Speaking & Training

Level up your team by bringing my training to you. I lead tailored, private talks and workshops for teams looking to train up on topics including Leading Design Sprints, Design Research Methods, Creating a Customer Centric Culture, Designing Teams and Organizations, and Product Strategy. My workshops leverage an experiential learning model, with detailed case studies, interactive activities, small group discussion, and tailored feedback. Additionally, I lead some of my most popular talks and workshops at select conferences worldwide. Some of these include:

Talks

For organizations looking for speakers for a team offsite or company event, or event organizers looking for speakers for a conference or webinar series, I offer talks (on-site or virtual) on a range of topics. Select from one of my existing talks or contact me to learn more about booking a custom talk.

Building a Customer-Centric Culture by Democratizing Research (talk)

When you’re building, not optimizing, you need everyone to learn from customers. But how do you build a team culture in which everyone, including backend engineers and program managers, feels empowered to do research? Learn creative methods for how to coach, how to share insights, and how to impact company policies. You’ll walk away with a new approach to teaching non-researchers how to research, sharing insights from customers that get heard and impact decisions, and finally, ideas for selling your organization on policies that enable a more customer-centric culture.

Build a Better Hiring Process with Design Thinking (talk)

How do leading organizations hire effectively? Hear how one hiring manager used behavioral science research insights and human-centered design principles to uncover pain points and opportunities in the candidate journey, facilitate a co-design activity to paper prototype potential solutions, and create a more intentional and fair interview process. Whether you're looking to lead and build out your own hiring process, or you're job searching and want to hear a hiring manager's perspective, this session will help you learn best practices from leading technology corporations, startups, and consulting firms.

Workshops

For organizations looking to upskill their team, I lead corporate training workshops (on-site or virtual). Select from one of my existing workshops, or we can work together to design a custom learning experience tailored to your team's needs. I typically teach a 1-2 hour, half day, or full day workshop for groups of 10-50.

For conference organizers looking to add workshops to their conference program, I lead corporate training workshops (on-site or virtual). Select from one of my existing workshops, or we can work together to design a workshop that aligns to your conference theme. I typically teach a half day or full day workshop for groups of 10-50.

Contact me to learn more about booking a workshop for your organization or conference.

Design Inclusion Principles (talk and/or workshop)

Are you working to design more inclusive products and services? For individuals and teams who want to incorporate the strategy behind designing inclusive products and services in their daily practice, this session will help you understand four key DEI design principles: Speculative Harm, Inclusive Teams, Equity and Justice, and Co-design. You'll learn from a specific case study and how to apply these principles to your work. Whether you are looking to improve how you spot biases or simply looking for a new perspective, this session is for you.

Systems for Speaking + Launch Your Lightning Talk (workshop)

Create more serendipity in your career by speaking. Speaking can make you a better writer, thinker, and teacher. While most people find public speaking intimidating, you don't need to become a professional keynote speaker at conferences to see the results from getting better at speaking. Learning to craft a great 5 minute lightning talk is the first step to building the confidence to speak up and provide insight in that weekly team meeting, and build executive presence. In this interactive workshop, you'll master the strategies and systems you need to build a consistent public speaking habit, and put them into practice by launching your first lightning talk. I'll cover how I got started with giving my first conference talk years ago, and the six strategies I use to build a consistent public speaking habit that's taken me to speak in many settings, ranging from lightning talks with my team or at local meetups to keynotes at international conferences. Then, I'll do a brief demo of a lightning talk. Next, I'll lead an interactive workshop in which you design a lightning talk, then gather in small groups to present and get feedback. Finally, we'll wrap with Q&A for your small group.

Level Up Your Leadership with Human-Centered Design (talk and/or workshop)

Beyond changing interfaces, human-centered design can and should influence senior leadership decisions. In this workshop, I'll share how you can increase your influence and hone your strategic leadership skills by focusing on the four ways human-centered design can impact your organization—products and services, people, process, and policy. Additionally, we'll go through exercises to practice the top three skills you will most need to develop in order to truly make an impact as a strategic leader in your organization.

Bias, Uncovered (talk and/or workshop)

Are you ready to confront bias? In this interactive session, you’ll be challenged to uncover your own cognitive biases and explore how understanding them can help us design for the behaviors we encounter every day. You’ll get a crash course in three particular cognitive biases (anchoring bias, confirmation bias, and social proof), and learn more about their applications in the real world. Most importantly, you'll walk away with actionable ideas for how to leverage this understanding to design more inclusive user research and hiring practices, so that you can design more inclusive and equitable products/services and teams.

