What we’re about
Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT) is a diverse community of 9,500+ members. We've been meeting monthly since 2015 to explore the world of design thinking as a human-centred design and living systems approach to innovation and solving complex problems – to help create positive outcomes for people, our planet, and business. We're one of the top design thinking meetups globally.
The vision for the SydDT meetup from the get go was to build a connected community and ecosystem of people from a diverse range of design and business practices, industries, contexts, and roles… to learn and share. To get exposed to what others are doing and see what's possible.
We’re proud to see this in our community – our members are experience designers, researchers, service designers, startup founders, product people, consultants, academics, anthropologists, architects, software engineers, project managers, medicos, engineers, and many other roles.
We keep it pretty casual with plenty of time for networking before jumping into talks, panels, and workshops on a broad range of topics - with a healthy Q&A that often turns into a group discussion. You can read a bit about the history and journey of our community and events here.
New members are welcome! If you’re not already a member, feel free to join our community. Each meetup audience is curated to a degree to make sure we have a mix of new people, as well as the committed regulars.
We’d love to hear from you if you’re keen to speak – or if there’s someone you think we should invite to speak.
Thanks
Ben Pecotich, Kylie Mageropoulos, Kate Linton & Lucas Mara
Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT) Organising Team
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- SydDT #111/IxDA Byron Bay: Regenerative Leadership, Design & InnovationTAFE NSW Connected Learning Centre (CLC) Byron Bay, Byron BayA$0.01
RSVPs ARE OPEN ON THE IxDA BYRON BAY MEETUP PAGE. GET YOUR TICKET HERE!
SydDT is going on tour again, this time to hang out with our friends at IxDA Byron Bay. Our first collaboration! Join us for the first IxDA Byron Bay event of 2025 and SydDT #111.
IxDA Byron Bay will host Ben Pecotich. He's a designer, coach, and founder of Dynamic4 – a social enterprise and B Corp focused on leadership, design, and innovation. He’s also the co-founder of Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT).
Come join us for some fun conversations with interesting people in and around the Northern Rivers design community!
Talk
Ben will kick off with a ~20-minute talk, diving into the world of regenerative leadership, design, and innovation. He’ll make the case for “regenerative” and frame it in the three nested layers of us as individuals, as teams and organisations, and our collective communities, culture, economy, and living systems.The central question he’ll focus on is how do we design and build business models, products, and services that customers and teams love, make money, and do great things for people, place, and our planet while increasing wellbeing?
Panel
Following his brief talk, Ben will host a panel with three Northern River locals doing awesome work in a diverse range of contexts. Jane Laverty from Business NSW Northern Rivers, Dan Leverington from The Ocelli Group, and Demi Barclay from TAFE NSW will share their insights and experience on how we design for regeneration in life and work.This event will provide practical insights for designers, leaders, changemakers, and anyone interested in helping create the conditions for people and communities to be happier and live on a cleaner healthier planet.
SPEAKERS & PANELLISTS
Ben Pecotich
Design & Innovation Director/Founder - Dynamic4
Ben Pecotich is a designer, coach, and founder of Dynamic4 – a social enterprise and B Corp focused on leadership, design, and innovation for happier communities… and making the transition to more regenerative ways of living and doing business.He coaches and works alongside leaders to solve problems that matter by designing and building business models, products, and services that customers and teams love, make money, and do great things for people and our planet… all while increasing wellbeing.
For 30+ years, Ben has led, designed, and delivered strategic change in financial services in Australia, NZ, Asia, the UK, and Europe. He takes a human-centred design and living systems approach to bring together strategy, design, and tech. During this time he’s also founded over 20 startups/social enterprises.
Ben's the author of Solve Problems That Matter: Design, Build & Launch Your Social Enterprise Idea and co-founder of the Sydney Design Thinking meetup.
Jane Laverty
Regional Director, Northern Rivers – Business NSW Northern Rivers
Awesome bio coming soon…Dan Leverington
Managing Director & Founder | Commercial Sustainability Concierge – The Ocelli Group
Awesome bio coming soon…Demi Barclay
Design Project Associate (CX), TAFE NSW
Awesome bio coming soon…EVENT SPONSORS
This event is brought to you by Business NSW Northern Rivers, TAFE NSW, Spangled Drongo Brewery, Just Digital People, Dynamic4. - SydDT #112: Designing Your Way Through Chaos with Rachel ZhangThinkPlace Sydney, Surry HillsA$10.00
In our April meetup, we’ll reflect on the economic challenges faced by designers over the past year. Rachel Zhang will share her personal experiences and insight and provide guidance on how to keep motivated to put in more effort, to continue giving even in hard times, how to stay top of mind, and how to find supplementary work.
Rach also emphasises the need for self-regulation, shaking off entitlement, being grateful for free time, appreciating what you have, allowing yourself a tantrum, and receiving help. She concludes on a positive note, mentioning that 2025 is proving to be more fruitful with more budget for roles and recruiters actively hiring.
Following Rach’s talk, Lucas Mara will host a panel discussion with Rach, Kylie Mageropoulos from Lanson Partners (and SydDT), and Steve Brown.
Come join us for some fun conversations with interesting people in and around the design thinking community.
SPEAKER & PANELLISTS
Rachel Zhang
Rach is a seasoned experience designer with over 15 years of expertise at some of Australia and UK’s foremost digital enterprises such as Telstra, Google, Accenture, AKQA, Westpac, R/GA – as well as starting her own businesses in design consultancy, team assessments, and education.Her portfolio spans diverse profit for purpose projects, including the transformative re-design of the Parliament of Victoria experience and spearheading research and strategic design initiatives for the future vision of WorkSafe Victoria’s digital inspector’s tool. Rach’s career has also seen her contributions at RMIT, where she pioneered innovative pathways for career progression through education.
Rach, her fiance, and two cats just moved back to Melbourne in February. All is well in the new household. Her dream is to rebrand the “crazy cat lady” as aspirational.
Steve Brown
Steve came to the design thinking toolkit in 2014 while at CBA. Not wanting to go back to his internal consulting role, he joined the CBA Innovation Lab to hone his new found capabilities. Since then, he has worked on both client and agency side and in businesses ranging from early stages start ups to Qantas during COVID.He's used design thinking to explore mundane and complex spaces, solving for shunned farmers and those who can’t speak, to the dying, the broke, the wealthy, the scammed, and (almost) everyone in between.
Kylie Mageropoulos
Awesome bio coming soon...Lucas Mara
Lucas Mara is passionate about helping organizations, communities, and individuals envision a better future and create pathways to achieve their aspirations.Lucas has the had the privilege of doing this professionally in his career, having worked in design leadership roles for almost a decade. Lucas is currently leading the Service Design practice at ING Australia and he has also held significant roles at Pegasystems and various Financial Services organizations. Lucas has led consulting teams and operated in strategic design and advisory capacities. Notably, Lucas was one of the first design thinking practitioners and design coaches at Commonwealth Bank back when the Innovation Lab was first opened.
Beyond his professional work, Lucas is deeply committed to community engagement. He actively supports professional industry bodies, universities, communities, and non-profits. As a co-founder of the Sydney Design Thinking Meetup, Lucas has spent nearly a decade fostering connections, learning from peers, and inspiring others.
EVENT SPONSORS
This event is brought to you by ThinkPlace, Sh8peshifters, and Dynamic4.
