Speakers

Julie Baher Sr. Director of UX, Illumina

Julie recently joined Illumina as Sr Director of UX, building a team dedicated to improving human health through design thinking. Formerly Julie had led  Citrix’ Customer Experience team for SaaS products which included responsibility for product design and user research.  She joined Citrix in 2010 and led product design for Enterprise products including XenClient, Cloud Platform and several new enterprise products such as App Orchestration. In the past two years, Julie’s team was responsible for driving design thinking across the business and training employees on innovation practices.

Prior to Citrix, Julie ran the design team for the shared platform of Adobe’s Creative Suite and led user research for Photoshop. She has designed everything from websites (xerox.com) to online education (building an online MBA program) to training programs (Charles Schwab, National Semiconductor) to computer networks (Onizuka Airforce base, ZiffDavis Labs).

Julie earned her BA at Wesleyan University in cognitive science and a PhD in Learning Sciences – an interdisciplinary program of cognitive science, artificial intelligence and education at Northwestern University. Julie is co-leader of the ACM SIGCHI Bay Area Bird-of-Feather group on Design Research.

Julie is speaking as part of our Designing Organizational Culture theme.

Alissa Briggs Director of User Experience, Brigade

Alissa is Director of User Experience at Brigade, where she brings a strategic approach to crafting impactful and evocative user experiences. Previously, Alissa led the design of top-rated, multimillion dollar web and mobile apps at Intuit. She’s spoken at SXSW, UXPA, and Grace Hopper Conference, and was published by O’Reilly Media. Alissa holds advanced degrees in Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

In her free time, you can find her tweeting @alissadesigns, designing wearable electronics, and exploring the great outdoors.

Alissa is speaking as part of our Enterprise Experimentation theme.

MJ Broadbent Design Director – Transportation, GE Software

MJ recently joined GE Software as the Design Director for Transportation, where her team is responsible for custom software solutions that connect people, data and machines via Predix, GE’s Industrial Internet platform. Over the previous 25 years, MJ’s design expertise and leadership has benefited organizations such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The College Board, Johnson & Johnson, The McGraw-Hill Companies (including Standard & Poor’s), Pfizer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Sony Electronics, and the United Nations.

Central among MJ’s numerous professional affiliations are the International Forum of Visual Practitioners (IFVP) and the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). Having programmed IxDA New York City local events starting in 2008, she went on to co-chair IxDA’s annual global conference in 2011 (Interaction11) and served on IxDA’s Board of Directors from 2011-2014 in the office of Treasurer. Because community organizing seems to be in her DNA, she’s currently a member of the UX STRAT Advisory Board.

MJ earned her BS in graphic design from University of Cincinnati’s DAAP College. As an evangelist for sketching and visual thinking, she coaches people in reclaiming their innate drawing skills through instructional workshops of her own design. MJ enjoys visual explanations of all kinds and creating sketchnotes is one of her favorite things to do. People often tell her she has incredibly neat handwriting.

MJ will be our Visual Scribe.

Chris Chapo Data Science and Operations, ENJOY

With over 15 years experience in data analytics and science, Chris Chapo is currently is currently practicing data science and research at ENJOY, a startup launching with a whole new way for people to buy and experience the products that matter most in their lives. Before ENJOY, Chris was VP of Data Science and Analytics at Intuit where he helped ignite the tranformation of the company to be a data-driven innovator. He has also put in tours of duty at Apple, Gap, and JCPenney. As a former scientist (MS in Physical Chemistry from UC Berkeley), Chris brings a scientific method and rigor to his work, but specializes in bringing them to life through observation, visualization, and real-world stories.

Chris is speaking as part of our Insight at Scale theme.

Catherine Courage Senior Vice President, Customer Experience, Citrix

Catherine’s passion is transforming corporate culture by making customer-focus a driver of innovation and change. Reporting to the CEO, she leads the Customer Experience Group. Her team’s mission is to create world-class products and services for customers, partners and employees that drive adoption and loyalty. She is responsible for company-wide brand, advertising, social, web, product design, information experience, and business process reinvention.  Previously, she held similar roles at Salesforce.com and Oracle.

Catherine co-authored the book Understanding Your Users and is an active writer and speaker on customer empathy, innovation and design. Catherine has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and TEDx.  She has twice been selected by the Silicon Valley Business Journal—in 2011 as one of Silicon Valley’s “40 Under 40” young tech leaders, and in 2013  as one of Silicon Valley’s 100 Most Influential Women. Also in 2013, Catherine made Forbes list of “Top 10 Rising Stars at The Worlds Most Innovative Companies.”  In 2014, the National Diversity Council named her one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology.

