Level Up
Level Up is a bespoke six-session coaching series for designers who want to deepen their craft, strengthen their leadership skills, sharpen their strategic influence, and step confidently into bigger roles.
You’ll work directly with world-class design leaders whose craft and standards shape the industry, gaining hands-on guidance, critiques, and technical direction that elevate your real work.
Level Up is for designers who:
Want to master their craft visually, technically, and strategically.
Are preparing for senior, staff, or principal-level work.
Want direct feedback from coaches who define real hiring standards.
Are seeking to strengthen confidence, communication, and creative authority.
Are stepping into leadership and want to lead with clarity and credibility.
Want to integrate advanced tools and AI into their workflow.
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How Level Up works
Level Up is a bespoke six-session coaching series for designers who want to deepen their craft, strengthen their leadership skills, sharpen their strategic influence, and step confidently into bigger roles.
Each 60 minute session can be scheduled directly through the Good Maven site at a pace that suits you, whether weekly, monthly, or tailored to your timeline.
Every engagement emphasizes clear, direct feedback and practical frameworks that help you interpret situations, communicate effectively, and choose better actions, along with techniques for breaking old habits and developing new leadership and craft practices.
Your sessions may cover:
Goal-setting and homework to shape your focus areas.
Real work review (portfolio artifacts, designs-in-progress, leadership scenarios, team dynamics).
Tailored exercises and skill-building work between sessions.
Targeted async check-ins for feedback and momentum between sessions.
Typical areas of focus include:
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Craft mastery
Elevating the quality of your visual and interaction design, sharpening taste and execution, and developing stronger judgment in complex product environments. We review real work together to strengthen clarity, usability, and polish.
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Designing with AI
Building confidence working with probabilistic systems, protecting human agency, and developing judgment for a practice that’s evolving quickly. Bring your thorniest AI problem and we’ll dissect it together, or come with a blank slate and a desire to learn the latest. We meet you wherever you are in your AI journey.
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Leadership presence
Developing the mindset and behaviours of a design leader, including clear decision-making, ownership of ambiguous problem spaces, and communicating with authority in cross-functional environments.
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Strategy & scope expansion
Learning to think and operate at a more senior level by framing the right problems, connecting design decisions to business outcomes, and taking responsibility for broader product and organizational impact.
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Influence & collaboration
Navigating stakeholder dynamics, building alignment across product, engineering, and leadership, and learning how to advocate for design in ways that move teams forward.
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Real world challenges
Working through live situations such as portfolio preparation, vying for a promotion, project critiques, presentations to leadership, or navigating difficult team and stakeholder scenarios.
All coaching is confidential and never shared without your explicit consent. We store your materials securely, and sessions can be recorded for your personal review.
Discover the right package or coach for you with our short guide.
Who you’ll work with
You can mix and match coaches throughout your package, or choose to work with one coach for the entire series.
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Melissa Hajj
Melissa is a product and design leader with 25 years of experience at Meta, Instagram, Apple, and more. She’s led teams of 70+ designers, built products used by billions, and shaped hiring and leadership practices across global orgs. She helps designers strengthen their leadership skills, strategic thinking, and product impact.
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Timothy Achumba
Timothy Achumba is a Design Director at Microsoft, leading a small AI-focused lab exploring how design practice changes when shaping the behaviour of intelligent systems. A former designer at Meta and Wunderlist, he works across product design, mechanical keyboards, and writing, practicing at the frontier while coaching others through it. His sessions are structured thinking together: helping designers find the clarity, logic, and confidence their work already deserves.
Level Up
£3,500*
Session format:
Six session package.
Delivered virtually.
Inclusive of all sessions and support.
We’ll discuss scheduling, coach fit, and your goals during your initial call.
*Price when paid up-front. Payment plan available.
Level Up FAQs
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Level Up is for designers at any stage who want to deepen their craft, expand their influence, or grow into bigger scope. Many clients are senior, staff, principal, or leadership-level designers. We also work with executives and experienced practitioners who want high-quality, design-specific coaching.
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Sessions are practical, focused, and conversational. You bring real work, real challenges, or real questions, and we work through them together. There’s structure and facilitation from your coach, but sessions are shaped around what will be most useful to you at that moment.
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Level Up is designed to be applied coaching. Depending on your goals, sessions may include portfolio or work-in-progress reviews, craft critique, leadership scenarios, stakeholder conversations, or problem-solving exercises. We adapt the level of technical depth to match your role and needs.
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Progress looks different for each person, but many designers leave with clearer thinking, stronger decision-making, sharper communication, and more confidence in their work and leadership. The focus is on practical growth you can apply immediately, not abstract theory.
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Level Up is led by senior design leaders who actively hire, manage, and mentor designers. That means feedback is grounded in real standards and real-world expectations. This is not generic career coaching; it’s deeply design-specific and rooted in lived experience.
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Yes. Six sessions is enough for most designers to make significant progress. The structure is designed to create momentum quickly, with focused work that compounds from session to session. Ongoing coaching is available if you’d like to continue beyond the initial engagement.
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No. It’s common to begin with a general sense of what you want to improve rather than a fully formed plan. Your coach will help you clarify priorities and shape the focus as you go.
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Sessions are scheduled directly with your coach at times that work for both of you. Scheduling is flexible and designed to fit around your existing commitments.
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Please view the terms and conditions of the Coaching Agreement to learn more about how we handle cancellations.
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Please view the terms and conditions of the Coaching Agreement to learn more about our policy on refunds.
Understand which package or coach is the best fit for you.
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Guided Decision
A short guided flow to help you understand which package or coach is the best fit.
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Chemistry chat
If you'd rather talk it through, book a call to discuss your goals and confirm whether Level Up is the right fit for you.