❓Why Subscribe
🚨 Right now, every UXer is scrambling to become AI-literate so they don’t get replaced.
That’s not your career threat.
Irrelevance to power is.
And it always was.
AI didn’t change what gets you promoted.
It just made the thing that was always true impossible to ignore: your career lives or dies on whether leadership sees you as someone who shapes decisions, not someone who ships screens.
The more capable you are, the more likely you are to be used rather than trusted.
Harder problems. Bigger scope. Cleaner execution.
And less say in what actually gets decided.
This is true at the Staff and Principal level.
It’s ALSO true once you have a leadership title.
UX Mentor Diaries is for people who have already “made it” on paper but are quietly discovering that skill, effort, and seniority do not translate into authority.
What you get here
There are already 240+ posts inside covering the situations no one prepares you for:
Your skip-level wants “strategic thinking” but can’t tell you what that actually means
You keep getting pulled into execution work even though your title says leadership - and no one can explain why you’re not in the room when priorities get set
You just found out a decision you should have influenced was made last Tuesday without you.
Your responsibility doubled but your authority didn’t.
Every one of those has a post built for it. Here’s what’s inside:
Case studies from real leadership situations (mine and my clients’) → so you stop guessing whether your read on the situation is right
Scripts for the conversations you keep rehearsing in your head → so you walk in with the words, not just the anxiety
Frameworks for reading rooms, pre-wiring decisions, and building influence before you need it — so you stop being blindsided by outcomes you should have shaped
Templates (stakeholder maps, visibility trackers, strategic ask builders) → so you have a clear, structured read on who holds power, where you’re visible, and where you’re exposed
The goal of this substack is to help you REASON BETTER in ambiguous, political, high-stakes situations + give you the tools to do so, fast + examples with results from my clients (who’ve laready used them to their advatange)
What happens if you don’t fix this
The market is contracting again.
So here’s a scenario:
Your team gets cut from 8 to 4. You survive, but now you’re doing the work of 2 people with no title change.
A Director role opens internally.
They give it to someone from Product who “thinks more strategically.”
You start job hunting and discover every Director posting wants “executive stakeholder management” and “cross-functional influence” → none of which, by the way, appear on your resume because you spent 5 years proving you’re a great designer instead of proving you’re a leader.
The window doesn’t close with a bang. It closes while you’re heads-down in a Figma file.
The game has rules. This newsletter teaches them.
Who this is for (and who it isn’t)
UX Mentor Diaries is written for:
Senior ICs, Staff+, Leads, and Directors
UXers & product designers working inside large or complex organizations
People who already know how to do the “craft work” well (and are ready for the influence, visibility, and political work that actually determines what happens next)
Paid vs. Free
Paid subscribers get:
Every new influence system the week it drops → case studies, scripts, and Notion templates so you know exactly what to say and when to say it (this alone is worth the subscription)
6 Influence Learning Tracks, each one targets a specific reason you're stuck. Find yours and you'll know exactly what to do differently this week ↴
Political Intelligence → decisions keep getting made without you, and by the time you hear about them it's too late to influence anything? This track rewires how you read power dynamics and position yourself before the conversation starts.
Strategic Judgement → you bring research, analysis, and solid recommendations but leadership still treats you as an executor, not a strategist? This track builds the type of thinking that gets you heard at the level above yours.
Building Authority → you keep hearing "great work" but never "we need you in this conversation before we decide"? This track will closes that gap. Fast.
Executive Communication → leadership nods at your presentation and does the exact opposite, or nothing at all? You'll walk out of this track speaking the language that actually changes what THEY DO next.
Strategic Visibility → you do the strategic thinking, but someone else gets credit> This track gives you a system to make your impact visible while you work → so you never have to scramble to prove it at review time again.
Influence Networks → people like working with you, but nobody's advocating for you when you're not in the room? You'll learn how to build the relationships that actually move careers with sponsors who say your name when opportunities open up.
Instant access to the full UX Influence Index→ 240+ issues, all written from a VP seat, covering the rules people are expected to know but nobody teaches directly. That situation you're dealing with right now, I bet there's already a post for it. If not, email me and there will be :)
Every premium career template at NO EXTRA COST → Brag Sheet System, Stakeholder Power Map, Strategic Ask Builder, Decision Pre-Wire Planner, and more. Paid subscribers get them all FREE. Everyone else pays $12–47 each.
Free subscribers only get one issue every Saturday that surfaces one of the common UX career and influence patterns + previews of the premium content.
🗣️ So…Why Listen to Me?
Because this isn’t theory.
I spent 25+ years inside the rooms where design budgets get approved and careers get decided, including most recently as VP of UX at JPMorgan Chase. American Express before that. Led a large international design team at a Swiss tech startup in-between. Worked at several agencies before that.
Influence “rules” are same everywhere.
So I reverse-engineered how organizations actually decide who gets promoted → and built systems around it.
Most UX career advice tells you to “be more strategic” or “build executive presence.”
That’s like telling someone to “be taller.”
And that’s why I separated “influence” into 6 individual learning tracks (or capabilities) - to help you identify and close that particular gap instead of feeling frustrated about “things not working”.
In my experience coaching thousands of designers and design leaders, there are usually only 1 or 2 specific capabilities holding you back. Once you close those gaps, everything else starts falling into place.
This is the same playbook I’ve used to help 2,400+ designers:
📈 Go from Senior IC to Director in 6 months
📈 Get out of career stalls after years of being overlooked
📈 Lead multimillion-dollar product initiatives without the title
These 6 Influence Learning Tracks treat political intelligence, strategic visibility, and stakeholder influence as designable systems, not personality traits, not soft skills, not luck.
Great work doesn’t speak for itself.
Careers don’t stall by accident.
And influence is rarely distributed fairly.
This substack exists to help you see those dynamics clearly → and ACT deliberately instead of reactively.
What people say
🚨 A note on Leadership Coaching
For readers navigating specific, high-stakes LEADERSHIP decisions, I also offer very limited 1:1 UX leadership coaching, separate from this newsletter.
💰 Can your company pay for this?
Many of my readers expense their subscription through one of these:
Learning & Development
Professional development budgets
Manager-approved reimbursements
To make the process easier, I provide ready-to-use justification templates:
You can find both here ↴
Join over 8,600 experienced UX ICs and leaders who have stopped reacting to office politics and started leading multimillion-dollar product initiatives.
Your “next level of leadership” starts with the first issue ;)