Catherine is a board member of the California College of the Arts and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  She holds a Masters of Applied Sciences, specializing in Human Factors, from the University of Toronto.

Catherine is giving our opening keynote.

David Cronin Executive Design Director, Industrial Internet Applications, GE

David Cronin is an interaction designer, strategist, and design leader. As Director of Interaction Design on the Design & Experience team at GE Software, he leads UX efforts for GE’s Predix industrial internet software platform, as well as for Healthcare programs at GE Software. Additionally, David is the design leader and product manager for Predix Reader, a mobile-first UX framework designed for 21st century industrial and healthcare workers.

Prior to joining GE in 2011, David was Director of Interaction Design at Smart Design, an award-winning product design consultancy and Managing Director at Cooper, the first design firm dedicated to the practice of interaction design for digital products. His early career was spent designing and building the first generation of large-scale, dynamic web sites and applications in San Francisco in the 90’s.

During his 15-year career, David has designed everything from consumer electronics to healthcare information systems and medical devices to a financial portfolio management and trading platform for the world’s largest asset manager. He’s happiest when he can work with cross-functional teams make complex systems useful and enjoyable for the people who interact with them.

David is an experienced speaker, writer and educator on the subject of design, and is co-author of  “About Face 3.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design” with Alan Cooper.

David is speaking as part of our Craft amid Complexity theme.

Uday Gajendar Principal Designer, Peel

Uday Gajendar is currently Principal Designer at Peel, defining what’s next for Mobile + IoT user experience in TV & Home control. Previously, Uday was Director of UX at CloudPhysics, a startup where he brought beauty & soul to data analytics for IT Admins. Before that, while at Citrix nearly 5 years, he helped transform a traditional IT infrastructure company into a design thinking powerhouse, via shipped concepts and cross-team workshops. Uday has 12+ years of versatile experience at Oracle, BEA, Adobe, Frog, and Cisco, from enterprise to consumer, desktop to mobile. He also regularly writes for ACM Interactions and speaks worldwide on design topics at SXSW, UX Australia, IxDA, IA Summit and other venues. You can read Uday’s reflections on design at his blog, www.ghostinthepixel.com.

Uday is one of our program organizers, and is speaking as part of our Craft amid Complexity theme.

Phil Gilbert General Manager, IBM Design

Phil Gilbert is GM of IBM Design, which was formed in 2012 and is focused on simplifying access to IBM’s capabilities.

Working across the software, hardware, and services business units, IBM Design is recruiting 100s of top Designers, scaling the practice of design, and driving great user experiences across the portfolio.

Phil joined IBM in 2010 via the acquisition of Lombardi Software where he was President. Leveraging this outsider’s perspective combined with a healthy respect for IBM’s design heritage, he is leading this effort to create a sustainable, modern culture rooted in the principles of human-centered design.

Phil graduated as a Pe-et (top ten) senior from the University of Oklahoma in 1978 & lives in Austin, Texas.

Phil is speaking as part of our Designing Organizational Culture theme.

Jeff Gothelf Principal, Neo

Jeff Gothelf is Neo’s lean evangelist, spreading the gospel of great team collaboration, product innovation and evidence-based decision making.

Jeff is a speaker and thought leader on the future of user experience design, often teaching workshops or giving talks on building cultures that support teamwork and innovation. Jeff is passionate about advancing the principles that lie at the core of Neo, and often does so on a global scale.

Prior to joining Neo, Jeff lead the UX design teams at TheLadders and Web Trends. Earlier he worked with and  lead small teams of software designers at AOL. He is the co-author (with Josh Seiden) of Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience.

Jeff is speaking as part of our Enterprise Experimentation theme and teaching a workshop.

Kelly Goto author of Web Redesign 2.0

As an evangelist for design ethnography, Kelly is dedicated to understanding how real people integrate products and services into their daily lives. Kelly is principal of gotomedia LLC, a global leader in research-driven, people-friendly interface design and strategy for web, mobile, and product solutions for clients including Samsung, Hyundai, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Adobe, and Seiko Epson Japan. Her book, Web Redesign 2.0: Workflow That Works, is a standard for user-centered design principles.

Kelly is past president of the national board of AIGA Center for Brand Experience. She lives in Half Moon Bay with her husband and two daughters.

Kelly is speaking as part of our Insight at Scale theme.

Dave Gray author of The Connected Company

Dave Gray helps large organizations solve complex problems related to culture, innovation and change. His approach involves getting the right people together and facilitating the group, to help them collaboratively develop new strategies, launch products and services, and design as well as deliver organizational change initiatives. He uses structured approaches that help people think, solve problems, and make decisions quickly and collaboratively, with minimum friction.

