Dave Ridilla (he/him)

A seasoned creative leader orchestrating cross-functional teams through some badass visionary and product design.

I'm a design nerd.

I love taking big problems or abstract ideas and figuring out ( either as a contributor, collaborator, or leader) how to create something that is elegant, simple, and most-importantly, useful.

This ranges from crafting North Star visionary work, getting deep into API discussions to guide design solutions on our roadmap, or understanding how to implement an organizational wide design system that is used by a suite of tools.

I'm a process nerd.

I've helped guide my teams through a well thought-out and collaborative design process. This includes respecting the roles of research, content strategy, and accessibility, while also understanding how to maintain balance with product and technology teams.

The tools we use are really not important, but communication and collaboration are always the two biggest contributing factors to an organization's success and you need to create those channels for them to happen.

But like, I just really give a shit care?

Great teams are great because of what happens behind the design. Being a great design leader is not about the output of the team, but the support you gave them both directly and indirectly. You need to ensure that the organization is mature enough to respect a real design process.

You need to keep people motivated, make them feel valued, reward them, understand their needs and concerns, give them a voice, an opportunity, and create a safe environment for them to do their best work. To those of us that work in a field founded on empathy this might seem all too obvious yet people lose sight of it and that is not the type of design leadership I will ever represent.