Our Speakers
PDT is honored to introduce our exceptional speakers!
We're immensely grateful for their expertise, invaluable insights, and unique perspectives that they bring to our events.
We are always on the lookout for new speakers. Interested in speaking for PDT?
JED CAHILL
Jed Cahill has spent the majority of his career driving strategic initiatives at the intersection of business planning, strategic design, and innovation in both management consulting and corporate strategy leadership roles. With a passion for creating inclusive work environments that promote empathy, creativity, and future thinking, he empowers people across all backgrounds and organizational levels to push the boundaries of what's possible.
Jed and his teams have led the strategic design of new experiences and digital products rolled out to tens of millions of customers, transformed business operations to drive efficiency and better employee experiences, and generated hundreds of patented inventions at the intersection of emerging technology and human needs. A graduate of University of Oregon's Lundquist College of Business (MBA), he now lives in SE Portland
Danielle Green
With a background in Cognitive Science, Danielle Green has nearly a decade of experience in UX Research and Product Strategy. As a consultant for high-growth businesses, she specializes in establishing scalable research processes and data-informed roadmaps. She is the proud Co-founder and Research Director of the UX Researchers' Guild, a community of independent researchers and strategists available for hire on-demand.
Danielle is also an educator, coaching the next generation of UX professionals as the Director of the User Experience Master's Program in Applied Cognitive Psychology at Claremont Graduate University. Additionally, she is the founder and leader of the Games and Interactive Technology Lab, a non-profit UX Research laboratory focusing on apps for supporting mental health, cognitive accessibility, educational technology, and employee experience.
Line Morkbak
Line Mørkbak describes herself as a Workplace Enthusiast. She is a curious soul who is passionate about co-creation, bold ideas, and quirky, less traditional ways to approach a collaboration challenge. She works with progressive organizations that are curious and ready to transform the way they work. She often supports hybrid, remote, and/or global teams in their collaboration. Line's work also includes partnering up with People & Culture Teams to design and implement new work practices within small to midsize organizations. With a global life and career, she honors her nomadic soul and has set up her work to be done from anywhere.
Stacey Murphy
Stacey Murphy is an award-winning serial entrepreneur, impact investor, architect, engineer, and the Founder of Dreaming Earth, an architectural venture capital studio with the Earthshot of growing buildings by 2030.
Stacey incubates startups focused on Regenerative Materials and systems in architecture and construction innovation. Her experience starting BK Farmyards, a decentralized urban farming network in Brooklyn, led her to deliver keynote talks in Regenerative Design Thinking for groups that want to improve efficiencies and leave a positive impact on the planet.
Stacey has been featured in Fast Company, New York Magazine, New York Times, BBC, Martha Stewart Radio, David Letterman, PBS, and two TEDx talks on the future of food.
Lucy Ziegler
Lucy Ziegler has been a practitioner in Industrial Design, Experience Design, and Service Design for 20+ years. Over the past 5 years at McKinsey & Company, she split her focus between design projects and projects that use Design to solve complex business problems. As a Certified Futurist and co-creator and leader of McKinsey's Design x Foresight practice, she had the opportunity to bring the unique combination of Design and Strategic Foresight to numerous clients across many industries from startups to Fortune 10 and learned many lessons on how to make this approach more nimble and effective.
As a mother of a young daughter, she is committed to helping leaders make the right decisions today to proactively shape a future for generations to come.
Mark lakeman
Mark is a national leader in the development of sustainable public places. In the last two decades, he has directed, facilitated, or inspired designs for more than 500 hundred new community-generated public places in Portland, Oregon alone. Through his leadership in Communitecture, Inc., and its various affiliates such as The City Repair Project (501(c)3), The Village Building Convergence, and the Planet Repair Institute, he has also been instrumental in the development of dozens of participatory organizations and urban permaculture design projects across the United States and Canada. Mark works with governmental leaders, community organizations, and educational institutions in many diverse communities.
Jim Kalbach
Jim Kalbach is a noted author, speaker, and instructor in innovation, design, and the future of work. He is currently Chief Evangelist at Mural, the leading online whiteboard.
