Amazon’s Joanna Peña-Bickley: Bringing more diversity into leadership

Joanna Peña-Bickley has had an amazing arc to her design leadership career: from Chief Creative Officer at Matter Worldwide and IBM, to her current role as Head of Research and Design for Alexa Devices at Amazon, Joanna has always sought to design things that are “useful, usable, and magical.”

In this interview, we talk with Joanna about working cross functionally with both software and hardware teams, and what she’s learned about building a more connected workflow. We also get Joanna’s take on speaking design in the language of business, and how she works to bring more diversity into leadership at the companies where she's worked.

Takeaways:

• How Joanna approaches building high-functioning teams.

• What the opportunities and challenges are when designing for invisible interfaces.

• How to create partnerships that will make your team successful.