2027 speakers
Michaela Hackner
TALK
There was no playbook, so I wrote my own: How a career of not fitting the mold prepared me to lead when all the rules changed
“Did you Google it? Did you call other companies?” The interviewer wanted Michaela Hackner to explain how she knew where to start leading AI transformation, and how her team got ahead. But the answer was no. Michaela hadn’t looked around for answers. Instead, she showed them a diagram she’d drawn from her own hypothesis.
Being hard to categorize felt like a liability for most of her career. Designer? Researcher? PM? Until the interdisciplinary thinking that made her hard to place became the most valuable skill in the room.
Michaela traces how she went from working quietly at the seams to turning a blank slate into a path forward—redefining what her team was for and leading Indeed through the shift, with no map.
You’ll leave knowing:
Which ambiguous openings are yours to step into
How to make a half-formed idea concrete enough that others join you
Why the parts of your background that never fit are your strongest asset now
ABOUT THIS SPEAKER
Michaela Hackner (she/her) has reinvented her career more than once, most recently as senior director of UX at Indeed, where she saw the shift coming and built the organization’s AI transformation program from scratch—putting UX in the driver’s seat rather than waiting for AI to happen to it.
The approach scaled beyond UX, and she was asked to help steer the product org’s transformation, too. She also leads five teams spanning design systems, accessibility, content design, design technology, and design ops.
Before tech, she taught people in rural Cambodia to run village banks, then to teach others to do the same. The multiplying instinct stuck. She’s a systems thinker, a relentless convener, and is known for her contagious enthusiasm.