SPEAKERS

ROGER ROHATGI

Chief AI Officer, Chai
Former Chief Design Officer, BP

  • Former Chief Design Officer, BP

    Roger Rohatgi leads digital design and change at bp, a global team of innovative thinkers, user experience (UX) professionals and creatives focused on supercharging human experience design (HXD) and enabling change. Human-centered design is the North Star he followed to create and deliver the first bp design discipline and system. This includes driving design best practice and digital circularity across the company, as well as introducing an award-winning ‘sustainable design’ methodology and an inclusive design mindset.

    Prior to bp, Roger spent 25+ years with creative, transformative teams, spearheading digital
    innovation and delivering captivating customer and user experiences with agencies, media outlets, and top brands such as Verizon, Twitter, Hyundai, Vine, Motorola Solutions and major TV networks such as CBS, NBC Universal, MTV, FOX, CNBC Arabia, ZEE TV and more. His TV, film and commercial work has been featured on the likes of MTV, ESPN, Nickelodeon, NBC, and ABC, and he has won awards both as a film producer and in design, including the Oracle CX Innovation Award for inclusive UX. Some of his work has also been seen in Fast Co., Wired, USA Today, LA Times, Hollywood Reporter, Advertising Age and Forbes.com.

    Roger sees the strategic role of HXD in the changes needed to achieve a brighter, more equitable and more sustainable future. He gets super energized by designing better, more human experiences with digital and the sustainable impact we can have for people and planet through design.

DEBORAH
DAWTON

Chief Executive

  • As Chief Executive of the Design Business Association, Deborah works with the industry to champion the tangible and measurable impact of design and its capability for change in business and government, nationally and internationally.

    Her passion for design as a strategic tool that boardrooms must recognise, and her experience of the UK’s diverse and competitive design sector enable her to lead the DBA as it works tirelessly to build universal confidence in design investment and support the design industry to deliver on this promise.

KEN
MUSGRAVE

Head, Digital Product and Experience Design

  • Ken Musgrave is a design leader with accomplishments across diverse industries and seeks to be at the intersection of business and design. He has found the most success through the integration of digital, physical, and service design domains.

    Recently, Ken was tasked with building and leading Ford’s Global Human-Centered Design capability, positioning the company for a smart, connected, autonomous, and service-driven future. Previously, as Vice President of Experience Design at HP, he rebuilt the company’s Global Experience Design capability and reimagined its entire digital and physical portfolio. Prior to HP, he established and led the Global Experience Design competency at Dell Technologies.

    Ken began his career in healthcare technology, where he developed a deep understanding of how human-centered design and immersive user research can drive meaningful outcomes. Currently, he is collaborating with Whirlpool Corporation’s senior design leader on key strategic initiatives.

    He holds an MBA from the University of Utah, an MS in Design from Georgia Tech, and a BS in Industrial Design from Auburn University.

MARK
WILSON

Global Design Editor

  • Mark Wilson is the Global Design Editor at Fast Company, who covers the entirety of design’s impact on culture and business.

    An authority in product design, UX, AI, experience design, retail, food, and branding, he has reported landmark features on companies ranging from Nike to Google to MSCHF to Canva to Samsung to Snap to IDEO to Target, while profiling design luminaries including Tyler the Creator, Jony Ive, and Salehe Bembury. He’s tracked the innovation of performance sneakers and the relevance of streetwear in high fashion with equal fervor to the evolution of Apple and the rise of generative AI. He has flown a jetpack and once designed a menu item for Taco Bell.

    Mark has been writing and producing video projects for nearly two decades. After graduating from the University of Iowa, he helped define the era of modern writing at Gawker Media properties including Gizmodo and Kotaku, while contributing to National Geographic, GQ, Esquire, and others. He’s published in Marvel By Design, which traced the rise and impact of comics on culture. He also once launched his own startup, Philanthroper, which raised $1 donations for new nonprofits each day. 

    He holds a degree in English and Cinema Production from the University of Iowa, where he completed his undergraduate thesis with the Writer’s Workshop

MELISSA DALRYMPLE

Partner

  • Melissa Dalrymple is a Partner at McKinsey & Company and leads their global Innovation and Design practice. Her client work focuses on consumer-facing industries, including travel and hospitality, CPG, and emerging technologies. By combining design thinking methods business strategy, and technology advances, her teams design and deliver the kinds of compelling new businesses that have the power to reshape categories and disrupt industries.