Jim is the author of several books: Designing Web Navigation (O’Reilly, 2007), Mapping Experiences, 2nd Ed. (O’Reilly, 2020), and The Jobs To Be Done Playbook (Rosenfeld, 2020). In 2023 he co-authored Collaborative Intelligence (Wiley, 2023) with Mariano Battan. Jim is also the Co-founder and Principal at the JTBD Toolkit, an online resource with learning, trainings, and content.
Heather blaikie
Heather Blaikie is an accomplished Industrial Designer, currently specializing her skills in Sports Product Design as a M.S. Candidate at U O.
With over a decade of experience, she's excelled in leading creative teams and shaping design strategy for major brands. Heather shares her expertise by teaching design-related courses and facilitating workshops. In her free time, she enjoys yoga, hiking with her wife and dogs, and drag performance.
Neal Moore
Neal Moore is human-centered business design strategist and consultant who co-founded Jump Associates, a Bay Area strategy and innovation firm.
He’s lead teams and executives in gaining insights, shaping new experiences and initiatives, commercializing technologies, and building capacity for design thinking in a variety of industries. He advises early-stage entrepreneurs and investors as well as large private and public organizations.
Damon Gaumont
Damon currently guides brands accountably at Emerge through the creation of digital experiences by tapping his extensive background and expertise in brand building, creative strategy, and experience design.
His belief that all brand extensions start best with a clearly articulated vision is the first step in an accountable process that culminates with beautifully usable and inherently humanized branded digital experiences. Emerge's roster of clients include; Nike, Splunk, Steelcase, Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield, and many more.
Kat Kojic
Kat’s a photographer, Improv facilitator, and consultant with a penchant for connection.
With over 20 years of experience with Improv and over a decade working as a professional photographer, plus a background in advertising and years of experience as an Art Director and Graphic Designer, Kat approaches each project with an open mind, an artful eye, and a focus on getting results.
April Reissmann
As a person living with Bipolar, Anxiety, and PTSD, sketchnoting gives me the ability to turn chaos into clarity. Being able to clearly communicate thoughts, needs, and goals is a priceless gift that I feel compelled to help spread. My mission is simple: to help. Pairing visual thinking with human-centered design allows me to truly understand who I'm serving and how to best help them (usually help themselves). My work ranges from private coaching to enterprise consulting. I live, work, and travel around the world with my husband and trusty service dog. This lifestyle gives me a unique perspective regarding inclusion and accessibility that I bring into my mission of helping every day.
Dan Self
Story first. Story always. Dan has spent most of his working life or what is known as "a career" thinking about, studying, and uncovering the importance of story.
And in the pursuit of discovering the importance of story, he has explored many different job paths that have revealed some important aspects of the brain on story.
Bottom line? Dan is not a neurologist, but he’s played one on TV, and that's his story and he’s sticking with it.
Mary Sherwin
Mary Sherwin has been teaching the ins and outs of product design and design thinking at the graduate level for over 10 years, from California College of the Arts to Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design to Pacific Northwest College of Art and everywhere in between.
She is also a seasoned writer and public speaking coach with expertise in helping individuals and schools develop rigorous curricula and activities for their learning needs. She has worked on multiple successful training programs and product innovation toolkits, such as Kaiser Permanente’s i60 Innovation Toolkit with Propelland and frog’s Collective Action Toolkit.
Colin Bay
Colin Bay is the megaphone for the voice of the user at Concrete. He's blazed trails in user experience for 30 years, spoken at industry conferences, and led UX research teams at companies large and small. He has worked in developer products, smart TVs, enterprise apps, networking, virtual reality, next-generation input methods, e-commerce websites, laptops, remote controls—you name it, he's dug into it.
Colin has been repeatedly given Concrete's "most likely to make a pun" award and is always working to keep the crown. He does sport climbing and bouldering in local gyms, making all kinds of music, and spending time with his family.
MOre PDT Speakers
LEO FRISHBERG
KRISTINA HALVORSON
TODD HARPLE
KATE MURPHY
TONY SALVADOR
CHARLES BUCHWALD
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PDT is a volunteer-run Oregon nonprofit organization, and we rely on sponsors and donations to help us offset event and website costs. If you would like to help, we accept donations through Venmo @PortlandDesignThinkers.
