Yana Barysheva
About me
Lead Principal Staff Director of Product Design Work
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Greetings!

I'm Yana Barysheva, a product strategist and designer who excels at solving complex challenges with clarity and pragmatism (ask me about designing products for the rat's nest that is retail energy!). For me, design is about finding solutions that work in practice—balancing creativity, strategy, and execution to move projects forward.

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y.barysheva@gmail.com

Nice things people have said about me

Approach

I approach design and strategy by channeling my creativity through a pragmatic framework of user needs, business goals, and technical feasibility. My process starts with understanding the problem: collecting information, analyzing it, and forming a mental map of the challenge ahead. I work in a cross-disciplinary fashion, connecting the dots to ensure that the final outcome is greater than the sum of its parts, and enjoy wearing whatever hat is put upon my head.

Mentorship

Every relationship with a report or mentee beings with three questions: Where are you now? Where do you want to be? How can I help you get there? Recognizing that everyone's approach and goals differ, I prefer to support them in the style they're comfortable with. Ultimtely, I want to help others define the path that works for them.

AI

I'm using it! I'm vibe coding (a bit), spending too much time on AI newsletters and events, and I have a lot a lot of thoughts on it (ask me!). I'm concerned about the ethics and frustrated by the hype; I'm incredibly excited by AI as a tool; and as a designer, my priority is pragmatic: how to implement AI wisely.

Outside of work

Most of my hobbies have to do with creating. I majored in creative writing and co-wrote a cookbook with my mom. I like to draw, paint, and generally "do art". I'm currently learning to play bass. I love people watching, and talking to them, too (people skills come in handy for user interviews). I also love cats.

More than Borsch

This is a book of Russian & Ukrainian recipes, culinary history, foodie literature, and other tidbits that I co-authored and co-designed with my mom, Ellen (who also taught me design!).
Check it out

Notes:

I used Cursor as a copilot to build this website. I know HTML/CSS well and can confidently say this is terrible code, but it was fun to have a little buddy messing things up and sometimes even helping. Ask me about my experience with this and other vibe coding projects!