Speaker Introduction – Lauren Celenza
I am very happy to welcome Lauren Celenza to beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf 2026.
So far we haven’t met in person and all conversation has happened over video calls so far. This feels a little funny in hindsight, because Lauren is someone who thinks very carefully about what technology does to human connection. But even through a screen, it was immediately clear that she is exactly the kind of person I want on the beyond tellerrand stage.
So who is Lauren Celenza?
Lauren is a software designer, writer, and advocate for technology that preserves human agency. Based in Seattle, she has led design work at some of the most consequential places in the industry, but in ways that most designers rarely get to experience.
At Google Maps, she led a global team making navigation more inclusive for hundreds of millions of people. At Code for America, her work helped generate over $90 million in tax refunds for people in the US who needed them most. At the World Resources Institute, she worked on global land restoration technology. These are not small projects. These are complex, deeply human systems – and Lauren's role in all of them was to take the intricate and the overwhelming and turn it into something that actually works for real people.
She has also worked with Adobe, the Gates Foundation, and others, and has taught design and storytelling to tech makers in over 40 countries. Her work and writing have been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, and The New York Times.
Tech Without Losing Your Soul
Alongside her design practice, Lauren writes Tech Without Losing Your Soul, a newsletter and interview series that blends personal essay and sharp reporting to examine tech’s power, burnout culture, and what it actually means to build with AI without surrendering our humanity or our sense of reality.
In a world that’s full of opinions about AI and the future of work, Lauren is one of the rare voices asking the more uncomfortable questions first. Not just what can we build?, but what should we build, and what does it cost us when we don't ask that?
She has been an early member of the Alphabet Workers Union, petitioned for the Silenced No More Act in Washington State, and continues to advocate, loudly and clearly, for technology that keeps people at its centre.
Why You Should be Excited
Honestly? Because this is exactly the kind of perspective that exciting.
beyond tellerrand always has been a place where technology and humanity meet. Where people who care about craft and people who care about impact can sit in the same room and feel equally at home. Lauren embodies that wonderfully. She doesn’t separate the human from the technical. For her, they are the same conversation.
I’m really looking forward to finally meeting her in person in Düsseldorf. And I hope and think her talk is going to be one that stays with people.