Debbie Millman Speaking Fee:

Debbie Millman is a designer, author, educator, curator and the host of Design Matters, one of the longest-running podcasts in the world. Fast Company has called her one of the most creative people in business, and Graphic Design USA has named her one of the most influential designers working today. She is an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School, co-owner and editorial director of PrintMag.com, and in 2025 she and her wife, Roxane Gay, acquired the literary magazine The Rumpus. Millman started Design Matters in 2004, paying for her own airtime, and has since interviewed more than 700 creative thinkers. The show won a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award and has earned multiple Webby Awards and Ambie nominations. She spent two decades at Sterling Brands, where she became president, and in 2010 she co-founded, with Steven Heller, the first graduate branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, which she still chairs. She is president emeritus of AIGA and received its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Her TEDWomen talk, "How symbols and brands shape our humanity," has drawn more than 2.4 million plays on TED.com. Millman has written or contributed to books including How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer, Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits, Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People, and the illustrated essay collections Look Both Ways and Self-Portrait As Your Traitor, which won a Gold Mobius and an Art Directors Club medal. She has spoken for companies including Adobe, Google, IBM, Spotify and Unilever, at universities including Harvard, Princeton and Yale, and at Design Indaba, Web Summit and Adobe Max. She serves on the boards of the Joyful Heart Foundation and Canva's design advisory board. She divides her time between Manhattan and Los Angeles with her two cats and a dog, and gardening is the subject of her 2025 book, Love Letter to a Garden.