Meredith Black: building DesignOps dream teams

Show notes: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/meredith-black

A lot of companies are investing more in design. As they do, the organization scales. As it scales, it has to operationalize, become more efficient, and plug into the rest of the company—but what makes all that possible?

In this episode, Pinterest’s Head of Design Operations Meredith Black talks about the emerging practice of DesignOps, and how she introduced it to Pinterest more than three years ago. Meredith covers everything from when it’s time to start building a DesignOps team to advice for getting started. She even reveals where she finds most of her best hires.

Listen as Eli and Aarron chat with Meredith about starting and growing a DesignOps practice—and how she nearly joined the FBI before finding herself in a different kind of “ops” career.

Meredith's bio

Meredith Black is the Head of Design Operations at Pinterest, where she's pioneered the Design Program Management organization and grown it to 11 design program managers in almost four years. Within Product Design, she’s also responsible for operations, recruiting, resourcing and risk management.

Prior to Pinterest, Meredith worked at design firms Hot Studio (acquired by Facebook) and IDEO. Her love for design runs deep. Real deep.