Dana Lawson is the Chief Technology Officer at Netlify, where she leads the Engineering, Product, and Design teams to innovate and deliver transformative digital experiences. With over two decades of leadership at industry-leading companies like GitHub, Heptio, and New Relic, Dana has a proven track record of scaling teams, fostering collaboration, and navigating complex technical landscapes. Throughout her career, she’s worn many hats across the product lifecycle, showcasing her versatility and expertise building impactful technology solutions. Driven by a genuine passion for people, Dana infuses her leadership with a blend of technical expertise and a spirit of fun, creating an inspiring and dynamic work environment.
Upcoming Talks
12 May 2026
As AI agents begin to design, code, and deploy products, the boundaries between design and development are vanishing. Netlify’s Chief Technology Officer, Dana Lawson argues that a new discipline is emerging, Agent Experience (AX), where UX and DX merge into one continuous creative flow.
In this provocative talk, Dana explores what happens when your “users” and your “developers” are increasingly AI-driven, and why human taste and values are becoming the most important design tools of all.
Challenges:
- Building for AI agents that don’t interact through traditional UIs
- Keeping humans in the loop as automation reshapes workflows
- Maintaining creativity and quality when “anyone” can generate design or code
Key Learnings:
- How UX and DX are converging into a unified discipline powered by AI
- Why taste and judgment are the new competitive advantages
- How to structure workflows that keep human purpose central in an AI-driven world
Past Talks
17 June 2021
By reducing the cost and complexity of enterprise software, No-Code has made it accessible to a lot of people.
Although, while simple to setup, it leaves security risks and a siloed system with no connected way of working. Sharing their different viewpoints, our panelists will discuss the pros and cons of no-code on the future of product delivery.
5 October 2020
Many of you have probably been told that microservices are the future for a great user experience and monoliths are dead, now go hurry up and update your architecture! If only it was that easy! This may bring up questions such as how you are going to make the change, when you can do it and why should you even go there?
In this session Dana will talk a little bit about the Why you should consider microservices and then dive into different ways to approach designing this architecture and the pitfalls and challenges to consider on your journey.
8 October 2019
This exciting discussion looks at managing remote teams, outsourced dev teams, global talent shortage plus much more!
