Katrina Alcorn
She/her
VP Experience, Strategy, and Innovation
Sam's Club
Katrina Alcorn is a global product design executive and award-winning author. She has built two successful design practices in her 20+ years in the tech industry. The first was the UX practice at Hot Studio, a boutique agency in San Francisco (bought by Facebook in 2013). The second was at Autodesk, where she centralized the digital design teams and drove a 5x increase in global e-commerce, and measurable improvements in customer satisfaction.
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Most recently, Katrina led one of the world’s largest design practices at IBM. IBM’s 3,000+ designers create software, hardware, brand, and web experiences powered by AI and used by millions worldwide. Under Katrina’s leadership, IBM Design drove major improvements to customer satisfaction and won a record number of product design awards.
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In 2024 Katrina joined Accenture Song—the world's largest tech-powered creative group—where she leads the Design & Digital Product practice for North America.
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Katrina is also the author of an award-winning book, “Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink,” about the challenges mothers face in the workplace, and she’s an advocate for workplace culture that supports the reality of modern-day families.
Katrina has lectured on design at Stanford, Harvard, and Northwestern, and spoken at dozens of conferences and corporate events, including The Commonwealth Club, SWSX Interactive, Fortune Brainstorm Design, and TEDx Monterey on a wide range of topics related to design, innovation, and women in leadership.
Talk
Beyond Efficiency: Reclaiming Humanity in the Age of AI
AI is changing everything about how we work — but efficiency alone won’t define the winners. In her #SDGC25 keynote, Katrina Alcorn challenges us to design systems that amplify what only humans can do — empathize, imagine, connect, and care. With global AI spending skyrocketing, the future belongs to those who center humanity in the machine age. Don’t miss this provocative and hopeful vision for the future of work — and the role of service design in making it real.