Dave has worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies across all industries. His approaches are not proprietary. They are clearly articulated and have been made publicly available in his book, Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers and Changemakers. His second book, The Connected Company, describes a new breed of adaptive, fast-moving organization that’s emerging in the 21st century. In 1993, Dave founded the design consultancy XPLANE, growing it to a multi-million-dollar business before selling it in 2010. He now works as an independent consultant with select clients.

His current project is Boardthing, a collaboration platform for distributed teams. Dave delivers keynotes and hands-on workshops on topics related to innovation, culture and change.

Dave is giving our closing keynote.

Dave Malouf Head of Interaction Design, Rackspace

Dave Malouf is currently the Head of Interaction Design at Rackspace Managed Hosting in Austin, Texas where he leads the interaction design discipline as part of Rackspace’s Experience Design team. Before coming to Rackspace, Dave was a professor of interaction design at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His career has spanned experiences from advertising agencies, to financial institutions to major consumer and industrial electronics companies.

The second half of his career has led Dave to focus on industrial and enterprise contexts and the immense challenges of designing for the special type of complexity, scale, and scope that only these types of contexts must manage.

Dave is a traveler, writer, speaker, teacher on many topics of design, but his current passions are focused on storytelling, building design cultures through a studio environment, and the importance of building a viable, scalable, and useful education system for current and future interaction designers. He is most proud of his role in helping to found the Interaction Design Association.

Dave is one of our program organizers.

Peter Morville President, Semantic Studios

Peter Morville is a pioneer of the fields of information architecture and user experience. His best-selling books include Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Ambient Findability, Search Patterns and Intertwingled. He advises such clients as AT&T, Cisco, Harvard, IBM, Macy’s, the Library of Congress, and the National Cancer Institute. His work has been covered by Business Week, The Economist, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal. Peter lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife, two daughters, and a dog named Knowsy.

Peter is speaking as part of our Craft amid Complexity theme.

Theresa Neil Managing Director, Theresa Neil Strategy + Design

Theresa Neil is an international design expert who is passionate about making products that look good and work well. Her best selling O’Reilly books, Designing Web Interfaces, co-authored with Bill Scott, and the Mobile Design Pattern Gallery have helped thousands of IT professionals advance their design skills and create better experiences.

As a UX consultant, Theresa works closely with her clients to define and deliver UX solutions for complex problems, including data visualization, systems management, security, finance and cloud based SaaS tools. With more than 100 live applications under her belt, Theresa knows the magic formula to rapidly designing and releasing a successful product.

A short list of her satisfied clients include Balsamiq, Adobe, eBay, and AT&T. A longer list can be found at www.theresaneil.com.

Theresa is teaching a workshop.

Steve Portigal Principal, Portigal Consulting

Steve Portigal helps companies to plan strategically for user research and to unlock their team’s research super powers  He is principal of Portigal Consulting, author of Interviewing Users: How To Uncover Compelling Insights and host of the Dollars to Donuts podcast. He makes his home in the San Francisco Bay Area where there’s always a new ramen restaurant to check out.

Steve is leading our Insight at Scale theme and teaching a workshop.

Marc Rettig Managing Principal, Fit Associates

Marc is principal of Fit Associates, LLC. He equips organizations to work with the roots of social challenges, from organizational culture to product-life alignment to urban systems. Fit uses coaching, research, immersion experiences, facilitation, and co-design to help people and organizations connect to their deep purpose, and to connect their purpose to a profound impact in the world. In addition to his work at Fit, Marc is on the faculty of the Masters in Design for Social Innovation program at the School of Visual Arts.

After a first career in software systems, Marc has spent seventeen years as a designer of projects, interactions, products, services, experiences, and transformations. He has worked with corporations across a broad range of sectors, including Philips Home Health, Nissan, Microsoft, Comcast, Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Seagate, SAP, and numerous startup companies. Marc taught at Carnegie Mellon University’s Graduate School of Design, where he was the 2003 Nierenberg Chair of Design, and the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago. He serves on the advisory boards of The IxDA Interaction Awards and Rosenfeld Media.

In the midst of it all, Marc plays at improving his cooking and photography skills from his home in the Polish Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, returning whenever possible to his birthplace in Montana.

Mark is leading our Designing Organizational Culture theme.

Christian Rohrer Vice President and Chief Design Officer, Intel Security

Christian Rohrer is Vice President and Chief Design Officer at Intel Security (formerly McAfee, Inc.) In this role, he is responsible for user-centered design efforts across all projects from ideation through delivery and beyond. As a veteran of user experience design and research, he has served in leadership roles at Yahoo!, eBay, and Move/REALTOR.com, prior to joining McAfee/Intel. Christian has a PhD in Symbolic Systems in Education (Cognitive Science) from Stanford University and a BA in Computer and Information Sciences with honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Christian Rohrer is speaking as part of our Insight at Scale theme.

