Nastasha is a deeply strategic and soulful design executive who is equally comfortable defining a big picture vision as she is diving into the fine details that truly make products and brands memorable. She’s been a creative leader, high-energy operator, and an effective culture builder of teams responsible for designing products, services, business strategies, and brands from end-to-end—for both startups and Fortune 100 corporations. A hands-on designer, Nastasha brings deep expertise in new product and service development, physical and digital design, brand development, user research, and business strategy to her latest role—Chief Design Officer at Kite.An effective collaborator with a track record of building deep cross-functional partnerships, Nastasha is driven by the mission to advance the impact women can have in the world. She’s equally passionate about transforming industries by designing exceptional user experiences that improve lives, move markets, and humanize and innovate world changing technologies. Nastasha loves a creative brief that starts with “designing the future of…”, which she encountered often as a Design Director at global design and innovation firm, IDEO, where she led the Interaction Design practice and new product development. And at Aurora and Uber Advanced Technologies Group, where she helped shape the next frontier of self-driving with a multidisciplinary group of product designers, UX researchers, and industrial designers. Across these roles, she led large-scale, complex programs, translating company vision, strategy, and values into action—especially in fast-paced, agile, and rapid-growth environments.An insight-driven leader who enjoys creating systems that scale human-centered research methods to uncover insights and translate them into meaningful innovation opportunities, she also spent time as a graduate-level instructor of Interaction Design and Industrial Design at California College of the Arts, parlaying her love of design into her desire to equip tomorrow’s designers with practical, real-world knowledge and inspiration. While in school, she attended UC San Diego and Carnegie Mellon University, graduating with magna cum laude honors. With a long career in innovation, technology, and the lived experience of a female person of color, she feels a strong sense of responsibility to challenge the systems and constructs of today, to create a better tomorrow.A sought-after public speaker on the topics of Design, Innovation, DE&I, and Leadership, she has graced stages at SXSW and Design Week.