Momentum 2025

Unblock Your Design Career: Reach the Staff Level in 2025

Hosted by Catt Small

Fri, Dec 20, 2024

5:00 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

Free to join

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What you'll learn

Common issues blocking senior designers from reaching staff

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

Methods to overcome your gaps and unlock the next level

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

How someone just like you went from senior to staff

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

Why this topic matters

Senior designers often struggle to get to the next level. Many internal career ladders lack specific, actionable steps you can take to grow. Lots of managers give unclear feedback. This toxic combo leads to stagnation. In this session, you'll learn the major differences between senior and staff designer roles and gain insights to push past what's holding you back from reaching the staff level.

You'll learn from

Catt Small

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

Catt is a Staff Product Designer, game maker, and developer. With a design career spanning over fourteen years, Catt has done design work for companies of all sizes including Asana, Etsy, SoundCloud, and Nasdaq. She started coding around the age of 10 and designing at the age of 15. She graduated from SVA with a BFA in Graphic Design in 2011 and later received an MS in Integrated Digital Media from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering in 2016. She was a member of Rosenfeld Media’s editorial board from 2018–2019.


As an individual contributor leader, Catt has driven the design and launch of many major product experiences that have impacted millions of people. The experiences she designed have drastically increased UX quality and revenue, unlocked an IPO, won awards, and led to successful patents. She enjoys helping people become their best selves and has proactively mentored many talented designers throughout her career — in addition to over 80 amazing individuals through Merit.


Catt’s work has been covered by many publications including Net Magazine, VentureBeat, BuzzFeed, and Black Enterprise. She has spoken at schools and events across the world including Yale, Columbia University, AIGA Design Conference, Beyond Tellerrand in Germany, UX Week, Microsoft’s Codess Seattle, Google’s WomenTechmakers NYC, and TEDxFoggyBottom. You can view her work at cattsmall.com.

Previously at

Asana
Etsy
SoundCloud
Nasdaq

Learn directly from Catt Small

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