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Pragmatic Institute Design Advisory Board

Our Design Advisory Board brings a real-world lens to strategic design. These experts are enthusiastic and passionate about design advocacy, human-centered innovation and building the next generation of design leaders.

Christine has been designing human-centered digital products and services for over 20 years. Currently, she leads employee experience products at Pfizer, focusing on programs to improve collaboration, productivity, learning, growth and joy.

Before Pfizer, Christine led an experience design consultancy, working with various clients primarily in life sciences and media. She helped build and grow the experience design capability at Everyday Health, infusing design research and innovation practices into their processes. She has also been an instructor for design thinking and design leadership.

John is the director of product design at Spotify. Previously, he was director of product design at Mailchimp, where his team evolved the core product experiences of the Mailchimp marketing platform and extended their reach into new channels and platforms. John’s work focuses on bridging the gap between corporate strategy and feature delivery through experience strategy and creative design practices.

John cares deeply about cultivating empowered creative leaders to do their best work. He also teaches others the benefits of leveraging system-thinking to unlock insightful and creative solutions.

Kim has nearly 20 years of multidisciplinary design experience. At Capital One, she leads a team of designers who create products and experiences with a customer-first strategy, driving better business outcomes. Kim previously worked at The New York Times as a print and motion graphics designer and a user experience designer for T Brand Studio.

Kim focuses on collaborating with diverse teams to solve complex problems and coaching others to accomplish their career goals. She leads the UX + Data Meetup, a group with over 6,500 members that explores how the intersection of design and data impacts our work and lives. She has been a mentor for AIGA and UXPA and an instructor for Fordham University and Columbia University.

Scott is currently responsible for Deluxe’s Innovation Center, where he’s working to transform the company into a customer-centered digital product organization. He also works as an adjunct professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University and Emory University. Previously, he was the chief innovation officer for Nationwide and led the design function, as well as vice president of innovation and user experience at First Data.

Scott is a human-centered innovation leader with extensive experience in product management and design. He is passionate about innovation that lies at the intersection of customer, business and technology. He focuses on using design thinking to create solutions that delight people and feed the long-term success of an organization.

Lauren is a systems-oriented design researcher and strategist with 15 years of experience delivering insights, designs and strategies that are ethical, value-driven and illuminating. As the principal of design research at Coforma, she leads design research and strategy for a large federal project. Previously, Lauren built and led a design team as the director of enterprise design at Bank of America and ran her own innovation practice across industries and sectors, working with clients like Sony Music Entertainment and the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation.

Lauren mentors and coaches entrepreneurs through programs including TechStars’ Conservation Accelerator in partnership with the Nature Conservancy, New Museum’s NEW INC, U of Denver’s Project XITE and Complexity University’s Gigatonne Challenge.

Leah Ujda is a design leader, community builder and empathetic listener. Leah has over 15 years of experience in roles like head of UX at Grafana Labs, senior director of research and design at Widen Enterprises, design researcher at Delve and digital services librarian at the Wisconsin Center for Education. She currently leads a team of UX researchers at Indeed, focused on connecting people to jobs.

Leah teaches workshops on design thinking for various audiences, and Introduction to UX classes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s continuing education program. She is a curious person, passionate about bringing users’ voices to the product design and development process.

Lyndsey Williams has almost 20 years of experience in product design, user research, marketing, merchandising and branding. Her experience spans financial services, ecommerce and nonprofits. An advocate for design and the voices of customers, Lyndsey has implemented design and research operations in organizations of all sizes. She specializes in implementing processes and tools for operational efficiency, user research, project management, relationship management, leadership coaching, career development, hiring and culture. Lyndsey has helped organizations build teams and digital products using various product delivery methodologies across platforms.

Currently, Lyndsey manages the DesignOps team and User Research practice for Moody’s Analytics. Previously, she held roles with Citibank, Bloomingdale’s (Macy’s Inc.), National Geographic, E*TRADE Financial and more.

Elizabeth has held influential roles at eBay, Lifion by ADP, Citi and now Signet Jewelers, where she is vice president of experience insights, strategy and research. She’s also the co-founder and host of NYC UX/User Research Meet-Up and an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore.

She is passionate about understanding the customer journey and positively impacting it by creating seamless experiences across people, products, processes, channels and policy.
Elizabeth brings expertise in navigating the intersection of information architecture and interaction design with a focus on user research.

Pragmatic Certifications

Pragmatic Institute Design Advisory Board

Christine Fitts

John James

Kim Moy

J. Scott Sanchez

Lauren Sinreich

Leah Ujda

Lyndsey Williams

Elizabeth Zietlow