speaker lineup
Sara Edwards
TALK
What if design doesn’t own anything? Designing decisions, not just solutions.
Designers have spent years fighting for ownership: of the customer experience, the design process, strategy, and a seat at the table. Sara bought into that idea, too. She moved from design into product management in search of more ownership—and, she thought, more influence.
Nearly a decade later, she returned to design and noticed something surprising: some of the work she owned had less impact than the work she enabled.
Through contrasting stories of initiatives that shipped but struggled to create change and others that thrived in the hands of partners, Sara will challenge the assumption that ownership is the path to influence. Design can reframe the problem, surface what others can’t see, make new possibilities tangible, and test assumptions before an organization commits.
What if design’s greatest value isn’t owning products, experiences, or tools—but changing the quality of the decisions that shape what an organization does next?
ABOUT THIS SPEAKER
Sara Edwards is a design leader at University Hospitals, where she partners with teams to tackle complex problems across healthcare—from access and care delivery to Medicaid coverage and AI.
Previously, she spent nearly a decade at Progressive building new products, platforms, and ventures. Her work blends systems thinking, experience strategy, technology, and organizational change. She believes design’s greatest value isn’t the artifacts it creates, but what organizations are able to understand, decide, and do differently because design was there.