’s spoken about her work at conferences like UX Week, IA Summit, and Confab.

For more, keep up with Emileigh at emileighbarnes.com or on Twitter as @emileighoutlaw.

Your Craft AND Your Influence

To be effective, to be inspiring, to drive results, leaders need a strategy for building and maintaining relationships. As practitioners, we spend our careers perfecting our craft. Until the day we’re promoted to a “leadership position,” and suddenly craft expertise isn’t enough to get things done.

Of course we still need our skills. And we need organizational influence just as much. Good work alone doesn’t speak for itself, as rarely does speaking for yourself alone.

It’s that right balance of craft and influence that is the difference between becoming Paul Revere and becoming William Dawes.

Who was William Dawes?

Exactly.

Jennifer Tress

Author, You’re Not Pretty Enough

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.

As a long time practitioner in organizational development and talent management, Jen has guided countless organizations through high growth cycles and significant change, including at FedEx, Nationwide Insurance, The Nature Conservancy and most recently at 18F, Ad Hoc and digitalundivided.

For more, keep up with Jennifer at yourenotprettyenough.com or on Twitter as @jdtress.

The 4-Point Plan to Dealing with Chaos at Work

Should I stay or should I go? When chaos reigns supreme in our organizations and the layers of systems that exist within them, it can negatively impact our own experience and the experience of the people we manage. When that happens, we start to question whether we’re in the right place, even when we love our teammates and our work. But is the grass necessarily greener elsewhere?

There are plenty of reasons for organizational chaos: bureaucratic structures and politics, limited vision, guidance and clarity, and poor processes are some of the biggest challenges we face. Trying to navigate organizations when chaos abounds is stressful, and often leads to burnout.

Fortunately, there are ways to manage through this before burnout happens—to you or your team. I’ve spent over 20 years researching and working with all types of organizations—from publicly traded companies to nonprofits to governments and everything in between to uncover four key methods to analyze your experience, disrupt it, and make empowered choices moving forward.

Karen VanHouten

Principal Consultant, Open Systems Technologies

A curious enthusiast with a deep love for beautiful messes (fostered over 20 years working in UX for enterprise solutions), Karen currently works as a Principal Consultant for OST (Open Systems Technologies). There she works with organizations to develop holistic digital strategies and build comfort operating in the space between opportunity and risk. She is passionate about intentionally designed work environments, and focuses on inclusion, collaboration, and space for play and experimentation as the most consistent drivers for sustainable success. She also swears a lot, especially on Twitter. And she can show you where she lives on her hand.

For more, keep up with Karen at karenvanhouten.com or on Twitter as @designinginward.

Session:

A Method for the Madness

When confronted with challenges, whether professional or personal, we often ask some variation of this question: “How do I do [this scary, difficult, yet necessary thing] without actually having to experience any discomfort or take any risks?” As a speaker and design leader, I get asked some version of this question every time I give a talk or work with new team struggling to change.

Obviously, the answer is: you can’t. There is plenty of discussion right now of the necessity of getting comfortable with discomfort, but very little actual guidance on how that process works. Instead, we hear tales of transformation that follow a vague formula of initiating events, challenges faced, victories won. These stories can be inspiring, but beyond that, they don’t provide much help for people struggling to take the leap out of their comfort zone. Without any practical guidance, many people hesitate and wait, static and stagnant, choosing to be careful instead curious.

I’ll outline a step-by-step approach for pushing outside our comfort zones and expanding our experiences. I’ll start by contrasting the perception of how our comfort zones serve us with the very different reality of how they work against us. I’ll blast through the most common excuses we have for staying put versus moving forward. We’ll explore simple, tactical ways to push through our resistance, move past our fears, and nurture the courage to design better relationships and make more authentic choices, in our careers, and our lives.

