Kathy Davies

Kathy Davies serves as Managing Director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University, where she combines her engineering expertise with a passion for transformative education. After earning her BS in Biomedical Engineering from Brown University and MSE in Mechanical Engineering and Product Design from Stanford, she built a diverse career spanning product development and educational innovation. Her technical background includes 15 years developing electromechanical and software products, resulting in five patents, while her consulting work encompasses design thinking, ethnographic research, and product strategy for Silicon Valley companies. As co-founder and CEO of DYL Consulting LLC, she leads workshops globally to help people navigate life transitions using design thinking principles. At Stanford's Life Design Lab, she manages a team delivering popular courses including "Designing Your Life" and "Designing Your Stanford," while also leading the Life Design Studio that has trained over 800 educators across six continents. Her commitment to social change is particularly evident in her role as co-creator of "Designing Your Life for Women," where she applies design thinking to address women's unique career challenges and social narratives. Through her leadership, the Lab has become a global hub for applying design thinking principles to life and career development, consistently achieving high satisfaction scores in their training programs.