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Public Speaking

Talks and customer panels I’ve designed and led: on stage for design teams, and in the room with customers whose evidence changed a roadmap.

  1. Mar 2021

    CloudWatch Customer Connections Panel

    AWS CloudWatch · online · ~40 attendees

    Workshop

    A team clustering colourful sticky notes on a glass wall during a workshopIllustrative image

    A live online workshop with 30+ CloudWatch users from top-tier EMEA customers. The VP of Product asked me to run it to get a ranked list of customer priorities for the 2022 roadmap.

    30+

    top-tier EMEA customers

    90%

    of participants satisfied

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    What I did

    • Designed the method: a survey beforehand to collect pain points, then live sessions where customers ranked them by impact, and brainstormed solutions for the top three.
    • Led the AWS team: designers facilitated, PMs co-hosted, engineers answered technical questions. I ran the main room, the polls and the synthesis.
    • Shared the findings in the next Voice of the Customer, an org-wide presentation.

    What changed
    Cross-account and cross-region ranked highest across both the survey and the rooms, which moved the next year’s investment away from aspirational features and into the 2022 annual plan (OP1). Multiple PM orgs adopted the CCP format, and many participants joined the customer feedback program.

  2. OCT 2026

    UX is a Team Sport: how to influence your company’s UX maturity when you don’t have authority

    UXDX Dublin · 30 min · ~100 attendees

    Conference talk

    1 / 2Laura Montefusco speaking at UXDX Dublin 2026 beside her Story 3 slide, Stopped assuming UX literacy, started assuming patience

    The maturity level of the company you get hired into tells you almost nothing about the room you’ll walk into on Monday. Three stories from three stages of UX maturity, what I did in each, and what works at every stage.

    For designers early in their careers, and anyone whose team is less mature than its logo suggests. Ends with questions to diagnose your current or next team.

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    I shared three stories:

    • The startup, building from zero: don’t ask for permission, bring results.
    • Big tech, UX as a team sport: being trusted doesn’t scale; systems do.
    • The scale-up, never assume, even at “mature”: UX maturity is a framework, a company-level score that can’t describe every room or every person in it.

    What works at every stage

    Build horizontal allies first, and the vertical alliance will find you. Never assume the room. Find the words that get heard, and drop the ones that don’t.

    View the slides

  3. Oct 2026

    How to say ‘no’

    Panelist  · BearingPoint Product Management Community · 60 min

    Panel

    2 / 2BearingPoint event slide: How to say No, a panel on managing tough conversations. Topics: why expectation management matters, foundations, from requests to decisions, strategic trade-offs, cross-functional dynamics, career lens

    A panel on saying no without breaking trust. My take: saying no, and defending scope and product boundaries, is healthy and expected from a product or UX leader. Back it with data, tie it to the business goal and the user, and the no doesn’t break trust: it shows you own the outcome.

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    What I brought to the panel

    • Protect the P0s. I revisit them only when there’s new evidence.
    • Triage as a triad: does it serve the business and the user, and is it now, next or later? I flag any risk in disguise or one-way door that’s costly to revert.
    • Show the trade-off: 'one month of capacity, two months of work. By [date] we can ship the P0s and a smaller MVP, and the P1s will be a fast follow'.
    • Structure the no: This is my concern, this is why I advise against it (with data), and this is what I would do instead.
    • Disagree and commit, with each function owning its part.