Whitney Hess coaches business leaders on how to more mindfully and compassionately design their products, their companies and themselves. She is the author of Pleasure & Pain and the co-host of Designing Yourself. Her life’s mission is to put humanity back into business.
Best known for her work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Seamless Food Delivery and Boxee, Whitney has spent the last decade partnering with senior leaders and product teams at Fortune 500s, nonprofits and startups.
Whitney graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction and a Bachelor’s in Professional Writing and HCI. She is currently pursuing a certification in Integral Coaching from New Ventures West and certification in Strategic Decision and Risk Management from Stanford University. She is a favored mentor to user experience practitioners and entrepreneurs, and has shared her message at dozens of conferences worldwide.
Born to challenge the status quo, Whitney is an only child, a lefty, a redhead, a JuBu, a nomad, an ENFJ, an 8 with a 7 wing, a yogi, a locavore, a hophead, an oyster aficionado, a PEZ collector, and a pretty good rapper. A native Manhattanite, she now lives in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, CA, with her sailor Fredrick and their EPIRB. They are in the early stages of planning their circumnavigation.
