Your career problem may have the “wrong” name
How to diagnose what’s really going on in 60 seconds
UX Mentor Diaries
Ex-JPMorgan VP teaching designers how power actually works. Weekly tactics on visibility, influence, and corporate fluency.
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Latest posts
How a stagnant Lead Designer got unstuck by picking the right battle
Inside the session: a Lead designer with eleven things she’d never said out loud, how we picked the one worth spending, the 52 words she used in front of her VP, and the count that proved it worked
What Wall Street and elite law firms know about career risks that you don't
Hint: it’s NOT imposter syndrome or lack of confidence
How to read a hiring panel when all you have is 4 job titles
Inside the session: a design leader on her third final round, and the 90-sec answer that flipped the person most likely to sink her (she got the job!)
What I learned about leadership hiring from watching Shark Tank
You've already seen 100s of hiring debriefs. You just didn’t realize what they were...because it was a TV show.
Why "not strategic enough" is almost never about your thinking
A Design Manager's week sorted into 3 kinds of rules, what changed after we did the sorting and she finally understood what "being strategic" meant to her manager
Most crosswalk buttons in New York City do nothing. Neither do most of your "company's rules".
How to tell which rules protect your career, which are theater, and which are testing your judgment.
Why "already doing" the Director job can make it harder to get the Director title
The 5 moves we built to turn unofficial responsibility into a promotion timeline her new CPO could no longer leave vague
Your own team is the worst place to try to become Director
Or, why companies pay outside candidates more to do the job their own people are already doing
More training vs. more exposure, and why only one led to a promotion
Two Lead designers started with the same feedback, but one collected certificates while the other changed who saw her work
"Do I really need a career coach?" No. Not yet. Probably.
The FREE self-coaching stack, what AI can and can't do for your career, and the ONE wall where DIY stops working.