Our Speakers

PDT is honored to introduce our exceptional speakers!
We're immensely grateful for their expertise, invaluable insights, and unique perspectives that they bring to our events.

Mark lakeman

Mark is a national leader in the development of sustainable public places. In the last two decades he has directed, facilitated, or inspired designs for more than 500 hundred new community-generated public places in Portland, Oregon alone. Through his leadership in Communitecture, Inc., and its various affiliates such as The City Repair Project (501(c)3), The Village Building Convergence, and the Planet Repair Institute, he has also been instrumental in the development of dozens of participatory organizations and urban permaculture design projects across the United States and Canada. Mark works with governmental leaders, community organizations, and educational institutions in many diverse communities.

Jim kalbach

Jim Kalbach is a noted author, speaker, and instructor in innovation, design, and the future of work. He is currently Chief Evangelist at Mural, the leading online whiteboard.

Jim is the author of several books: Designing Web Navigation (O’Reilly, 2007), Mapping Experiences, 2nd Ed. (O’Reilly, 2020), and The Jobs To Be Done Playbook (Rosenfeld, 2020). In 2023 he co-authored Collaborative Intelligence (Wiley, 2023) with Mariano Battan. Jim is also the Co-founder and Principal at the JTBD Toolkit, an online resource with learning, trainings, and content.

Heather blaikie

Heather Blaikie is an accomplished Industrial Designer, currently specializing her skills in Sports Product Design as a M.S. Candidate at U O. With over a decade of experience, she's excelled in leading creative teams and shaping design strategy for major brands. Heather shares her expertise by teaching design-related courses and facilitating workshops. In her free time, she enjoys yoga, hiking with her wife and dogs, and drag performance. 

Neal Moore

Neal Moore is human-centered business design strategist and consultant who co-founded Jump Associates, a Bay Area strategy and innovation firm. He’s lead teams and executives in gaining insights, shaping new experiences and initiatives, commercializing technologies, and building capacity for design thinking in a variety of industries. He advises early-stage entrepreneurs and investors as well as large private and public organizations.   

damon gaumont

Damon currently guides brands accountably at Emerge through the creation of digital experiences by tapping his extensive background and expertise in brand building, creative strategy, and experience design. His belief that all brand extensions start best with a clearly articulated vision is the first step in an accountable process that culminates with beautifully usable and inherently humanized branded digital experiences. Emerge's roster of clients include; Nike, Splunk, Steelcase, Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield, and many more.

Kat Kojic

Kat’s a photographer, Improv facilitator, and consultant with a penchant for connection.

With over 20 years of experience with Improv and over a decade working as a professional photographer, plus a background in advertising and years of experience as an Art Director and Graphic Designer, Kat approaches each project with an open mind, an artful eye, and a focus on getting results.

Smiling woman with wavy red hair in warm sunilght

April reissmann

As a person living with Bipolar, Anxiety, and PTSD, sketchnoting gives me the ability to turn chaos into clarity. Being able to clearly communicate thoughts, needs, and goals is a priceless gift that I feel compelled to help spread. My mission is simple: to help. Pairing visual thinking with human-centered design allows me to truly understand who I'm serving and how to best help them (usually help themselves). My work ranges from private coaching to enterprise consulting. I live, work, and travel around the world with my husband and trusty service dog. This lifestyle gives me a unique perspective regarding inclusion and accessibility that I bring into my mission of helping every day.

DAN SELF

Story first. Story always. Dan has spent most of his working life or what is known as "a career" thinking about, studying, and uncovering the importance of story.

And in the pursuit of discovering the importance of story, he has explored many different job paths that have revealed some important aspects of the brain on story.

Bottom line? Dan is not a neurologist, but he’s played one on TV, and that's his story and he’s sticking with it.

Mary sherwin

Mary Sherwin has been teaching the ins and outs of product design and design thinking at the graduate level for over 10 years, from California College of the Arts to Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design to Pacific Northwest College of Art and everywhere in between.

COLIN BAY

Colin Bay is the megaphone for the voice of the user at Concrete. He's blazed trails in user experience for 30 years, spoken at industry conferences, and led UX research teams at companies large and small. He has worked in developer products, smart TVs, enterprise apps, networking, virtual reality, next-generation input methods, e-commerce websites, laptops, remote controls—you name it, he's dug into it. Colin has been repeatedly given Concrete's "most likely to make a pun" award and is always working to keep the crown. He does sport climbing and bouldering in local gyms, making all kinds of music, and spending time with his family.

More PDT speakers

  • Leo Frishberg

  • Krisitina Halvorson

  • Todd Harple

  • Kate Murphy

  • Tony Salvador

  • Charles Buchwald