Sheila leads the Slack content design team. She’s been designing products with words since before content design was a thing, and has managed content design teams of different sizes within vastly different product and design cultures.

Previously, Sheila led the Microsoft 365 Commercial Content design team, Microsoft Security content design team, and built and led a content design team focused on innovation in the consumer financial sector for Capital One. She also led a content strategy team at GoDaddy.

She cares deeply about creating safe and supportive team environments that encourage curiosity and experimentation. She volunteers with ADPList to help boost the next generation of leaders and content design practitioners.

She has a degree in English Literature from Arizona State University, which has worked out surprisingly well. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband Kevin, dog Seamus, and many many trees.

Flex Your Staffing Model to Navigate Change, Build Trust, and Have Big Impact

Content design will never have 1-1 ratios with product design, and banging our heads against the resourcing wall only leads to the pit of despair. At many companies, our perennial resourcing problem was made even worse by recent layoffs that reduced team size and demoralized the people who were left holding the pieces for their content design teams.

It’s time for us to rethink our approach to staffing in a way that builds trust, creates agency for content designers, and results in high impact. The aim of this approach is not growth, but healthy, energized, high-performing teams.

In this session, attendees will learn:

• Why talking about staffing ratios doesn’t get us anywhere.
• The pros and cons of different staffing models and how to create one that gives content designers agency and autonomy.
• Criteria you can use to determine what work your team invests in and why and how to ruthlessly prioritize it.
• How to measure the impact of the staffing model on team health, individual performance, partnerships, and product quality.