Workshop:

Healthier Teams by Design

From the outside, high performing teams, particularly highly collaborative and innovative ones, seem to demonstrate an innate chemistry and the ability to harness the power of serendipity. But the truth is, successful teams are incredibly deliberate and intentional about how they work. Culture, processes and best practices should be designed with as much care as the products and services we build. And, while there are certain essential characteristics common to successful teams, the unique challenges of our work context and our project needs also require a team uniquely optimized for those situations.

Every experience is designed, including our team experience. In this workshop, we’ll explore how we can use design tools to design better ways of working. Based on the challenges of your projects and the skills and traits of your amazing team members, we’ll look at how you’d like the team to evolve and articulate specific goals that can be measured. We’ll define an MVP approach to help you develop small experiments for opportunities and interventions that will help you establish new, more effective patterns of communicating and collaborating.

Pasha Moore

Founder & Principal, Holland Taucher Consulting Group (HTCG)

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.

With over 15 years of political experience, Pasha has previously worked in various roles with over 120 campaigns, political organizations, tech organizations, and not-for-profits. Under the HTCG masthead, Pasha has directed the fundraising and development of numerous national, state, and local campaigns and political organizations in Texas and beyond, including state judicial campaigns, legislative races, and congressional races; national campaigns and PACs; and state-based political GOTV organizations. Outside of development, Pasha has produced scores of multi-day corporate, political, and tech conferences as well as hackathons and symposiums.

Additionally, Pasha is a member of the Advisory Council of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life at The University of Texas at Austin, where she has taught at the ASI Campaign Bootcamp for the last eight years; as well as engaged in the Austin community via memberships in the Junior League of Austin and the Women’s Symphony League.

Negotiating the Difficult: Deciding Which Hills to Die On

Everyone wants everything, and they want it their way. Sometimes, it feels like you’re choosing your battles on a daily basis–from working with humans who have different motivations to trying to meet seemingly impossible goals with even more impossible deadlines.

I’m not going to tell you I’ve seen it all, however, I am going to tell you that as a political fundraiser, I’ve seen a lot, I’ve been underestimated a lot, and I’ve exceeded a lot of expectations. I’ve even stood my ground when it could have been easier to take a different path!

We’ll explore approaches to making choices based on the right reasons and for the right causes; maximizing your resources; and how to ultimately hold that chosen hill when it’s time to dig in. I’ll share my approach to isolating the factors worth considering and negotiating the best outcomes based upon the constraints you’ve been dealt–and how to make everyone feel like they’re winning something, even when it requires both sides giving up a little.

Christian Spinillo

Co-founder, VoiceSquared

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. Throughout his career, he has focused on large scale product platforms and experiential marketing, exposing him to many alternative interfaces. Over the last 4 years, Christian has focused almost entirely on voice-first technologies, having written multiple patents for voice-first products and platforms. In 2019, Christian co-founded VoiceSquared, a measurement and personalization platform for voice experiences. When he’s not focused on VoiceSquared, you’ll find Christian farming with his wife, Kate, and son, Luca, on 30 acres in mid-Michigan. They own and manage Ham Sweet Farm, where they raise pastured heritage hogs and poultry.

For more, keep up with Christian at christianspinillo.com.

​Praise the Lard! Farming Saved My Life

Years of 80+ hour weeks finally took their toll on me, and I lost complete control of my bipolar, and subsequently who I was. I forgot that my good fortune as the son of a 15-year-old Italian immigrant exposed me to a connection with food and the earth seldom found in this country. I knew that I needed to get back to having my hands in the dirt and growing my food. Fast forward to farming 35+ hours a week while still holding down a VP level position at a leading start-up, and six years later running a farm with my wife and son.

Ham Sweet Farm is now a 30 member meat CSA, which stands for Community-Supported Agriculture, and one of a handful of small farms across the country working to preserve and save the American Guinea Hog, a heritage hog breed considered “threatened” by The Livestock Conservancy. In addition to the CSA, you’ll find Ham Sweet Farm pork on menus from anywhere from mid-Michigan to Chicago.

