Why Shawn?

Shawn Johnson is an Emmy® Award winning Executive, Speaker, Innovator, Entrepreneur & Futurist - Shawn is the Group Vice President Product & Design for Discovery Communications. He is responsible for Strategy, Product, Design, User Experience, Brand Creative, Operations & Delivery – Shawn sets the Product Strategy, Vision and Go-to-Market Approach through Product & Design Thinking and Customer Centered strategies for all TV, OTT, and Direct to Consumer products, platforms, services and experiences.

Combining an award-winning product portfolio with strategy, technology and business acumen - Shawn is a proven global leader who builds synergies between cross functional teams through Product & Design Leadership. His teams deliver engaging user journeys that create positive, memorable & lasting consumer relationships within evolving product and technology ecosystems.

Prior to Discovery, Shawn served as VP of Experience Design for NBCUniversal where he built an industry leading team through design strategy, user and brand experience to produce some of the best products, applications and channels with billions of passionate fans.

Earlier, Shawn served as Senior UX Lead & Creative Director for Microsoft – working across the entire Microsoft ecosystem of products & services. He led business groups/partners towards a unified global brand vision and customer experience.

Over the past three decades, Shawn has remained at the forefront of innovation – building, leading and cultivating teams globally. An entrepreneur and founder of several successful west coast agencies, Shawn has had the pleasure to with a broad range of clients including, Nike, Unilever, Sony, Budweiser, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Coca-Cola, Nissan, DreamWorks and Walt Disney Imagineering.

Blurring the lines between impossible and possible, Shawn thrives at the intersection of product design, technology and the imagination of the human spirit. He attended Otis Parsons School of Art & Design, and at age 24 became one of the youngest instructors at the prestigious west coast design school.