    Melissa’s research efforts focus on the Business Value of Design and the evolving role of design leadership. Her work has had broad coverage in the media, including Fast Company, Forbes, The Financial Times, and McKinsey Quarterly, and is frequently credited with helping elevate the role of user-centered thinking within large organizations, especially those seeking to redefine their purpose to meet shifts in consumer behavior.

    Prior to McKinsey, Melissa spent nearly two decades in the design and innovation industry at firms including IDEO and Doblin. She has also consulted to multiple early-stage startups on their products and funding models in both Europe and the US.

    She has been a lecturer on the business value of design at multiple at MBA programs, including Ross, LSE, and HBS. Melissa is a graduate of Yale University, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard Business School. She lives in Chicago with one husband, three kids, and two dogs.

PHIL DUNCAN

Chief Design Officer
Design Leader, Fabric Care OU

  •  Phil holds a dual role as Chief Design Officer and Design Leader for our Fabric Care OU. Phil’s deep mastery in Design, Brand Building, and integration of the Vectors of Superiority to achieve a superior consumer experience is a big asset to P&G. Phil will continue the Design team’s transformation, deepening and elevating the team’s “designing” mastery, and integration of technologies to enable our design work to be increasingly effective, desirable, and productive. 

    Phil maintains his responsibilities as P&G’s Chief Designer Officer (CDO), a role he has held since 2008. As CDO, Phil is accountable for the overall superiority of our product and package designs, and helping build a superior consumer experience, integrating across our five vectors of superiority. Phil continues to lead the transformation of Design from a largely “design management organization” to a “designing and design leadership” mastery capability. Phil continues in his leadership role to maximize value creation with our Olympic sponsorship, and with our P&G Architect team to create world-class employee and guest experience with our facilities -focusing on the Cincinnati General Offices. 

    Prior to his P&G CDO role, Phil was the President of Europe and the Middle East, for Landor Associates, a branding and design agency -part of WPP. Phil spent 13 years with Landor, successfully growing and expanding their business globally, including with a diverse portfolio of P&G brands from Fabric and Home Care, to Beauty, FemCareand Oral Care.

    Phil is an experienced Brand Builder and Creative –with mastery across many capability spaces including brand architecture, package design, Design sprints, and visualization techniques. He is an experienced leader, passionate about the delighting consumer, building business-centric creative cultures, and bringing out the best in individuals and teams. 

PETER MERHOLZ

Consultant and Author focusing on Organizational Effectiveness and Leadership Development

PHIL GILBERT

Author of Irresistible Change. Former General Manager of Design at IBM. Board Trustee, Eames Institute for Infinite Curiosity. Keynote speaker and executive advisor. 

  • Phil Gilbert is a serial entrepreneur, author, and former General Manager of Design at IBM, where he led one of the most ambitious cultural transformations in modern business—changing how nearly 400,000 employees across 180 countries worked, without the authority to mandate any of it. Instead, he treated change as a product that teams chose to adopt, an approach that became the foundation of his book, Irresistible Change: A Blueprint for Earning Buy-In and Breakout Success (Wiley, 2025). The IBM transformation has been the subject of a Harvard Business School case study, the award-winning documentary The Loop, and features in The New York Times, Fortune, Fast Company, and others. Phil now serves on the Board of Trustees for the Eames Institute for Infinite Curiosity and advises senior leaders navigating high-stakes change driven by AI, design, and culture. He lives in Austin, Texas. 

    Melissa’s research efforts focus on the Business Value of Design and the evolving role of design leadership. Her work has had broad coverage in the media, including Fast Company, Forbes, The Financial Times, and McKinsey Quarterly, and is frequently credited with helping elevate the role of user-centered thinking within large organizations, especially those seeking to redefine their purpose to meet shifts in consumer behavior.

    Prior to McKinsey, Melissa spent nearly two decades in the design and innovation industry at firms including IDEO and Doblin. She has also consulted to multiple early-stage startups on their products and funding models in both Europe and the US.

    She has been a lecturer on the business value of design at multiple at MBA programs, including Ross, LSE, and HBS. Melissa is a graduate of Yale University, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard Business School. She lives in Chicago with one husband, three kids, and two dogs.

