Staff Designer: Influence & Lead as an Individual Contributor
Catt Small
Staff Product Designer with 15+ YOE
Stop being a paintbrush, start being a visioner
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 about my career, 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 200 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!
What you’ll learn
Build a robust toolkit of techniques to level up your influence, scale your impact, & show value as a design leader without direct authority
Define the role itself, discuss common responsibilities at companies of different scales.
Identify the qualities that distinguish a Staff+ Designer from a Senior one.
Build confidence to choose between the Staff+ path and Design Management.
Gain influence at your organization without a Manager or Director title.
Level up your executive communication skills.
Work across teams to positively impact your company's vision and roadmap at scale.
Set better boundaries with your collaborators and stakeholders.
Manage your time more effectively to make the most impact.
Make the space to do more strategic design work in a sustainable way (instead of getting stuck in tactical work or endless meetings).
Show the impact Staff+ Designers have on experience quality through craft — and business success through innovation.
Contribute to the growth of the individual contributor career ladder.
Articulate the value of this role to executives at companies where it doesn't exist.
Push past what's holding you back from reaching the Staff level.
Ensure your success as a Staff+ Designer.
Learn directly from Catt
Catt Small
Staff Product Designer with 15+ YOE at Etsy, Asana, SoundCloud, & more.
Who this course is for
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
What's included
Live sessions
Learn directly from Catt Small in a real-time, interactive format.
Lifetime access
Go back to course content and recordings whenever you need to.
Course workbook
Practice leadership skills in your own customizable, reusable workbook.
Community of peers
Stay accountable and share insights with like-minded professionals.
Certificate of completion
Share your new skills with your employer or on LinkedIn.
Maven Guarantee
This course is backed by the Maven Guarantee. Students are eligible for a full refund up until the halfway point of the course.
Course syllabus
21 live sessions • 32 lessons • 9 projects
Week 1
Jan
5
Course Cohort Mixer
Jan
6
Jam time: Section 1 🌜
Jan
7
Jam time: Section 1 🌞
Jan
8
Jam time: Section 1 🌜
Jan
9
Jam time: Section 1 🌞
1 - Set expectations
Week 2
Jan
13
Jam time: Section 2 🌜
Jan
14
Jam time: Section 2 🌞
Jan
15
Jam time: Section 2 🌜
Jan
16
Jam time: Section 2 🌞
2 - Build your leadership foundation
Free lesson
Time management for designers: carve out more time to create
Get out of meetings and into the zone
Make space on your calendar to complete more strategic projects — within your normal working hours.
Work on what matters
Stop doing tactical work and start designing more holistically for a longer-term impact.
Set better expectations
Estimate your output so you can better negotiate time and priority of projects with cross-functional partners.
Schedule
Live sessions
1-3 hrs / week
Pop into live sessions to ask questions about the lessons and workshop problems with Catt and your peers. These discussions will not be recorded — what happens in the room stays in the room.
Mon, Jan 5
4:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)
Tue, Jan 6
11:00 PM—11:45 PM (UTC)
Wed, Jan 7
3:00 PM—3:45 PM (UTC)
Digital lessons
2-3 hrs / week
Learn directly from Catt through in-depth lectures with immediately applicable tactics. These lessons are pre-recorded and split into reasonable chunks you can consume each week.
Projects
2-3 hrs / week
Practice the communication and leadership strategies Catt shares by applying them to the context of your work.
Success stories
- I witnessed Catt lead the strategy, launch, and iteration of a business critical net-new product at Asana. As a Staff Designer, Catt works through complex problems with expert-level prioritization and craft. She's a wonderful mentor to learn from for anyone looking to up-level their skills as a designer, or learn how to work better with design.
Micah Bennett
Staff Product Designer at Figma; Ex-Asana - Catt has consistently been a mentor and source of inspiration to me throughout my career. Her curiosity, creativity, and empathy-first approach make her exceptional as both a designer and leader. She has a wealth of knowledge and tools to help navigate ambiguity and deliver high quality product experiences, and she’s generous about sharing them!
Angira Shirahatti
Senior Product Designer at DataDog; Ex-Gusto & Etsy - Catt played a huge role in my transition from the Graphic Design industry to User Experience. The industry wasn’t fully developed yet but Catt had already been focused on UX for years when we met. She created valuable resources, empowered me to explore public speaking at conferences, and consistently has been a soundboard for my career growth.
Lil Chen
Staff Product Designer at Discord; Ex-Google - Catt is an immensely talented designer. It’s been impressive to witness how Catt has been committed to deepening her expertise across many aspects of design as well as continue to share her findings liberally with the world. Anyone would be lucky to get to learn from her. I’ve learned a ton from her and look forward to learning more!
Kyle Turman
Design at Anthropic; Former Director of Product Design at Slack & Dropbox
Get tactical strategies to do your best work
Learn real, tested techniques you can use today, straight from a fellow Staff designer.
Learn with a cohort of peers
Meet and learn from other Staff and Senior Designers solving challenges just like yours.
Frequently asked questions
$799
USD