Announcing our newest IBM Distinguished Designers and Design Principals

On behalf of the IBM Design Leadership Board and as its chair, it is my honor and privilege to announce our newly appointed 2020 IBM Distinguished Designers and Design Principals. These professionals are exemplars of design practice, craft, and leadership, and they are an integral part of IBM’s industry-standard design program.

We’ve placed a special emphasis on nurturing great design leaders as we’ve built the program and practice of design at IBM over the past seven years. Design leaders at IBM must not only be experts in creating amazing human-centered outcomes that drive business results; they also have to have a deep understanding of the technical and industry domains in which they work and lead the way for design-driven change in a complex global enterprise.

IBM Distinguished Designers

• Dennis Bajec, IBM GBS iX
• Tony Moreno, IBM GBS iX
• Patricio Sánchez, IBM GBS iX
• Jennifer Sukis, IBM Cloud & Cognitive Software, AI Transformation

Design Principals

• Ilse Breedvelt, IBM Cloud & Data Platform
• Neil Everette, IBM Cloud & Data Platform
• Jennifer Hatfield, IBM iX
• Stephen Herold, IBM iX
• Amanda Hurte, IBM iX
• David Levinson, IBM Cloud & Data Platform
• Kirsten McDonald, IBM Z
• Priya Noel, IBM Cloud & Data Platform
• Kevin Paolozzi, IBM Finance & Operations
• Vikki Paterson, IBM Cloud & Data Platform
• Robert Redmond, IBM Watson Advertising & Weather
• Rich Ruggerio, IBM iX
• Scott Rushton, IBM iX
• Jean Servaas, IBM Carbon
• Andrew Smith, IBM Cloud & Data Platform
• Katina Sostmann, IBM iX
• Wonil Suh, IBM Digital Growth & Commerce
• Jon Temple, IBM CIO
• Sarah Walter, IBM Cloud & Data Platform

We would like to offer our heartfelt congratulations on this incredible achievement to our new IBM Distinguished Designers and Design Principals, and we look forward to the impact they will have on their organizations, studios, geographies, and across the broader community of IBM Design and beyond.

We would also like to express our sincere thanks for the incredible efforts it took to submit packages in the midst of a global health pandemic. While this is a demanding process in the best of times, every one of our nominees worked hard to submit their packages while navigating challenging new work conditions and restraints and balancing a focus on their families, wellbeing, and communities.

With this cohort, we see the continued expansion of our community of design leaders across the IBM company and around the globe. We have our first IBM Distinguished Designer in our IBM Studios Columbus location; we also have our first-ever Design Principals in our IBM Studios in Atlanta, Hursley, London, Ottawa, Poughkeepsie, and Zurich. IBM now has a total of 14 IBM Distinguished Designers and 55 Design Principals.

We continue to make progress on certain aspects of diversity such as gender. However, we know that we still have significant work to do on other aspects of diversity like under-represented minorities, especially Black designers. The newly formed Racial Equity in Design team at IBM is working with the Design Leadership Board to address the underrepresentation of Black designers and much more. These efforts will go beyond the candidate nomination and review process, including early career pipeline-building, accelerated career growth, and enhanced leadership opportunities.

Please join me in congratulating our newest IBM Distinguished Designers and Design Principals!

IBM Distinguished Designer
An IBM Distinguished Designer is a corporate executive appointment that recognizes exemplary technical design expertise and leadership, with demonstrated innovation through design practices, initiative, technical vitality, and reputation. They are integral members of their business units’ executive teams, through which they advise and drive technical and business strategies across the company. IBM Distinguished Designers have significant external eminence and drive market outcomes by taking on cross-IBM assignments and leading collaboration across disciplines to solve design problems at scale. They are coaches and mentors who bring cultural change and represent IBM to industry associations, standards boards, clients, government agencies, and academic institutions.

Design Principal
Design Principal is the highest non-executive technical role in the IBM designer career framework. They are top technical practitioners who take on leadership positions to fulfill specific missions in their business unit. Their roles involve the advancement of design through scalable and reusable artifacts, thought leadership and intellectual property, and driving their organization’s utilization of design and design thinking. Design Principals also contribute to developing IBM’s design practices, initiatives, technical vitality, and reputation both internal and external to the company.

Design Leadership Board
Comprised of 22 of the company’s technical and managerial design executives, the Design Leadership Board receives an extensive application form, a portfolio of work, and executive references for each candidate and then goes through a meticulous and thorough review process to determine which candidates meet the high bar of being appointed IBM Distinguished Designer and Design Principal. IBM Distinguished Designers go through an additional corporate review of the candidate’s impact to the company, professional eminence, and portfolio of work.