STEPHEN BAIRD

Shareholder at Greenberg Traurig, LLP Minneapolis

  • Nationally recognized trademark and intellectual property attorney with substantial intellectual property experience spanning virtually every industry, with a focus on trademarks and the legal implications of branding. Frequent speaker and author on trademarks, brand management, and related intellectual property subjects. Considered a gifted writer, speaker, creative thinker, and legal strategist, with a professional passion for winning, building, teaching, mentoring, and also supporting selected pro bono clients. Recognized by the Wall Street Journal as the "legal brain" behind the successful 1999 decision of the USPTO canceling the Washington R*dskins trademarks as disparaging to Native Americans. Has a rare background as a pharmacist, serving life sciences, pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, and medical device brands. Substantial experience in helping Indian Tribes build their intellectual property rights and solve their legal issues involving intellectual property. Substantial trademark and branding experience in the outdoor sporting, hunting and shooting industry. Substantial experience in trademark and branding matters for start-ups, restaurants, casinos, software companies, banks and financial institutions. Served as Judicial Clerk to the Honorable Wilson Cowen of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. Currently counsels clients on trademark usage and clearance, branding strategies, domestic and worldwide portfolio management, litigation and enforcement, Internet domain name disputes, licensing and prosecution. Specialties: Although the ethical rules governing lawyers carefully control the use of the word "specialty," Steve is widely known for having substantial experience in advising clients on the legal implications of branding, non-traditional trademarks such as color and product configurations, naming, trademark registration strategies, internet issues, trademark enforcement and policing, among others.

  • Peter Merholz has worked at the intersection of design, technology, and humans for over 30 years.

    Currently, he’s an independent consultant focused on improving the effectiveness of design organizations. His clients include JP Morgan Chase, Contentsquare, The New York Times, Humana, and Target.

    He co-founded Adaptive Path, the premier user experience consultancy, acquired by Capital One in 2014. After leaving Adaptive Path, served as a design executive, leading teams at Groupon, OpenTable, Capital One, Snagajob (now Snag), and Kaiser Permanente.

    He co-wrote Org Design for Design Orgs, still the premier book on building in-house design teams, and co-hosts "Finding Our Way," a podcast exploring design leadership.

    Oh, and, yeah, he coined the word “blog.”

HOSTED BY

  • John enjoyed a rewarding career at Procter & Gamble that spanned more than 2 decades. John’s global responsibilities in customer services, operations, international trade, strategic sourcing, and design & innovation – and touched all categories, most brands, and all regions at some point during his career.

    Notably, a member of P&G’s global Design Leadership Team, John was a part of P&G’s initial, formative journey to elevate and leverage Design more strategically in its businesses, and in its DNA and culture.  One of the largest and most transformative “Design journeys” on the planet.  In this role, John was responsible for all of P&G’s external design and innovation agency relationships – interfacing with almost 400 design, innovation, and creative agencies, and creating the processes and criteria used to identify, select, and on-board exceptional talent and capability, as well as to evaluate existing agency relationships. 

    John also led external benchmarking programs with Fortune 500 corporations who sought to better understand the strategic role of Design, and how it might be a catalyst for growth… and not just a “decoration station”. 

    Inspired by this “balcony view” of the industry - and a wide range of experiences, observations, insights, and patterns of behavior - John saw the opportunity to help both “sides” of the industry accelerate their respective Design, marketing, & creative services journeys… to better serve consumers, and drive better business performance.  To be better, together.

    In early 2007, John left P&G to launched A Better View Strategic Consulting, LLC to “enhance the intersection of creative relationships”. 

    John and A Better View have advised more than 120 leading, consumer-facing corporations, dozens of smaller/newer brands and start-ups, and has had the opportunity to coach more than 2,000 agencies - shaping their value propositions, elevating client engagement skills, and expanding the value they create for their clients.    

    John is passionate about the role, influence, and impact that Design might deliver for organizations and for greater business results… as a catalyst for growth… an advocate for consumers, customers, colleagues, and communities… influencers of culture and collaboration… a source of curiosity and action… and a champion of long-term and long-lasting brand propositions.

    John created the Design Leaders Council for the prestigious economic research and leadership organization, The Conference Board.  This peer-to-peer council launched in 2017 with “Head of Design” members from 47 well-known corporate enterprises, including:  Google, Procter & Gamble, Mastercard, Mayo Clinic, Salesforce, SAP, Expedia, BNSF Railways, Nike, Rockwell Collins, Pacific Gas & Electric, and many other equally renowned corporations. 

    John co-founded The D Event… a round-table event exclusively for client-side Design & business leaders.  He teaches a Design Thinking course in the MBA program at the University of Notre Dame.  And John was elected to the Board of Directors of the Design Business Association in the UK – the world’s leading authority on Design effectiveness.

    In short, John hopes that his experiences, perspective, influence, & impact provide… well… a better view.