Vice President, Teague
Lindsey Maxwell is the Vice President of TEAGUE’s Aerospace Design Studio. Lindsey’s career with TEAGUE began shortly after she graduated from Western Washington University with a degree in Industrial Design.
Lindsey started at TEAGUE in the Aviation Design Studio, collaborating with designers, suppliers, and builders to image the future of flight through full scale prototypes she helped to build. She later transitioned onto the 787 team, where she helped to design the award-winning interior that sets the industry standard for commercial aircraft.
Deeply engaged in product development with The Boeing Company, Lindsey has helped to craft innovation programs that have led to several groundbreaking solutions flying today. Lindsey is considered the primary account holder of the 75-year relationship with Boeing.
Now as the Vice President of the Aerospace Studio, Lindsey leads an interdisciplinary team of 125+ researchers, designers, and engineers focused on creating human-centered experiences for air travel. Lindsey has been integral in taking TEAGUE’s legacy in Aviation and expanding it to other passenger experiences including urban air mobility, space travel, space habitats and more.
Statement of Candidacy (Board of Directors – Chair-Elect | 2022 term)
IDSA has been part of my professional career as a designer since the beginning. It was through IDSA that I was able to network with many professionals in design. They reviewed my portfolio during conferences, invited me to tour design firms they worked at, and connected me with people to begin the search for my first job.
I am grateful for the experiences and opportunities I have had through IDSA and want to be part of shaping the future of the organization. I believe the experiences I have had in my career will be beneficial to the organization in a couple of ways. The first being I have hands-on experience creating the future strategy of an ever-evolving design firm. I have learned multiple sides of what it means to run a successful design business. The talent, the client (internal or external), and the business all need to be in balance to create a healthy organization.
Second is the power of design: how to harness it, how to speak to it, how to fight for it, how to grow it and sell it. This power is a strategic tool that should be leveraged at the highest levels of the organizations we work at and collaborate with. The right skills need to developed, both hard and soft, for designers to achieve desired impact.
The last is inclusivity. Not just of the inequities in our profession, but also for the outcomes we create. I strongly believe the future of Industrial Design includes more diverse perspectives and we need to make certain that as a community, we are attracting and retaining such talent.
I would be honored to bring my knowledge as a design leader to help IDSA achieve its ambitions to strengthen our design community.
Lindsey Maxwell, IDSA, is Vice President at TEAGUE and the incoming Chair-Elect on IDSA’s Board of Directors, beginning in 2022. This year, she is especially proud of starting an Executive Women in Design Group and serving as Co-Chair of IDSA’s Women in Design Committee (WIDC), to which she was elected in early 2021.
She recalls how, “a year ago, as a newer executive without many opportunities to socialize and network, I sought out other women executives and business owners in design to form a group.” Now, the group meets once a month to discuss the challenges they face as women and design leaders in the industry. “It’s great to be part of a group that shares similar values and supports each other’s success,” Lindsey says.
Another highlight was co-leading IDSA’s WIDC with Hina Shahid, IDSA. “Together we’ve set a vision and mission for the committee and established goals and tactics for next year,” Lindsey notes. “Unfortunately, I’ll have to leave this team when I transition to Chair-Elect of IDSA. But I’ll take the experience and what I’ve learned with me into my new role.”
Lindsey tells us she’s always motivated by the opportunity to introduce design into new categories and spaces. An opportunity like this arrived in 2021, when her team began a new relationship with an engineering-focused company in an emerging market. “Engineering tends to be solution-orientated, while design and design thinking are need-based —that can cause some tension, especially in a new team,” Lindsey admits. “But there was none in this collaboration; the company’s leadership leaned into the design process and was genuinely interested in learning how human-centered design could lead to a better experience. And it did.”
Bringing engineering principles and creative and critical thinking together from the beginning not only transformed their product, Lindsey attests, but also the way they approach problems. “Earning trust and establishing close relationships with the people and brands shaping the future is incredibly fulfilling,” she adds.
Looking ahead to 2022, Lindsey says she and her team will be spending a good deal of time establishing new ways of working, keeping talent motivated and engaged, and building creative teams. She also plans to continue working closely with long-standing clients across the travel industry, “helping them recover and re-imagine their businesses for a post-pandemic future.”
Oh, and doing a lot of work in space! This includes “exploring zero gravity living and working, creating new products, environments, and passenger experiences that will shape the future for humans in space,” she says. “It’s an incredible and inspiring industry to work in.”
Finding Up: A Story of Female Leadership In Male-Dominated Industries
This year’s Fortune 500 has more female CEOs than ever before: 33. According to the latest Design Census conducted by AIGA and Google, 53.5% of designers are women. Ye, women hold just 11% of the design industry’s leadership positions and make 80 cents for each dollar paid to men. Equal representation? Yes, at last. Equal pay? Equal opportunity? Equal autonomy? No, not yet. But how do we get there?
In this presentation, Teague Vice President Lindsey Maxwell shares the story of her climb—from junior designer to head of the world’s largest aviation design team—and offer advice for women on how to navigate male-dominated workspaces and industries to rise to the top.
