Female Design Leadership: A TechWomen100 Winner’s Hyper Island Journey

What does modern design leadership actually look like today?

For many senior design professionals, leadership is no longer just about craft. It’s about creating safe environments, managing diverse teams, and shaping inclusive cultures in complex organisations. But

• How do you guide teams across cultures?
• How do you create psychological safety where creativity can actually thrive?
• And how do you grow into leadership without losing your human perspective?

Julia Fogelberg Bouverat’s career offers one perspective. Through her Hyper Island design leadership experience, she has grown into a Design Leader and Senior Product Designer working across global teams, mentoring future female tech leaders, and advocating for more inclusive workplaces. This is her story.

Julia is currently a Design Leader and Senior Product Designer at Cognizant, a global tech consultancy with over 300,000 employees. She works in a multi-disciplinary Service Design team on projects for the UK Government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. Alongside hands-on design work, she manages other designers and supports their professional development — something she describes as one of her favourite parts of the role.

She’s worked across start-ups, agencies, and major organisations. And for her, leadership has never been about a title. It’s about how you show up.

Julia has lived and worked in Stockholm, London, Shanghai, and Sydney. Those international experiences shaped how she approaches teamwork and management.

Moving between cultures also taught her humility. Experiencing loneliness and adaptation helped her understand how people enter new environments — something she now applies in her leadership.

In her view, leadership requires understanding the cultural and personal context people bring to work

Julia is a graduate of both the Digital Creative YH program and the UX Designer YH Upskill course. Her Hyper Island design leadership experience was not only about tools and frameworks. It was about how to work with people.
Today, she gives back as an Industry Leader at Hyper Island, guiding students through the UX landscape.

She highlights the methodologies she experienced at Hyper Island — experiential learning, teamwork, and practical application — as foundational to how she now leads.

And for Julia, leadership is closely tied to how safe people feel when they enter a learning space or workplace.

For Julia, strong design leadership skills begin with psychological safety.

She acknowledges that UX and tech are not always inclusive fields. Buzzwords, expectations, and hierarchy can create barriers.

Her approach is different. She believes leadership does not mean having all the answers. It means empowering people to experiment and try new tools and methods.

In her current role, she fosters continuous learning, prototyping, and experimentation — both in projects and in team development.

Julia was named one of the winners of the TechWomen100 Awards, recognised by WeAreTechWomen.

The award expanded her professional network, but she sees it as motivation rather than destination. She wants to use that visibility to continue mentoring and speaking publicly about inclusion in tech.

Beyond awards, she volunteers as a mentor through Cognizant, ADPlist, and BIMA. She also advocates for initiatives that promote financial literacy and investment equality among women.

For Julia, leadership extends beyond design teams. It includes raising awareness, supporting other women, and working toward systemic change.

Julia encourages professionals to seek growth intentionally.

She believes courage is a muscle that can be trained in small, daily actions.

For students and future UX leaders considering Hyper Island, she highlights:

• Learning by doing
• Exposure to industry leaders
• A blend of teamwork, theory, and practical work
• Access to a global network

She advises students to embrace the values of lifelong learning and leading change — principles she continues to apply in her own design leadership career journey.

Julia’s story illustrates what a Hyper Island design leadership experience can lead to: not only career progression, but the ability to lead inclusively, mentor others, and shape meaningful change in the tech industry.

If you’re looking to strengthen your design leadership skills through hands-on, collaborative learning, explore Hyper Island’s learning experiences for professionals.