Cohort 4 - May 2025

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

Catt Small

Staff Designer: Influence & Lead as an Individual Contributor

Asana

Etsy

SoundCloud

Nasdaq

Identify and navigate the roadblocks that keep most senior designers from getting to the next level — with guidance from someone who's been there. I'm a Staff Product Designer with years of hands-on, high-impact leadership at both small and large companies. I've been on a journey as a hands-on designer these past 15 years with lots of bumps in the road, including surpassing these challenges: 🙃 Struggling to understand why I'd been stuck at senior for years 🙃 Fighting for influence over product and design strategy, but still being left out of the room 🙃 Swimming in a sea of role ambiguity as a Staff Designer 🙃 Being overwhelmed with design busywork and not having time to impact the company's vision 🙃 Trying out management multiple times; liking the leadership and mentorship parts, but not the HR part After reaching a place of clarity in my own design career, I decided to create this course to help others reach the same point. Through a series of digital lessons and live conversations, you'll discover techniques and tactics to become a more impactful, influential, and strategic individual contributor and leader. This course was designed for you to get the most possible value from your live time with me. 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 150 designers the tools to navigate their own challenges and reap all the career rewards. Let's work together to chart your path forward with confidence. Join the next cohort today!

Stop being a paintbrush, start being a visioner

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

If you're one of these, this is the course is for you:

In this course, you'll learn to:

Define the role itself, discuss common responsibilities at companies of different scales, and identify the qualities that distinguish a Staff+ Designer from a Senior one. Build confidence to choose between the Staff+ path and Design Management.

Clarify expectations of a Staff+ Designer

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.

Influence strategy as a non-manager

Set boundaries and manage time effectively so you can make the space to do more strategic design work in a sustainable way (instead of getting stuck in tactical work or endless meetings).

Shift from reactive to proactive

Articulate the value of this role to executives at companies where it doesn't exist and build out the individual contributor career ladder. Show the impact Staff+ Designers have on experience quality through craft — and business success through innovation.

Advocate for the Staff+ Designer role

Push past what's holding you back from reaching the Staff level or succeeding in the role.

Identify and fill your own gaps

Provide a brief description for each module as a way to sell the value of what students will be learning throughout the course.

First Module

Second Module

Third Module

Course syllabus

Connect with your peers and talk shop in small, donut-style group conversations. This optional, social experience will not be recorded.

Social Mixer

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.

Digital Lessons

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.

Jam Time

Course format

Communication and leadership tools you can use today, straight from a fellow Staff designer

Real, tested techniques

Ample time to connect directly with Catt and acquire next steps to resolve your unique issues

Highly interactive course

Meet and learn from other Staff and Senior Designers solving challenges just like yours

Learn with a cohort of peers

Tactical strategies to do your best work

Staff Product Designer at Figma; Ex-Asana

Senior Product Designer at DataDog; Ex-Gusto & Etsy

Staff Product Designer at Discord; Ex-Google

Design at Anthropic; Former Director of Product Design at Slack & Dropbox

Learn from someone who's been there

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