Helen Keighron

Director of Product Design, HubSpot

Helen Keighron, Director of Product Design at HubSpot, is focused on leading and scaling multi-disciplinary UX teams. HubSpot’s UX organization numbers in the 160s and growing, and the team’s dedicated work has helped small businesses grow, driven unprecedented NPS growth, and cemented HubSpot’s ease of use advantage over other CRM platforms. Helen is hiring roles at all levels, so you should probably get in touch. She lives in Massachusetts with her family and unruly cats.

For more, keep up with Helen on Twitter as @helenpremium.

Designing Your Leadership Career Search

When we interview for a new role, design leaders frequently are not screened and evaluated the way other leaders in a company might be. In my most recent search, I tapped into a vast network of other design leaders and solicited their best advice. I leveraged their advice so effectively that well-known companies fought for me based on my skills as a leader, not a maker.

When design leaders search for new opportunities we are confronted with a market that doesn’t know where to place us internally or how to hire us. We face well-intentioned yet naïve requests for artifacts and exercises, all while being evaluated by people who don’t know what good design leadership looks like. I’ll regale you with tales from my experiences so we can all learn to elevate the design leadership hiring process!

Maria Pereda

Director of Product Design, Clio

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. In her spare time, which is never, Maria is learning to play guitar.

In 2018, she made a promise to never buy clothes again, and to this day, she continues to make her own clothes.

Tailored by Design: A Year of Making My Own Clothes

This January, I challenged myself to go the entire year without purchasing clothes. If I wanted some new pants or shirt, I had to make it myself. The kicker? I did not know how to sew. That’s right, I needed to start from scratch in a new field, or the only new clothes I would have would be the emperor’s.

I’ve been a designer for over 15 years and sometimes it’s easy to forget how it feels to be a beginner. It’s both unnerving and exciting at the same time. Learn about my successes, failures, and unexpected learnings making my own clothes for the past year.

Megan Kellie

Writer, Actor, Improviser, Illustrator

Megan Kellie is a writer, actor, improviser and illustrator. She lives in Chicago where she regularly repurposes cardboard and goes to Blick. She performs all around the city, and has just started showing her art things in places. You can find her @flipflipflap very sporadically on Twitter and less sporadically @imdrawinghere on Instagram.

Susan Salvi

Writer, Actor, Speaker

Originally from (sincerely) wonderful Pittsburgh, Sue Salvi is an actor, improvisor, and writer who now lives in Chicago. She will occasionally assault you with her brain offerings using her mouth as a vehicle, while on stage at various establishments around Chicago. Keep up with Sue on Twitter @suesalvi, though she sometimes goes through long periods of inactivity due to anti-internet feelings.

Megan & Susan present:

Someday A Bird Will Poop On You, a book reading of a life lesson

This is not a threat. It’s an informative reminder. Join us for a reading of the book by the author and illustrator, who will likely be wearing bird hats in spite of the fact that this is a grown up event. We’ll touch on the importance of resilience and the gift of being able to control our reactions to things we have no control over.

Hope for the Day

Proactive suicide prevention through outreach and mental health education.

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. Too often, we do not discuss mental health or suicide until it directly impacts our community.

Proactive prevention is about creating an environment that doesn’t wait for someone to reach a point of crisis to address their mental health. In doing proactive prevention, individuals step up to take action and facilitate the conversation on mental health in their spaces.

For more, keep up with Hope for the Day at hftd.org or on Twitter at @HopeForTheDay.

Things We Don’t Say

The Things We Don’t Say workshop is a program designed to teach individuals how to understand self-care and be supportive to proactive mental health care for others. We press the discussion about stigma, its impact on individuals and communities, and teach practical skills for early recognition of mental health challenges that often go unaddressed due to the silence of stigma, building to a crisis stage. Through Peer-to-peer Proactive Prevention, we can disrupt the highest risk factors before the crisis stage.