Velina Ilieva

Velina Ilieva has a strong background in design and user experience. Velina worked as a Senior Art Director at Critical Mass starting in September 2021. Prior to that, they were a Senior Interaction Designer at Leo Burnett from April 2019 to August 2021. From February 2017 to April 2019, they served as a Senior Experience Designer at Digitas North America, where they worked on projects for clients such as TruStage, CUNA Mutual, Miller Lite, Scotts, Emerson, Hyundai, Genesis, and DijiTouch. At Digitas, they played a key role in creating personalized consumer experiences and developing a customer experience strategy for CUNA Mutual Group. Before that, Velina worked as a User Experience Consultant at Solstice from April 2015 to December 2016, where they worked on projects for clients including Discover Bank & Card, Northern Trust, John Deere, Bosch, Jarden Consumer Solutions, and Rockwell Automation. Velina showcased their IoT project at Solstice's conference FWD 2016 and at Amazon's conference re:Invent in 2016. Velina's early experience includes working as a User Interface Designer at Tribune Company from August 2012 to January 2015.

Velina Ilieva earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in Visual Communication Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where they attended from 2007 to 2011. Prior to that, they studied Graphic Design at New Bulgarian University from 2005 to 2007 before transferring to SAIC. In addition to their formal education, Velina Ilieva has obtained several certifications, including a Professional Certificate in Product Management from Kellogg Executive Education in April 2022, a certification in UX Design Principles for AR & VR from Emeritus in October 2020, and a certification in Human-Computer Interaction for User Experience Design from MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in January 2020.