Ben Lister

I'm a product designer, creative leader, and developer specializing in Design Systems, with extensive experience as both an individual contributor and team lead. I integrate AI tools into my design process to enhance productivity and problem-solving, focusing on UX and interaction design, documentation, and prototyping. I thrive in high-autonomy environments where I can combine hands-on design, strategy, systems thinking, and mentoring, leveraging my coding abilities to bring ideas to life.

Most recently, I was a Staff Product Designer at Okta where I worked to scale Odyssey, Okta's enterprise design system. I previously led the design, vision, enablement, and strategy on Gusto's design system documentation site, Workbench. Before that, I was the first design hire at Sprout Social, where I co-created Seeds and founded Sprout's design system team.

I’m currently open to new full-time or contract opportunities. View my portfolio or resume to learn more.

As a teenager I started designing websites as a hobby and built a fansite about my favorite band, Nirvana. The hobby eventually became a side gig when I landed a banner ad deal with the band's record label and later began doing freelance design work for other music sites. This experience helped me learn the foundations of design and programming and allowed me to discover my passion and career ambitions.

I started my professional career at a small agency where I worked on projects for clients such as Hyatt, The Ford Motor Company, CUNY, and the University of Miami. My focus shifted to product design in the late 2000s, and I have been designing for startups big and small ever since. For the last nine years, my specialty has been design systems, where I've worked in leadership, strategic, and hands-on practitioner roles for three well-known design systems.

Having grown up in my family's restaurant kitchen, I've become an avid home cook who also enjoys traveling, hiking, running, cycling, and (often regretfully) rooting for the Chicago White Sox. After spending much of my life between Chicago and West Michigan, I now live far from the snow in sunny Oakland, CA, with my family and our two energetic Whippets, Devo and Phoebe.