The Rise of the Design Executive Officer
Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design identifies and explores the qualities of a new breed of leaders: the design executive officer. The talk will explore how DEOs run their companies and why this approach makes sense today. Maria will talk about how we can identify design skills in ourselves and our colleagues, and guide them in using these skills to build, revive, or reinvent the next generation of great companies and organizations.
Innovator, artist, protagonist, and positive provocateur, Maria Giudice has pursued a vision of intelligent, elegant, people-centered design throughout her professional life. Her grasp of the pragmatic, the authentic, and the essential have kept her at the forefront of design and business for over 25 years.
Under Maria’s leadership, Hot Studio, the experience design firm she founded in 1997, grew into a full-service creative agency with an impressive list of Fortune 500 clients. In March 2013, Facebook acquired the talent behind Hot Studio. In 2015, she joined Autodesk as VP of experience design. Her latest book, Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design, is published by New Riders. Maria is an AIGA design fellow. She has spoken at conferences all over the world and currently serves as an adjunct professor and trustee at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Maria is a mom to two amazing teenagers and recently was ordained as a minister at the Universal Life Church.