Nat Maher sees the design industry’s gender gap not just as a women’s issue but as an opportunity for transformative change in how we lead, how we run better businesses and create more impactful design. From finding herself one of the only women in the boardroom to founding the initiative Kerning the Gap, her journey is one of empowerment, and the conviction that the best design thrives when every voice has a seat at the table.

Nat Maher didn’t set out to become an activist for women in design, in fact, her entry into the design world came via communications and strategy roles. Early in her career, she worked behind the scenes at design agencies and industry bodies, observing studio cultures and leadership dynamics. By the time she earned her first Managing Director role at a design consultancy, Maher had a hard-earned seat at the table, and that’s when she began to notice just how few other women were sitting alongside her.

“I remember looking around meeting rooms and often realizing I was the only woman there,” she says. It struck her as odd, given the talent pipeline: years of industry reports had shown women made up the majority of design graduates.

“I kept asking myself, where have all the women gone?” Maher recalls. The higher she rose, the fewer female peers she saw. It took reaching that MD position for her to finally feel she could call herself a “bona fide woman in leadership,” and with that came a new sense of responsibility.

“Once I was in that position,” she explains, “I felt I had to do something about the lack of diversity I saw at the top of our field.” Her own success had opened a door – now she was determined to hold it open for others.

Those years working across different studios had given Maher a broad view of the design industry’s culture. She saw that the issue wasn’t a lack of talented women entering the field; it was what happened afterwards. Women were dropping out or stalling before reaching leadership roles, often due to structural and cultural hurdles. Some of those hurdles were hiding in plain sight, from subtle biases in how potential leaders were chosen, to a lack of support systems for women juggling career and family, to the simple fact that many young women saw few role models in senior positions and concluded people like me don’t end up in charge.

Maher also sensed an underlying emotional toll within these patterns, whereby talented women would doubt themselves because they didn’t feel heard or they didn’t feel valued. These realisations were the seeds of an idea that would lead to Kerning the Gap.

By 2015, Maher decided it was time to act. That year she founded Kerning the Gap, a grassroots initiative to tackle the very question she’d been asking: why were design’s women leaders disappearing and how could the industry bring them back?

“There’s one goal: we need to see more diversity in leadership roles,” Maher says of the mission that drives Kerning the Gap. At its heart, it’s a community for like-minded people who want to see more women in design leadership, but it was also built to challenge the status quo and spark practical change.

The name itself carries a cheeky design pun (“kerning” being the spacing between letters) but also a clear message: it’s about closing the gap.

Maher was acutely aware of the stark numbers: roughly two-thirds of design graduates are female, yet only a small fraction (in 2015, around 13%) ever make it to creative director or other top roles.

“The representation of women in the upper levels of agency leadership is woefully poor, and the role models for our aspiring leaders simply aren’t accessible,” she points out.

The design industry, dominated by small studios and founder-led agencies, often lacks the formal HR policies or accountability measures that larger companies use to foster equity.

“With 93% of design agencies being micro businesses (less than 10 people), the usual checks - publishing pay scales, HR departments - just don’t reach most of us,” Maher explains. In such small businesses, disparities can, without intention, flourish unchecked. For Maher, what is needed is in part highlighting the problem, but also creating and feeding a collective effort to change minds and practices across the industry.

One of Maher’s first observations was that the conversation about equality needed to expand. One of the most striking observations she had was why aren’t the men part of this conversation? Women-only panels and forums had their place, but Maher felt they could be exclusive and often leaving out half the industry. Men, for Maher, were and are a critical part of the solution. After all, how can you exclude that section of the workforce that held over 80% of leadership roles; to change the culture, they had to be involved as both allies and participants, acting with empathy and understanding not distant observers.

Kerning the Gap would invite everyone to the table from junior designers, senior executives, women to men alike, to candidly, and openly, discuss why the gap exists and what could be done about it in a practical sense.

Maher also wanted to break down silos between generations and job roles.

“There were forums for senior women to talk to each other about how they made it, which is useful but much more valuable when a junior woman who is just starting out is also invited,” she says.