Invest in your team

Contact me to learn more about how to bring a talk or workshop to your organization or conference. You can either select from an existing talk/workshop (e.g. Introduction to Human-Centered Design, Introduction to Customer Discovery, Designing for Machine Learning Products, or Data + Design: Creating a Test & Learn Culture on Your Team) or I can develop a custom talk/workshop for your group.

Upcoming & Past Engagements

Upcoming & past speaking and training engagements include:

- UX+ Conference: Bias, Uncovered: Building Better Products with Behavioral Science talk in Manila, Phillippines
- Front Utah: Designing in Crisis talk in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
- Industry Europe: Build a Customer-Centric Culture by Democratizing Research talk in Dublin, Ireland
- MICA Product Management graduate residency: Bias, Uncovered: Building Better Products with Behavioral Science workshop - online
- Private Custom Workshop: Introduction to Human-Centered Design talk + workshop (for 40 managers at an annual leadership summit) in Reno, NV, USA
- MICA UX Design graduate residency: Design Inclusion Principles workshop - online
- Reforge User Insights for Product Decisions: Building New Products with Customer Discovery talk + AMA - online
- Button Conf: Centering Ethics and Inclusivity at Work workshop - online
- Race in the Field: Navigating User Research as Designers of Color panel - online
- Advancing Research: Build a Customer-Centric Culture by Democratizing Research talk in New York City, NY, USA
- Confab: Content Strategy for Humanitarian Immigration Services talk in Minneapolis, MN, USA
- School of Visual Concepts: Data-Driven Design full day workshop in Seattle, WA, USA
- Design Ops Summit: Design Ops and Research Ops Leadership: The Bigger Picture panel (panelist) in New York City, NY, USA
- ChangeCon: Designing for Machine Learning Products keynote in Zagreb, Croatia
- HeapCon: Designing for Machine Learning Products talk in Belgrade, Serbia
- Tech Ladies: Level Up Your Leadership with Human-Centered Design talk online
- Design & Content Conference: Designing for Humanitarian Immigration Services talk in Vancouver, Canada
- The Lab @ OPM Spring Design School: Why Design Matters panel (panelist) in Washington, DC, USA
- AIGA DC x USDS Design Open House: Building Design Cultures and Championing Great Design in Government panel (moderator) in Washington, DC, USA
- ConveyUX: Scaling Impact When Designing in the Public Sector talk in Seattle, WA, USA
- Productized: Designing for Machine Learning Products talk in Lisbon, Portugal
- Midwest UX: Scaling Impact When Designing in the Public Sector talk in Chicago, IL, USA
- Pluralsight Live: Build a Better Hiring Process with Design Thinking talk in Salt Lake City, UT, USA
- SPA: Designing for Machine Learning Products half day workshop in London, UK
- The Lead Developer: Build a Better Hiring Process with Design Thinking talk in London, UK
- NDC Oslo: Designing for Machine Learning Products talk in Oslo, Norway
- O'Reilly Fluent: Build a Better Hiring Process with Design Thinking talk in San Jose, CA, USA
- Code for America Summit 2018: Using Discovery Sprints to Drive People-Centered Policymaking panel (panelist) in Oakland, CA, USA
- Oktane18: Leveraging APIs to Drive Adoption and Growth talk in Las Vegas, NV, USA
- NDC Minnesota: Designing for Machine Learning Productstalk in St. Paul, MN, USA
- Data Day Mexico: Designing for Machine Learning Products keynote in Mexico City, Mexico
- StarsConf: Bias, Uncovered workshop and Designing for Machine Learning Products talk in Santiago, Chile
- PAPIs: Designing for Machine Learning Products talk in Boston, MA, USA
- Midwest UX: Designing for Machine Learning Products talk in Cincinnati, OH, USA
- SeleniumConf: How to Run Your First Beta Testing Program talk in Berlin, Germany
- Grace Hopper 2017: The Art & Science of Product Management panel (panelist) in Orlando, FL, USA
- Refresh: How to Run Your First Beta Testing Program talk in Washington, DC, USA
- UXDC 2017: Behind the AI Curtain talk in Washington, DC, USA
- InnovatorsBox: Beyond the Box: Government panel (panelist) in Washington, DC, USA
- ProductTank: Gathering and Prioritizing Feedback panel (panelist) in Washington, DC, USA
- ULL Conf 2016: Bias, Uncovered half day workshop in Killarney, Ireland
- AIGA DotGovDesign 2016: Design Sprints for the Real World talk in Washington, DC, USA
- Ashoka U 2014: Human-Centered Design at Scale workshop at Brown University, USA
- Barcamp Beijing: Bias, Uncovered talk at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, China
- Ashoka U 2012: Introduction to Customer Development workshop at Duke University Fuqua School of Business, USA
- Supernova 2009: Digital Media Strategy talk at University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, USA