Holly Habstritt Gaal

Holly Habstritt Gaal has a diverse and extensive work experience in various design and leadership roles. Holly is currently working at DuckDuckGo as the Senior Director of Product Design, where they focus on new product development and team growth. Holly is also the FDRI/Team Lead for the Design team, responsible for expanding the team's skillsets.

Holly is an investor at Operator Exchange, a group of angel investors with experience in building fast-growing startups. Additionally, Holly is a voice-over artist specializing in VR games, immersive art experiences, and narration, with their own home studio.

Prior to their current roles, Holly worked as the Design Lead for New Product Development at Booking.com, where they played a key role in growing the design team and launching new products like Booking Wallet.

Holly also served as a User Experience Lead at Mozilla Corporation and as a UX designer for their own business, Holly Habstritt, LLC, where they contracted for companies such as General Mills, Hasbro, NBC, and Layar.

Holly has also gained experience working with startups like Layar, where they worked as a Senior Interaction Designer, contributing to the development and launch of augmented reality app called Stiktu.

Before that, they co-founded TriMutiny, LLC, focusing on early mobile app experiments connecting everyday hardware to smartphones.

Holly's skills include information architecture, user experience design, interaction design, product strategy, and product development. Holly has collaborated with various clients and teams, presented their work, directed visual designers, and worked with developers and usability teams.

Holly Habstritt Gaal began their education journey in 1998 at Roseau High School, where they completed their high school studies. In 2001, they enrolled at Macalester College, where they focused on Mathematics, Computer Science, and Music. The following year, in 2002, Holly transferred to the University of Minnesota, although no degree is specified for this period. Finally, from 2003 to 2005, Holly attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, earning a B.S. in Visualization. Their field of study at this institution encompassed Interactive, Computational, and Graphic Design.