Maria Giudice

Maria Giudice describes herself as an “innovator, artist, protagonist, and positive provocateur.” She was vice president of experience design at Autodesk from 2015 to 2018 and, before that, Facebook’s director of product design. She’s been a CCA faculty member in Design Strategy and Graduate Design since 2006. Giudice founded the experience design firm Hot Studio in 1997. The firm eventually grew to include 100 employees with offices in San Francisco and New York and an impressive list of Fortune 500 clients. In March 2013, it was acquired by Facebook. Before Hot Studio, Giudice spent time working under the iconic graphic designer Richard Saul Wurman, who coined the term “information architecture.”

Giudice earned her bachelor’s degree from Cooper Union, where she took courses in painting, calligraphy, and graphic design. She’s the co-author and designer of several books about design, including Rise of the DEO, which discusses the ascendant concept of the “design executive officer.”