Barb Natali-Sherman

Design & Leadership

Empowering teams, elevating design, and driving strategic impact

Leadership that multiplies

Business success

Strategic design that significantly contributes to a product’s viability, direction, and overall business goals

Team success

Leadership that ensures effective teams, cross-functional collaboration, and designers enabled to do great work and advance their careers

Customer success

Products, services, and interventions designed to solve customers’ problems and aim to make their lives better

I’m Barb, a strategic design leader passionate about empowering teams to elevate design and solve meaningful problems for users. I specialize in guiding design teams to de-risk and drive product decisions while creating products that are not only desirable but also viable and feasible. My leadership focuses on fostering inclusive, psychologically safe environments where designers feel supported, confident to take risks, and empowered to grow their careers.

With over 15 years of experience, I’ve worked with organizations of all sizes—from startups to enterprise giants like Google, Cisco, Salesforce, Shopify, and Atlassian—bringing a people-first approach to shaping impactful product experiences.

Expertise

AI-first product development

Over the last few years I have helped develop approaches to AI-first product development that prioritizes the superpowers and constraints of the technology, but ensures user-centricity is not an afterthought. These approaches have been leveraged on numerous enterprise products and product teams.

Strategic design

I have led multiple teams developing vision artifacts that influenced or articulated a business’s strategy. I have also led a team developing a strategic designer training, helped operationalize it, and assisted with building a new line of business around it.

Leading, teaching, and coaching

With a background in psychology, I lead teams with a drive to understand, support, and empower. I approach leadership as a creative practice and am continuously seeking to learn and improve my approaches based on evolving contexts and people

Early-stage product development

For over 2 years I led the design team for a large tech company’s incubator where we helped almost 40 teams and founders. During this time I helped develop and operationalize new user-centric processes, elevate design to help drive product definition, build cross-functional partnerships, and develop processes for AI product development.

Let's connect

I’d love to hear from you! Whether you’re looking to discuss an opportunity, collaborate on solving meaningful problems, or simply connect, feel free to reach out. I’m based in the Bay Area and always open to chatting about design, leadership, or creative ways to drive impact. Let’s start a conversation—drop me a message anytime!