Jack Shugrue | Design Buddies

Organization

Design Buddies

Role

Designer, Content Lead, Partnerships, Events

Date

2020 - 2023

Team

Grace Ling

Maggie Karaya

Jess Lam

Calum Mills

Uju Oduah

Nabil Mir

Nadia Le

Ellisabeth Kaseda

Founder

Events

Events, Community

Community

Admin team

Asset by Brian Ling for Design Buddies

Context

Design Buddies is an inclusive design community built in an effort to connect, empower, and support designers, especially those just beginning their professional design journeys.

At Design Buddies anyone can level up their design skills with peer-to-peer learning, mentorship, shared resources & content, participate in digital events, expand their professional network, and make new friends along the way.

Impact

I contributed to community growth by focusing on content, forming partnerships with organizations like Adobe, Spline, Pinterest, Discord, and hosting events with prominent designers and tech leaders.

Among these approaches to growth, I led a 5-week live immersive PM and Design program called Product Splash, which admitted over 250 students and generated the highest revenue the community had received to that point.

During my time at Design Buddies, we grew from around 12,000 members across all platforms to over 70,000 in the community.

This growth included:

1,500,000+ messages sent across our Discord community

4,500+ weekly visitors

400+ attendees to live videos

2x'ed growth on social posts

Most importantly, we helped countless designers land their first design job, make new friends, & level up their design skills.