From individual contributor to content design lead in 60 days

Wednesday 20 March 2024, 16:50 UTC, Stage 1

Many of us will transition from individual contributor to content design lead at some point in our career. Learn what it takes to move into leadership and get some hands-on advice.

What happens when you move from being a content design individual contributor (IC) to a team lead? It’s a move that many of us may make in our careers: some with trepidation, some with excitement.

Last year Nicole was unexpectedly promoted from staff content designer to content design lead. She very suddenly became responsible for both content design and a localisation team. In this talk you’ll learn about how she had to quickly figure out how to adjust her role, find and step into her leadership style and combine high-level IC work with actually leading a team.

She’ll share the lessons she learned, and how the day to day changed quite a bit - but not as much as you might expect. And she’ll talk about how she believes that content design leadership requires us to be so much more hands on than most leadership roles in other disciplines.

Session takeaway

How to transition from an IC content design role into content design leadership

Meet your session facilitator

Nicole Michaelis (Sweden)
Head of Content Design, Doordash/Wolt

Nicole is a Content Design Lead and host of the Content Rookie pod. She lives in Sweden, where she writes poetry and chases her 1-year-old around her clover lawn.

Nicole has been working in Content Design for 12+ years and has worked for some of the biggest tech companies in the world, as well as tiny startups.

She talks about making a career as an individual contributor as well as her more recent journey of finding her leadership style. She’s into authentic leadership, questioning any best practice, and figuring out how to scale all the benefits of content design across large product orgs, while not losing focus on what really matters: the people who can benefit from the product

Languages spoken: English, German and Swedish

A global problem they’d love to solve: World Peace

Something they can’t be without: My running shoes, hats, tea and things that smell good