DrupalCon Los Angeles 2015: Keynote by Whitney Hess
Channel: Drupal Association
Date: 2015-05-13

Who She Is

Whitney Hess is a coach, writer and speaker helping people bring their whole selves to their work. As a result, they better serve their customers, their companies, their communities and themselves. Her life’s mission is to put humanity back into business.

For the last decade, she has coached hundreds of companies on how to make their products easier and more pleasurable to use, boost the bottom line, and do work they love. With leadership coaching for new managers, career mapping for UX practitioners, and UX training for creative professionals and product teams, Whitney’s techniques eliminate haphazard decision-making, methodically prioritize efforts, and measurably improve team dynamics.

Whitney is the co-host the podcast Designing Yourself, writes on her blog Pleasure & Pain, and speaks at conferences and corporations worldwide. She holds a Masters in Human-Computer Interaction and a Bachelor’s degree in Professional Writing and HCI from Carnegie Mellon University, and in 2014 became a certified coach through New Ventures West. She and her sailor-chef Fredrick live aboard s/v Jenny, their 1980 Endeavour 37′ sloop, currently docked in San Diego, CA.



What She is Going to Speak About

Being Integral: Developing You

It’s a given that much of our success depends on our ability to foster meaningful relationships with our colleagues and customers. But what about our relationship with ourselves? When we ignore our emotions, act against our values, and become indifferent to our surroundings, we lose who we really are and run a much greater risk of not achieving our clients’ goals (and our own). In this talk, Whitney will explore how presence, adaptability, empathy, and influence can be our most effective design tools. And she’ll address how to cultivate these qualities through intellectual, emotional, and physical practices we can integrate into our everyday routines.