Team is what makes or breaks a company

“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”

Ed Catmull, Сo-Founder of Pixar

That’s why we dedicated an entire module of our Executive Programme for Design Leaders to Teams. From hiring and onboarding to conflict resolution and succession planning – for the next 2 weeks our cohort will be learning how to build and scale high-performance teams from our brilliant faculty.

Topics we cover in Module 4: Team


Management

Forming & Coaching Elite Design Teams
The Role of a Chief Design Officer
The Extended Diary of a CEO
The Future of HR
Succession Planning
Design & Creative Operations
The Power of Facilitation

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Culture

Think Design, Lead Creatively 
Creating Inclusive Culture
Creating Space for Teamwork
Leadership, People & Culture 
Unleashing your Inner Rapper 

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Human

Cross-Cultural Teams
High-Performance Teams
Conflict Resolution & Transactional Analysis
Group Coaching

Our Module 4 Faculty


Yolanda Martin,
Fractional CPO, former Global VP of Design at ClearScore

Yolanda is an international design leader and platform strategist, with over 20 years of experience across fintech, energy,
e-commerce, and media, where she has led global teams through large-scale transformation. Most recently, as Fractional Chief Product Officer at Jigsaw Create, she restructured product and design functions, embedded platform thinking, and scaled AI-first tools for professional services.

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Jim Prior
Former Global CEO of WPP agencies

Jim has worked with many of the world’s greatest brands, both as a senior leader inside organisations and as a trusted external advisor and global agency CEР. In 2011, he joined The Partners a globally renowned brand consultancy, a part of WPP, becoming the CEO in 2004. He led Superunion until its merger with Design Bridge in 2023, where he took the role of Chair, before retiring from WPP later that year.

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Abigail Wilmore
Former CPO at Tom Ford Fashion and Stella McCartney, Founder of People Flow

Abigail has over 25 years of experience in luxury fashion and beauty, including roles as Chief People Officer at Tom Ford Fashion, Stella McCartney and Dr Barbara Sturm, as well as HR Director at Kering (formerly Gucci Group).

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Patrizia Bertini
Managing Director & Founder at Euler

Patrizia is a Design Operations Strategist, currently leading EU regulations for innovation at Euler. She has developed her approach to Design Ops through 20+ years of international experience in usability, accessibility, web design, design management and user research and has set up and grown Design Ops practices at companies like Intuit, Tide and Babylon Health.

Dan Makoski,
Chief Design Advisor, former Chief Design Officer at UnitedHealth Group and Lloyds Banking Group

Dan has led user experience and design at many of the world’s largest companies, including Google, Walmart, Microsoft, Capital One, Motorola and UnitedHealth Group. He started Google’s modular phone project, designed Hotmail and the original Surface at Microsoft, created “Hey Moto” while leading design research globally at Motorola (which was quickly adopted by Google), and doubled conversion with a redesign of Walmart.com.

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Bidisha Sinha,
Associate Director at Zaha Hadid Architects

Bidisha joined Zaha Hadid Architects in 2005 and has decades of experience delivering international architectural projects across all stages — from design concept through to completion. Bidisha was also the Project Senior Associate on Mathematics: The Winton Gallery at the Science Museum in London, completed in 2016, which received the RIBA award. Her current ongoing projects include a large-scale student university residence, super-luxury retail mall interiors, a collection of single-family residences and two museums.

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John Anderson,
Former Olympic & Paralympic Performance Director; Leadership Coach

John was the Performance Director and Team Leader of the Olympic and Paralympic Canoeing Teams from 1997 to 2017. He led the British Canoeing team to unprecedented success including Team GB’s best-ever Olympic results in Rio 2016. In his role as an executive performance coach, John provides support to public and private sector board-level business leaders to gain a greater understanding and application of the leadership and winning behaviours that improve performance.

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Susan Allen,
Co-Founder & Chief Brand Officer of Here We Flo

Susan launched Here We Flo in 2017 – 
a rapidly growing B Corp with an impressive roster of advisors and investors from Graze, Charlotte Tilbury, Unilever and L’Oréal that has been shaking up the personal care category ever since. Recently, she has been recognised as a 2023 Glossy Future Leader in the Wellness category.