Louis Rosenfeld Principal, Rosenfeld Media

Lou Rosenfeld is an independent information architecture consultant for Fortune 500 corporations and other large organizations. He has helped a variety of large and highly-political enterprises make their information more findable, including Caterpillar, PayPal, Ford, AT&T, the Centers for Disease Control, Accenture, and the NCAA. Lou helps his clients with their information challenges at a strategic level—through mentoring their teams, evaluating their designs, beefing up their user research methodologies, and helping them find new talent.

Lou has been instrumental in helping establish the fields of information architecture and user experience, and in articulating the role and value of librarianship within those fields. Lou is co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (O’Reilly; 3rd edition 2006) and Search Analytics for Your Site (Rosenfeld Media, 2011), co-founder of the Information Architecture Institute, and a former columnist for Internet World, CIO, and Web Review magazines.

Lou is also founder of Rosenfeld Media, the industry’s leading provider of user experience books, training, and other forms of high-level UX expertise. He blogs regularly and tweets @louisrosenfeld even more so.

Lou is one of our program organizers.

Steve Sanderson Resident Lean Startup Expert, Rackspace

Steve is leading our Enterprise Experimentation theme.

Bill Scott VP Business Engineering, Paypal

Bill has always been passionate about software engineering (30 years). And just as passionate to understand how humans interact with software. For a long time he couldn’t decide if he was an engineer or a designer. He finally gave up trying to classify himself and just decided to live in both worlds as much as possible.

Bill is currently VP, Business Engineering at PayPal (Retail, Merchant and Online Payments). Previously he led UI Engineering at PayPal and did the same at Netflix and Meebo (where he also led user experience). He is co-author of the O’Reilly book Designing Web Interfaces and a regular conference/workshop speaker on topics on all aspects of design & engineering. Previously he has consulted for startups and fortune 500 companies, co-wrote one of the first JavaScript Ajax libraries, launched the design pattern library at Yahoo! and wrote one of the first games for the Macintosh in 1985.

Bill is speaking as part of our Enterprise Experimentation theme.

Nathan Shedroff Program Chair, MBA in Design Strategy, California College of the Arts

Nathan Shedroff is the chair of the ground-breaking MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, CA. This program prepares the next-generation of innovation leaders for a world that is profitable, sustainable, ethical, and truly meaningful by uniting the perspectives of systems thinking, design thinking, sustainability, and generative leadership into a holistic strategic framework. He is a pioneer in Experience Design, Interaction Design and Information Design, is a serial entrepreneur, and researches, speaks and teaches internationally about meaning, strategic innovation, and science fiction interfaces. His many books include: Experience Design 1.1, Making Meaning, Design is the Problem, Design Strategy in Action, and Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction.

Nathan holds an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School and a BS in Industrial Design from Art Center College of Design. He worked with Richard Saul Wurman at TheUnderstandingBusiness and, later, co-founded vivid studios, a decade-old pioneering company in interactive media and one of the first Web services firms on the planet. vivid’s hallmark was helping to establish and validate the field of information architecture, by training an entire generation of designers in the newly emerging Web industry. He is on the board of directors for Teague and the AIGA.

Nathan is speaking as part of our Designing Organizational Culture theme and teaching a workshop.

Kendra Shimmell Managing Director, Cooper

Kendra is a Managing Director at Cooper. Her goal is to nurture and empower designers; to educate businesses on the value of design and to provide the tools to integrate design at the core of business innovation, process, and decision-making. As an educator, speaker, and designer, she has brought product strategy, design, and business innovation to companies ranging from Fortune 500s to startups in a range of categories, from healthcare systems and medical devices to retail environments, consumer electronics, financial services, enterprise management, and more.

As the creator of Cooper’s groundbreaking UX Boot Camp, Kendra’s vision of pairing real-world design training with meaningful projects has led to student-designed solutions for non-profit organizations such as the American Red Cross, Kiva, and Wikipedia. She also created Cooper’s popular Design Leadership course from the ground up, offering new tools for designers to lead and succeed in business.

Kendra is leading our Craft amid Complexity theme.

Dan Willis UX Consultant, Cranky Productions

Dan Willis is a consultant, author and speaker who has been designing digital products for two decades. Along the way, he has solved complex problems at a wide variety of major enterprises, from media companies, U.S. government agencies and financial institutions to a car manufacturer and a popular NYC museum.

Dan is our Enterprise Storytelling session coordinator.