Building Design Teams with Clout

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All Lightning Lessons

Building Design Teams with Clout

Hosted by Ryan Scott (Host) and Alex Schleifer

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What you'll learn

Why Design teams should have more influence in their orgs

We’ll dive into the short- and long-term benefits for designers & our companies when design teams are truly empowered.

What holds Design teams back from being more impactful?

Why don’t all Design teams have clout? We'll breakdown why non-designers might be unclear about Design’s value & impact.

Join with your team & learn to build influence together

Everyone—not just leaders—can build Design’s influence. Bring your colleagues to unlock meaningful design work together.

Why this topic matters

Designers can deliver more value that non-designers often realize. Consequently, many Design teams aren’t asked to deliver their full potential. If we try to do more, we may be met with confusion or skepticism. Today, Alex Schleifer—Airbnb’s former CDO—and host Ryan Scott will explore how Design teams can develop the influence to unlock more fulfilling design work & more impact for our companies.

You'll learn from

Ryan Scott (Host)

Founder @ Accelerate Design. Ex-Design Lead @ Airbnb & DoorDash. UC Berkeley MBA

Ryan Scott is a multidisciplinary designer who has led cross-functional teams to launch some of today’s most recognizable products.

As an early employee at DoorDash, he spearheaded live order tracking, mobile group orders, and the launch of in-app food photos. At Airbnb, Ryan led major redesigns of checkout flow, messaging platform, search platform, and mobile website.

After earning his MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Ryan now coaches and teaches critical business skills to emerging-design leaders.

Alex Schleifer

Former Airbnb Chief Design Officer. Co-Founder at Human Computer.

Alex Schleifer is a renowned design leader who served as Airbnb's Chief Design Officer. At Airbnb, he grew the team from a few-dozen to a world-class team of 300 designers, researchers, writers, and illustrators. He also successfully stewarded a company culture where design was seen as essential to the operation and success of the business, creating an environment for designers to do career-defining work.

He now runs Human Computer, independent video game studio based in San Francisco.

Previously at