Strategic Influence for Human-Centered Leaders

Tuesday, October 20th, 6:00-8:00 PM EDT
Presentation & Discussion

Strategic Influence for Human-Centered Leaders
Presented by Misha Energí

Event Description

As service designers mature into senior leadership, our mandate shifts from advising on customer experience to defending headcount, budget, and bottom-line impact. This transition can feel jarring: leadership politics often seem counter to our core values like empathy and collaboration, while our classic defense, “the work speaks for itself,” no longer holds.

To keep growing, we need to evolve how we position our work and our roles, and mastering peer advocacy is a key driver in this shift.

But winning support doesn't require a ruthless posture. Nor do we need to abandon our human-centric values. In fact, as service designers, we already hold the tools for strategic leadership; we simply need to redirect our empathy, systems thinking, and co-design methods toward internal dynamics.

This interactive session introduces Strategic Influence for Human-Centered Leaders: a practical advocacy framework to align user-centric goals, complex stakeholder interests, and our own aspirations.

Aimed at senior contributors and team leads who are thinking about “what’s next” in their careers, the session will unpack four leadership personas: Visionary, Driver, Partner, and Diplomat. Interactive exercises will show how inspiration, persuasion, collaboration, and consultation come together to reposition service design seniors as valuable business partners.

About Our Speaker
Misha Energí
Misha Energí is an executive coach, facilitator, and founder of Speak Human Studio. They partner with professionals in tech and media to transform high potential talent into impactful leadership.
With almost two decades of advisory experience in organizations like Google, Deloitte, and Cognizant, Misha’s coaching empowers under-represented talent to navigate corporate politics, claim authority, and prevent burnout.
Misha’s "full-stack" coaching method combines advanced degrees in psychology with trainings in applied emotional intelligence, and evidence-based adult learning.

Beyond their coaching practice, Misha runs The Queens Well (a wellness studio in Ridgewood, Queens), is a professor at Parsons School of Design, and serves as Donor Relations Lead for QARAVAN, an NGO supporting LGBTQ+ refugees.

Agenda

• 6:00-6:30PM Meet & mingle over food and drink
• 6:30-7:30PM Presentation
• 7:30-8:00PM Discussion & Networking
• 8:00PM - ? After-Party

Address
Intuit
51 Astor Place
New York, NY 10003

After-Party:
Cuna Bar
The Standard
25 Cooper Sq

Financial Transparency & Scholarships
As a non-profit, we do our best to strike a balance between making our events available to all and ensuring we keep the lights on. For this event, we are charging $10.

• If this amount is prohibitive for you to attend this event, please email Barry at sdn.newyorkchapter@gmail.com as we may miss messages on this platform.
• If you’d like to provide scholarships, please message Barry at at sdn.newyorkchapter@gmail.com and he will follow up with you.

See you there :)
David, Francesco, Yasmin, Lynn, Nicholas, & Barry