Catt Small

Cohort 2 - Oct 2024

Cohort 3 - Feb 2025

Cohort 1 - Aug 2024

Cohort 4 - May 2025

Cohort 1

Cohort 5 - Aug 2025

Cohort 7 - July 2026

Cohort 6 - Jan 2026

Drowning in meetings and tactical pixel-pushing? You need to regain control of your time so you can do more of the work that matters. Use this free set of tools to identify opportunities to clean up your calendar, create focus time blocks, and improve at estimating your work. You'll have more time to do more strategic design thinking and set better expectations with cross-functional partners. Enter your email below to get free printable worksheets and a spreadsheet that is free to copy.

Make space to do vision work

Build a robust toolkit of techniques to level up your influence, scale your impact, & show value as a design leader without direct authority

Staff Product Designer with 15+ YOE

Staff Product Designer with 15+ YOE at Etsy, Asana, SoundCloud, & more.

Staff Designer: Influence & Lead as an Individual Contributor

Senior Content Designer

Lead UX Designer

Staff Product Designer

Senior Product Designer

UX Lead, Design Systems

Graphic Designer

UX Designer

Asana

Etsy

SoundCloud

Nasdaq

Identify and navigate roadblocks that keep most senior designers from leveling up — with guidance from an expert.I'm a Staff Product Designer with years of hands-on, high-impact leadership at both small and large companies. Over the past 15+ years, I've surpassed these challenges:🙃 Struggling to understand why I was stuck at senior🙃 Fighting for strategic influence, but still being left out🙃 Role ambiguity as a Staff Designer🙃 Being overwhelmed by busywork, not having visioning time🙃 Enjoying the leadership and mentorship parts of management, but not the HR part After finding clarity for myself, I decided to create this course to help others. Through digital lessons and live conversations, you'll discover tactics to become a more impactful, influential, and strategic individual contributor and leader.This course was designed for you to get the most value from our live time. You'll connect with designers from across the industry and build a shared understanding of the role of a Staff+ designer.I've given over 250 designers the tools to navigate their own challenges and reap the career rewards. Let's work together to chart your path forward. Join the next cohort today!

Stop being a paintbrush, start being a visioner

Clarify expectations of a Staff+ Designer

Influence strategy as a non-manager

Shift from reactive to proactive

Advocate for the Staff+ Designer role

Identify and fill your own gaps

Staff and Principal Designers who need new tactics to shift from reactive to proactive, build more leadership skills, and influence strategy

Senior Designers who want to get promoted to Staff — or learn about the role before choosing between individual contributor (IC) and Manager

Design Leads, Managers, and Directors shifting back to hands-on IC work who want to know how their skills translate

Asynchronously learn what it takes to operate at the staff level, including techniques to level up your influence and scale your impact

Identify and navigate roadblocks that keep most senior designers from leveling up in this self-paced, asynchronous course.I'm a Staff Product Designer with years of hands-on, high-impact leadership at both small and large companies. Over the past 15+ years, I've surpassed these challenges:🙃 Struggling to understand why I was stuck at senior🙃 Fighting for strategic influence, but still being left out🙃 Role ambiguity as a Staff Designer🙃 Being overwhelmed by busywork, not having visioning time🙃 Enjoying the leadership and mentorship parts of management, but not the HR partAfter finding clarity for myself, I decided to create this course to help others. Through digital lessons, practical exercises, and FAQs, you'll discover tactics to become a more impactful, influential, and strategic individual contributor and leader.I've given over 250 designers the tools to navigate their own challenges and reap the career rewards. Grab your spot in this asynchronous course and begin to chart your path forward today.This course has a lengthy time window so it stays open. You can join at any time, and the content will be available to you in perpetuity.

Teach yourself to stop being a paintbrush, and start being a visioner

Advocate for the Staff+Designer role

Staff Product Designer with 16+ YOE at tech companies including  Etsy, Asana, SoundCloud, & more.

You've done the work, now let's get that promotion.

What we can work on

How it works

Is this for you?

Once you reach out, hit reply on the confirmation email to share a little about what you're hoping to work on together.

Private coaching for IC design leaders

A 2-hour workshop on building influence as a seasoned, hands-on designer

Getting past senior is about much more than craft. Execution quality continues to matter, but communication becomes critical in unexpected ways. The designers who ascend to staff and beyond have figured out how to make an impact through others, all without direct authority.Influence is the key, and the frustrating thing is that nobody teaches it. You either stumble into it through trial and error, or you stay stuck wondering why the right answer keeps losing to a worse one.In this workshop, we'll make it concrete. You'll learn how influence actually works, how to map the people around you so you know where to invest your energy, and how to communicate in ways that actually move people. You'll leave with a 30-day plan built around your specific situation, including actions you can take next week.This workshop is for designers who are tired of being correct yet overlooked. If that's you, come ready to do some real thinking. The seat at the table is there. Let's take it!

Designers who have been at the same level for years and feel like they should've been promoted by now.

Designers who just got the staff title and are now realizing the job is fundamentally different from what they did before.

First or founding designers who often get overruled or ignored by engineering, product, or the company's founder(s).

Advocating for UX Quality in Orgs That Value Speed & Metrics

Learn to move conversations away from aesthetics by connecting UX issues to concepts the business understands.

Reframe design quality as a business problem

Discover techniques to push back on shortcuts while still aligning with delivery expectations.

Advocate for quality without becoming the blocker

Understand when advocacy is worth continuing and when it’s a signal to adjust strategy.

Protect your energy and political capital while advocating

Unblock Your Design Career: Reach the Staff Level in 2025

Staff product designer with 14+ YOE at Etsy, Asana, SoundCloud, & more.

You'll learn the differences between senior and staff, along with key gaps managers often see but ICs don't.

Common issues blocking senior designers from reaching staff

Resources to strengthen your individual contributor leadership toolkit and prepare yourself to excel at the next level.

Methods to overcome your gaps and unlock the next level

Personal experiences from a designer who overcame the same career block you're facing.

How someone just like you went from senior to staff

Ship it sooner: How product teams get more done in less time

The upsides of processes and tools, and when to focus on them with your team.

Why and when process can help your team

Build the muscle to unstuck your team and get more done rather than getting caught up in the process.

How to make less plans for plans

Focus on what matters with your direct collaborators.

Join with your team and learn together

Time management for designers: carve out more time to create

Make space on your calendar to complete more strategic projects — within your normal working hours.

Get out of meetings and into the zone

Stop doing tactical work and start designing more holistically for a longer-term impact.

Work on what matters

Estimate your output so you can better negotiate time and priority of projects with cross-functional partners.

Catt Small will help you become a hands-on design leader

Catt Small

About Catt

Courses

Staff Designer: Influence & Lead as an Individual Contributor

Self-paced Staff Designer: Asynchronously Learn to Influence & Lead as an IC

Workshops

Persuasion for Designers

Lightning Lessons