Staging environment

Speak Up and Stand Out: Strategic Skills for Product Designers

Course

Speak Up and Stand Out: Strategic Skills for Product Designers

Cheryl Chepusova

Design Leader, ex-Slack, Pinterest

Grow from doing the work to owning your impact

AI is accelerating how quickly teams can produce work but that also means output alone is less differentiating.

For designers, this isn’t a new problem, but it is a more urgent one. Designers have always needed to communicate their value, but as the role evolves and AI takes on more of the execution, what helps you stand out is how clearly you communicate your taste, your decisions, and your impact.

This course is for product designers who are thoughtful, reliable, and trusted, but often stay heads-down or prioritize execution over making their impact clear. You’ll learn how to make your work visible, communicate with clarity, and grow in a way that’s aligned with you, not just what’s asked of you. You’ll also build awareness of the patterns that keep you in execution mode, so you can show up with more intention, confidence, and direction in your day-to-day work.

This course includes:
👉 4 live sessions with feedback, coaching, and community
👉 (Optional) 30-minute live coaching with Cheryl after the course

What you’ll learn

Move beyond execution and stand out for how you think, communicate, and shape decisions

Learn how to communicate decisions, tradeoffs, and strategic thinking — not just polished screens
Frame your work so it lands with product, engineering, and leadership
Complement your speed and AI-assisted workflows with clear framing, so your work is recognized for its judgment and impact, not just output

Build trust across product, engineering, leadership, and cross-functional teams by making your thinking easy to follow
Learn how different stakeholders evaluate design work and communicate with more clarity, relevance, and influence in the moments that matter

Create lightweight systems to make your work and impact consistently visible without overextending yourself
Use updates, async communication, and 1:1s more strategically so your contributions stay clear in fast-moving environments

Define what you want to be known for beyond execution alone
Recognize the patterns that keep you stuck in output mode, and learn how to grow with more intention, clarity, and direction

Learn directly from Cheryl

Cheryl Chepusova

Contact

Staff-level designer with 14+ years leading product teams across 3 continents

Previously at

See all products from Cheryl

Who this course is for

Product designers doing strong work, but stuck in execution and unsure how to make their impact visible
Creatives in tech on global or distributed teams who struggle to clearly communicate their thinking across async, cross-functional work
Thoughtful or introverted designers who want to stand out for their impact without self-promotion or overextending themselves

What's included

Live sessions

Learn directly from Cheryl Chepusova in a real-time, interactive format.

Community of peers

Stay accountable and share insights with like-minded professionals.

Bonus 1:1 Coaching

Schedule a 30-minute 1:1 with Cheryl to review and strengthen the artifacts you created during the course

Lifetime access

Go back to course content and recordings whenever you need to.

APAC-friendly timing

This course is uniquely timed so designers in Asia timezones can fully participate in live sessions — no more joining past midnight or missing out.

Maven Guarantee

Your purchase is backed by the Maven Guarantee.

Course syllabus

4 live sessions • 4 projects

Week 1

Jun 2—Jun 7

Conveying Decisions & Taste

Jun
2
Communicating Design Decisions with Conviction
Tue 6/22:00 PM—3:00 PM (UTC)

1 more item

Cross-Functional Framing Exercise

Jun
4
Lead Cross-Functional Conversations with Clarity
Thu 6/42:00 PM—3:00 PM (UTC)

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Week 2

Jun 8—Jun 12

Strategic Visibility in Practice

Jun
9
Make Your Work Visible Every Week
Tue 6/92:00 PM—3:00 PM (UTC)

1 more item

Defining and Articulating Your Design Impact

Jun
11
Find Your Professional Edge
Thu 6/112:00 PM—3:00 PM (UTC)

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Schedule

Live sessions

4 hrs

Come prepared to unpack why communicating your work is hard, practice clearer ways to speak about decisions and taste, and stand out with strategic impact while learning directly from other product designers in the room.

Tue, Jun 2
2:00 PM—3:00 PM (UTC)
Thu, Jun 4
2:00 PM—3:00 PM (UTC)
Tue, Jun 9
2:00 PM—3:00 PM (UTC)
Thu, Jun 11
2:00 PM—3:00 PM (UTC)