Christophe Egret,
Founding Director at Studio Egret West

Christophe co-founded Studio Egret West in 2004 with David West, establishing a dynamic and integrated practice where urban design, architecture, and landscape are seamlessly brought together through both strategic vision and attention to specificity. After establishing an Employee Ownership Trust, he stepped down from the practice in 2024, leaving it under the leadership of his co-founder, David West.

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Gemma Ballinger,
Managing Director & Partner at Studio Output

Gemma is the Managing Director and Partner at Output – an independent design studio with a focus on digital and motion design. With over 15 years' experience, she's built strategy, new business and client relationships, making sure that working with Output is as rewarding as possible. Gemma's delivered branding, design and digital to clients including BBC, Cuckoo, Penguin, Monzo, Marshmallow, UKTV and Warner Bros.

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Rebecca Robins,
Brand, Culture, Leadership Сhangemaker

With a 20-year career at the intersection of brand, culture and leadership, most recently as Global Director and Chief Learning and Culture Officer at Interbrand, Rebecca works with leading organisations across the world, from Bugatti to LEGO, LVMH to Reuters. Rebecca’s advisory work centres on companies dedicated to being part of collaborative solutions. An advocate of how we invest in people and culture, she is also an Advisory Board Member at the Chartered Management Institute.

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Julia Whitney,
Leadership Coach

Julia is a design leader turned executive coach, working with leaders to help them realise their full potential. Her clients include leaders and leadership teams from AWS, Condé Nast, Dropbox, Spotify, Financial Times, IDEO and many more. Julia led design teams for more than 20 years in the US and the UK. She was the General Manager and Executive Creative Director for the BBC’s 150-person UX & Design department.

Eugenius,
Rap Artist

Eugene’s extensive background in music includes appearances on major stations like Capital FM and Kiss Fresh. He's also a content creator and has been part of prestigious events like the National Social Media Awards and the celebrity opening of the Metropolitan Mayfair Casino alongside fellow talent Connor Mantle and Harry Morris.

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Sarah Lowes,
Executive Coach

As a Certified Transactional Analyst and experienced coach, Sarah believes strongly that awareness of oneself and others is key to individual, team and organisational success in terms of both productivity and wellbeing. Her specialities include behavioural profiling, executive coaching, leadership and management, and many more.

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Annie Lee,
Leadership Coach

Annie is a coach, educator, and nature-inspired change maker. As Co-Director and Founder of Nature’s Blueprint CIC, she creates spaces where people can reconnect with nature, learn from living systems, and explore new ways of responding to today’s challenges. Her work is rooted in coaching, systems thinking, community learning, and a deep connection with the natural world.

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Kate Williams,
Leadership Coach

Kate is informed and inspired by 20 years of working with a huge range of organisations, from BCG to Save the Children, Unilever to LEGO, British Airways to Yorkshire Building Society. Kate's clients range from startups to FTSE 30 companies, with many shapes and sizes in between. She is a qualified executive coach with expertise in coaching capability, leadership team facilitation, purpose-driven strategy and culture change.

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Simon Gough,
Facilitator

Simon is a service design consultant, facilitator and writer with clients ranging from FMCG companies to central government. Over the past decade, he has focused on developing an expanded toolkit that brings together design thinking, systems thinking, data and economics, working on projects that combine environmental, social and technological themes.

Ready to invest in your next 10 years of growth?

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Take your career and leadership to the next level by expanding your network and learning from the C-level faculty. Apply for our Executive Programme for Design Leaders today.

  • Five in-person Modules spread across 1 year (9 weeks in total)
  • In London & California
  • Exclusive Global network
  • Next Cohort Starts: 12 July 2026
  • Cost: £45,000 (excl. VAT) for all learning sessions with the C-Level faculty, materials, coaching, 1-on-1 mentorships, and special cohort experiences

APPLY NOW

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