World-class Designer Podcast

We speak with Hannah Dreher from the United States of America, a product manager and "bookaholic" in this episode.

As a designer, Hannah started her career in graphics. She later decided to migrate to product manager out of a need to improve her skills, reinventing and positioning her career. Hannah dedicated much of her time to perfecting her contact with the area by taking several courses.

Hannah finds herself constantly motivated by the brilliance of those she has the privilege to learn from and work alongside, whether they are members of the company or customers.

Juliana is an entrepreneur and educator. She is the co-founder of ECHOS, an innovation lab, and its business units: School of Design Thinking – a school that puts innovation in practice, and Echos – Innovation Projects. 

Over the last years, Juliana has worked to develop an innovation ecosystem in Brazil and Australia to foster the design of desirable futures. She works as a leader in projects in the areas of healthcare, construction, the internet of things, and beyond. 

As an educator & speaker, Juliana creates awareness around the knowledge and depth of design as a way to accelerate innovation, having participated in events such as the Global Innovation Summit in San Jose - California, TEDxMaua in Sao Paulo, What Design Can Do, Sydney Design Festival, Pause Fest and the William Drenttel Award for Excellence in Design.

Sarah Belkhamsa is a lecturer at the Institute of Arts and Crafts of Kairouan in Tunisia and a project consultant in the field of culture and design. She holds a Ph.D. in Design from the University of Paris 1 and was a researcher in Semiotics of Arts and Design at the ACTE Institute (2007 to 2017) in France. Laboratory, where she developed modeling and theories framed in digital tools that can be used to audit Habits change (http://metabolisme.design/). Her topic is about relationships between design research, system thinking, and semiotics.

She relies on this research and methodology to build and disseminate a new vision of design. Her projects have a strong social impact such as "School of designers " in 2017 and the "TOGA" Network of Education Through Art in 2019 copyrighted and implemented in Tunisia. She deploys her expertise in communication and design to NGOs specialized in education, culture, and innovation. Product Designer/Researcher/Coach and design activist. she continues her work on habit by experimenting with its model in various fields.

For several years, his expertise has provided significant support to various Tunisian startups by integrating design thinking as an innovation process and by developing product/service adapted to the target customers. She is currently coach and Taskforce of the OSTX network (Open Startup Tunisia). Finally, she is a member of several scholarly and professional organizations in the field of design that defend the ethical, committed and developmental dimension of design in the sustainable economy of countries.

Renato Paixão, a Rio de Janeiro-based visual designer, with a Bachelor's degree in Visual Communications from the University of Rio de Janeiro's School of Fine Arts (EBA/UFRJ). He helps companies to find innovative ways to engage with clients and expand their business through brand experience design, by creating user-focused solutions that bridge the user's brand experience and company business objectives.

In 2014, he won first place in L'Oreal's Brandstorm competition and found his calling: to create experiences that build connections between people and brands. Throughout his career, he has had the chance to work with great brands and develop his knowledge working in multiple areas.

"If you can design one thing, you can design everything."

Massimo Vignelli

From sketches to design sprints, prototypes to codebase commits - He takes pride and joy in exercising and growing my skills in each phase of product development.

He has built tiny startups and has also worked in large corporations, like Google and Youtube, building out new, experimental arms of their businesses from tiny seeds. Both have involved growing and fostering healthy teams and making sure their members felt empowered to experiment, safe in asking difficult questions, and ready to support and celebrate one another.

Patricia Machado, a UX researcher and human-centred design facilitator with over six years of international experience turning customer needs into products, content, and services for innovation projects. She is currently working at Ford Motor Company in the Information Technology group, answering challenging questions to shape the future of mobility and helping technology teams to engage with customers actively.

She started her career designing content strategies and producing audiovisual and digital content to engage with customers.  Patricia arrived in User Experience Research, driven by an interest in better understanding people and how they interact with technology. She holds an MFA degree in Interaction Design (Human-Computer Interaction) from the College for Creative Studies based in Detroit, MI.

As a researcher, she has focused on product experimentation and innovation. She is highly competent in qualitative research methodologies with a strong emphasis on participatory design techniques.

Sabeeha is a software developer turned design entrepreneur. She has a passion for helping dreamers launch their businesses and has helped over 30 startups to get going. As an advocate by nature, she has an inborn sense of idealism and morality and sees helping others as her purpose in life.

She founded Jack Studios as a side-hustle while completing her degree and is now running it as a successful product studio with her dream team. Her passion for startups has spilled over into her co-founding two digital products in the travel and African entrepreneurship space.

When she is not sitting in meetings and writing proposals, you can find her doing yoga, baking banana bread, and painting large-scale abstract Arabic calligraphy.

Thaisa is a problem solver and a perfectionist in recovery, willing to stretch herself and risk making mistakes to achieve innovative solutions and validate my learnings.

Her experience includes working with diverse product teams from UX design, through research, to development. Worked with well-known brands including Twitter, HP, MasterCard, Autodesk, WellsFargo, Ubisoft, TomTom, and Visa.

Thaisa believes that information needs to be shared, this is at her core, and she also loves to connect with people. In her free time, she enjoys recording episodes for her podcast Latinx in Power and writes for the PM101 blog while she talks about the program and product manager role, frameworks, certifications, and books - lots of books. The PM101 blog reaches half-million people yearly!

Koji Pereira is a Senior Product Design Manager at Twitter. With over two decades of experience in the Design field, +5 managing teams. He leads a team-building experience for exploring and search at Twitter. He strives to build diverse teams and safe spaces, making sure everyone is included and all voices are heard. Over the years he helped to build many products from 0-1 elevating designers to the strategy sphere.

Previously he was at Lyft, where he was a Head of Design for Lyft Business, leading a suite of products for organizations to get rides for their people. He launched Lyft Pass, a self-service product that allows companies to create ride programs.

At Google, he led Design for Files by Google from 0 to 1/2 billion MAU and launched many products, including Camera Go, Android TV Data Saver, and Google Spaces. He also taught design around the world in schools like Harbour. Space in Spain and PUC Minas in Brazil and led a startup in Brazil. Koji also hosts Cells and Pixels Podcast with Product and Design leaders.

Adrian Jankowlak, a designer and creative director with a passion for connecting people, ideas, organizations, and technologies. He believes empathy, collaboration, and prototyping are key to solving problems on any scale.

He has designed products, services, and creative campaigns across the world, with work spanning new technologies, toys, consumer electronics, furniture, sanitation, and more in fast-moving industries across a large number of brands.

In 2015 he founded Nairobi Design Week to strengthen the Kenyan creative industry and give East Afrikan talent a platform to showcase their work locally and globally.

Nairobi Design Week is an annual festival and all-year platform that brings Afrikan design to the world, with past projects including the Refugees Pavilion at the London Design Biennale and collaborations with several European academic institutions, as well as the British Council.