Kathleen McMahon

Engineer | Designer | Speaker

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Actions

Kathleen is a software engineer, designer, educator, and international conference speaker who builds design systems across engineering and product design. She creates inclusive, accessible foundations for AI-ready workflows through scalable component libraries, token-driven systems, and the tooling and documentation that help teams design, build, and ship with more clarity and consistency.

Kathleen’s a Design Tokens W3C Community Group Specification Editor. Her talks and workshops explore front-end engineering, accessibility, design systems, and modern product development, with a focus on how systems thinking and inclusive implementation improve the way teams build.

Outside of work, she is the Creative Director for the CXsisters network and the best lanterne-rouge cyclocrosser you’ll ever meet.

Area of Expertise

Information & Communications Technology

Topics

Design Systems
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Accessibility
Front-End Development
React
JavaScript
TypeScript
UI/UX Design
Design Tokens

Design System Test Kitchen! Recipes for AI-Ready Components

Design systems are like a well-stocked test kitchen: developers are the head chefs and AI tools are the line cooks. With the right ingredients, recipes, and kitchen rules, teams can rapidly turn ideas into UI. But without machine-readable recipe cards and kitchen rules, AI has to guess, and developers end up with something nobody ordered. This workshop shows how to make your design system AI-ready: component metadata, usage guidance, accessibility expectations, and validation. Walk away knowing exactly what to fix and how to fix it.

Cue Lights and Go! Syncing Sound and Light with AI and React

If you've ever worked backstage at an event, you know: timing matters. But what happens when sound, light, and interaction all need to synchronize? One missed cue and your symphony of sound and light becomes chaos. In this talk, we'll explore how React 19 and XState can orchestrate live cues across web APIs and AI-generated music, syncing it all with lighting. Pair this with the right hardware, and your room can come to life right on cue.

Beachcomber's Guide to Type-Safe Design Systems

Building a design system can feel a lot like beachcombing: you wander through washed-up components, mismatched tokens, and that one mysterious Button variant you *swear* no one added.

And sometimes? The code looks solid — until you touch it. Like sand dollars, fragile patterns can seem beautiful and consistent on the surface, but one wrong move and everything crumbles.

With TypeScript on your side, you don’t have to leave consistency up to chance.

In this talk, we’ll explore how to use type safety to organize the mess, protect fragile pieces, and build a clear, maintainable system — even if you’ve inherited one that’s already half-buried in technical sand. From modeling tokens to robust variant props, you’ll leave with practical ways to build systems that are both sturdy and flexible — like any good sandcastle should be.

CityJS Athens Upcoming

- Design System Test Kitchen! Recipes for AI-Ready Components
- Cue Lights and Go! Syncing Sound and Light with AI and React

October 2026 Athens, Greece

React Alicante

- Design System Test Kitchen! Recipes for AI-Ready Components
- Cue Lights and Go! Syncing Sound and Light with AI and React

September 2026 Alicante, Spain

Codemotion Madrid 2026 Sessionize Event

April 2026 Madrid, Spain

jsday 2026 Sessionize Event

April 2026 Bologna, Italy

MagnoliaConf 2025

The Beachcomber’s Guide to Type-Safe Design Systems.

October 2025 Jackson, Mississippi, United States

Codemotion Milan 2025 Sessionize Event

October 2025 Milan, Italy

Codemotion Milan 2025

Practical Accessibility in React: The Sand Dollar Approach (Workshop)

October 2025

DevFest Santiago de Compostela 2025 Sessionize Event

October 2025 Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Kathleen McMahon

Engineer | Designer | Speaker

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Actions

Please note that Sessionize is not responsible for the accuracy or validity of the data provided by speakers. If you suspect this profile to be fake or spam, please let us know.

Kathleen McMahon

Actions

Links

Area of Expertise

Topics

CityJS Athens Upcoming

Codemotion Madrid 2026 Sessionize Event

jsday 2026 Sessionize Event

Codemotion Milan 2025 Sessionize Event

DevFest Santiago de Compostela 2025 Sessionize Event

Kathleen McMahon

Links

Actions