Fonda LaShay

Fonda LaShay is Director of Design at Aidn, a Norwegian health tech scale-up, where she's been involved in growing the design team to 30 people. She started out in architecture before pivoting into design, and now has over 21 years across the US and Norway working in-house at companies like Storebrand and Cognite and also as a consultant.

Along the way she sold her own company and moved through nearly every corner of design: visual, systems, product. That wide background is what's shaped how she thinks about design: not just decoration, but what turns good experiences into business results.

Her stance has stayed the same throughout: things have to work and solve real problems, but there's no reason they can't look good while doing it.

She calls Stavanger home. When she is not working... there's a good chance she's got a floor plan open somewhere, redrawn for the tenth time, or she's knee-deep in planning the next trip.

At Aidn, design was trusted early and never had to defend its place. That trust isn't free, it has to keep being earned. I'll share how blending closeness to users with business instinct is what's let design be a differentiator in decisions at Aidn, and how you can build that same case wherever you work.