From September 25–27 in San Francisco, the Design Executive Council (DXC) will convene senior design executives from the world’s leading companies under the theme “Defining Futures, Reimagining Roles.”

This year’s Summit comes at a moment of seismic shifts, macro challenges and evolving roles:

• ‍Four in ten CEOs in PwC's 2025 survey of 4701 global CEOs at World Economic Forum believe their companies will be unviable within a decade without rapid reinvention, reflecting how digital disruption, AI, and margin compression are forcing change at the top.
• The pressure is evident in markets: according to Morgan Stanley, 2025 Q2 earnings grew 26% for the ‘Magnificent 7’ tech giants but only 1% for the rest of the S&P 500, heightening concerns that cost-cutting and price increases could trigger stagflation.
• Against this backdrop, Design Executive Council's survey of 25 CDOs of Fortune 1000 companies shows that 48% of senior design executives view AI as a transformational opportunity or competitive advantage, while only 32% see it primarily as a risk—underscoring design’s pivotal role in driving enterprise reinvention.

This gap signals a critical shift: design executives are approaching AI with optimism, positioning it as a driver of growth and reinvention rather than a threat to manage. For enterprises, it means design leadership is prepared to help boards and C-Suites harness AI for competitive advantage, resilience, and new value creation.

At the Design Executive Council, we believe this is a pivotal moment not only to respond to disruption, but to define futures and reimagine our roles. Guided by our 2025 theme, The Intelligence Renaissance, we see this era as more than AI. It is a deeper inquiry into the values we choose, the futures we intend to create, and how we harness both human and artificial intelligence in the most meaningful ways that reclaim the full scale of our imagination and craft.

Through this Summit, we will lay the foundations for defining the modern playbook for design leadership: addressing implications from AI product development, digital transformation, workforce evolution to business model reinvention and long-term corporate vision.

Uniting Design Executives to Advance Enterprise Leadership

DXC’s membership represents more than $3 trillion in market capitalization and over $1 trillion in annual revenues. Collectively, members average 20+ years of experience leading Fortune 1000 design organizations and large private companies across technology, finance, healthcare, transportation, retail, media & entertainment, and consumer sectors.

"This Summit is about more than design. It’s about how design executives step into the defining challenges of enterprise leadership today, reimagining how companies compete, how value is created, and how leaders shape the workforce of the future" said Gordon Ching, Founder & CEO at Design Executive Council.

The Summit is a curated peer forum where members exchange strategies, sharpen insights, and set forward-looking agendas that address the realities of business under AI-driven disruption, margin pressure, and reinvention.

Crafting the Playbook for Strategic Design Leadership

Over three immersive days, the Summit agenda carves space for members to index on the state of business and the related design leadership imperatives that help move businesses and teams forward.

From shaping brand and vision to influencing strategy, product development, go-to-market, to measurement, the forum expands the sphere of impact for design executives as enterprise leaders.

Council sessions surface practices, initiatives, and research that inform DXC’s 2026 roadmap and guide our research and learning programs. Grounded in first-party research, business insights, and case studies, these conversations capture how design executives drive both strategic and operational outcomes.

Co-created with members, the agenda reflects the realities of leaders on the frontlines of global business and culminates in the modern playbook for the design executive role in the AI era. Insights gathered at the Summit will carry forward into new publications, research, and events shaping 2026.

Summit Attendees

The Annual Summit is our flagship event to connect Council members and innovate on our practices. Our members are amongst the industry’s most influential design executives, united not only by a love for design, but by a shared commitment to elevating its strategic role and impact within global enterprises.

• Andy Vitale - VP of Head of Product Design at Taxwell 
• Arin Bhowmick - EVP, Chief Design Officer at SAP 
• Brian Rice - Fmr. SVP, Global Chief Design and Brand Experience Officer at 3M
• Caleb Schmidt - SVP of Experience Design at U.S. Bank 
• Christian Rohrer - VP of Human Centered Design at TD Bank Group 
• Christina Vallery - Chief Design Officer at The Cigna Group 
• Christopher Kiley - Chief Design Officer at Boeing Digital 
• Cindy Chastain - Fmr. SVP of Customer Experience and Design at Mastercard 
• Eric Kabisch - Fmr. VP of Design at Roblox 
• Eric Wood - SVP of Product Experience at Hyundai Motor Group (42dot)
• Fabricio Dore - Chief Design Officer at Itau Unibanco 
• Heather Cassano - VP of Experience and Analytics at Autodesk 
• Heather Winkle - VP of Digital Journeys and Channels at Delta Air Lines 
• Irene Au - Design Partner at Khosla Ventures
• Issa Breibish - Chief Design Officer at Bentley Systems 
• Jae Park - VP of Digital Product Design at Ford Motor Company 
• Janaki Kumar - Chief Design Officer, Global Banking at JPMorgan Chase 
• Jason Ferrell - Chief Design Officer at Humana 
• Jeff Gelfuso - SVP, Chief Design Officer at Qualtrics 
• Jennifer Darmour - VP of Health Design, Oracle
• Jyoti Shukla - Fmr. SVP of Experience Design at SiriusXM Pandora
• Mary Piontkowski - VP of Product Design at Cisco Networking 
• Matthew Menz - VP of CX at AWS, Amazon
• Natasha Tan - Head of Design, Enterprise at Rocket 
• Purvi Shah - VP of UX Design, Research, and Accessibility at Target
• Richard Dalton - VP, Head of Consumer Design at Verizon
• Tom Gebauer - SVP of Design and Research at Dow Jones

“As enterprises embrace AI and new business models, the role of design is no longer limited to shaping experiences; it’s central to how companies reinvent themselves. Across the Design Executive Council, we see design executives stepping into business conversations about growth, reinvention, and the future of work. DXC provides the best forum where we can align on what that leadership must look like in this new era.” 

— Arin Bhowmick, EVP, Chief Design Officer at SAP and Design Executive Council Board Advisor

We look forward to developing the new playbook for design leadership and organizations in the AI era. We extend our thanks to our members and team for enabling this important event.

Learn more

For senior design executives interested in our work, learn more about our Annual Summit and Council Membership below.

• About the Design Executive Council Annual Summit
• Explore Design Executive Council Membership

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