Introducing the Shift UX VIP Leaders Salon - led by Peter Merholz
August 13, 2026
UX leadership has always been demanding. Right now, it’s something else entirely — leadership mandates to fold AI into the work, teams anxious about their futures, and all of it stacked on top of a job that was already full. Something has to give, and for a lot of leaders, that something is starting to feel like their own sense of purpose.
Recent research on UX and research professionals found them to be among the least happy people in their field, and the isolation that’s always come with UX leadership hasn’t gone away. It’s gotten worse.
Shift UX is built around one premise: roles disappear, but the work matters more than ever. For leaders specifically, that premise raises a harder question — if your title no longer defines your value, what does?
That’s the question The Shift UX VIP Leaders Salon exists to answer.
What is the Leaders Salon?
A companion event to the Shift UX conference, the Salon is an all-day gathering for UX leaders at director level and above, facilitated by Peter Merholz. It’s built for stepping back, gaining real perspective, and leaving ready to lead from clarity instead of reaction.
Join us September 23, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM ET.
How the day works
Rather than a day of lectures, the Leaders Salon is built around one question, answered four times from four different angles: your organization, your positioning, your practice, and your own next move.
Peter opens with a framing talk grounded in his own research — a 458-person sentiment survey and a listening tour of twenty UX executives — on the phase shift the profession is moving through.
From there, you’re placed into a small “home group” of peers in a similar organizational situation, a group that stays with you all day and becomes a real network afterward, not just a name badge exchange.
The day moves through a sequence of hands-on exercises: naming what your organization actually believes UX is for (not the mission statement version — the real one), literally designing a product box that states UX’s value proposition and defending it in front of the room, and building a concrete playbook of practices for leading through uncertainty. It closes with a personal plan for your own next move, informed by a full map of the field’s real, current opportunities — built collectively, by the whole room.
Everything runs under the Chatham House Rule, so the conversation can be as candid as it needs to be.
What you walk away with
- The product box you built — a physical artifact of what you believe UX is for
- The room’s full playbook of leadership practices, transcribed and sent the next morning
- An option map of the moves available to UX leaders right now, with real people attached to each one
- A complete workbook of the day
- A small group of peers who understand your situation well enough to still be useful months from now
Salon participants are also part of the VIP UX Leader cohort for Shift UX, with an invitation to a VIP reception where you can keep the conversation going and meet Shift UX speakers and sponsors. Secure your spot before prices increase on September 3.