A designer’s career path isn’t always linear, and leadership isn’t confined to the creative department. So Kerning the Gap set out to unite all conversation at both a seniority and discipline level. Whether you’re a fresh grad in client services or a veteran creative director, Maher’s message is very simple:

1) You have a role to play in improving diversity.
2) You deserve access to guidance and support.

By rallying agencies across the sector to collaborate rather than compete on this issue, she hoped for industry-wide conversations and action.

Kerning the Gap operates a bit like a welcoming cross-studio network and a support system all rolled into one. There are workshops and talks, and a flagship mentoring programme that pairs women (and men, in many cases) with industry mentors. Maher sees mentorship as a route to help empower, grow confidence and develop leadership skills for both mentor and mentee.

A junior designer might enter the programme feeling unsure of her voice, and months later find herself leading a client meeting, while the mentor gains a wider perspective and, hopefully, a real sense of achievement in helping someone grow. Not all mentors are women, either. Men in leadership roles are actively encouraged to participate as mentors. This in turn can create dialogues that breed an understanding that likely wouldn’t happen otherwise.

As for the future, Maher’s is equal parts hopeful and clear-eyed. She’s the first to admit that real change takes time.

“We’re not realistically going to fix decades of imbalance overnight,” she says, but she also sees momentum building.

Initiatives like Kerning the Gap have begun to spur wider industry discussions. You see some of the larger design firms launching their own diversity programmes and conversations about inclusion have moved from the margins to the mainstream.

Maher notes, “Design is still a male-dominated industry, but the definition of leadership is certainly expanding. I see far more men stepping up as allies than in the past, and younger generations walk-the-walk of expecting a more inclusive way of working.”

In thinking about those younger generations, Maher believes millennial and Gen Z designers value mentorship, empathy and transparency in their workplaces. “That gives me a lot of hope. The next generation isn’t interested in the old boys’ club model of leadership, and honestly, that’s good news for all of us.”

Maher believes that the benefits of closing the gender gap go well beyond just fairness; they impact the very quality of design work that agencies produce. “If you have the same people making decisions who all come from the same background or gender, inevitably you are going to miss perspectives, and be poorer for it,” she argues.

Maher believes that diverse leadership leads to a far more creative, well-rounded offering. In her view, the future of design will be brighter and more innovative once these outdated imbalances are corrected. When women - and other underrepresented voices - have an equal seat at the table, the entire industry gains a fuller range of insight and creativity.

Policy change is another area Maher would like to see progress. Part of the challenge in design, especially in small studios that make up the backbone of the sector, is the obvious lack of formal structures to ensure equality.

Maher advocates for industry bodies and business leaders to take proactive steps such as voluntarily publishing gender pay gap data to embedding family-friendly policies that prevent talented women from being forced out of their careers.

Ultimately, Maher envisions an industry where inclusion is baked into the way agencies operate: “I’d love to see the day where every design business, no matter its size, naturally thinks about diversity in every hire, every project team, every leadership decision - not because someone told them to, but because it’s obviously the best way to work.”

As for Kerning the Gap, Maher’s long-term hope is somewhat paradoxical: to make itself unnecessary.

“The dream is that in the future we won’t need initiatives to champion women in design because it will just be the norm.”

In that ideal future, a young woman entering the design field would see plenty of examples ahead of her to know that she can become a creative director, a CEO, or whatever she aspires to without having to fight an uphill battle to get there.

Until that day, Maher isn’t slowing down. Her advice to women starting out is to own their ambition and speak up. “Don’t be afraid to ask for opportunities or to voice your ideas. Seek mentors to give you the encouragement if you find this difficult, but never forget that your talent got you in the room, so use your voice once you’re there.”

She also has advice for those already in positions of power: make space for others. Maher lives by this principle herself. “If you’re one of the few women at the table,” she says, “remember that the gift of having a seat at the table is the ability to pull up more chairs for others.”

For Nat Maher, the fight for equality in design is both deeply personal and fundamentally collective. It’s about validating the emotional experiences that so many women in design have lived through, and pairing those stories with structural solutions. It’s about policy and empathy, mentorship and leadership, all working in concert. And ultimately, it’s about the fundamentals that the design industry, a place driven by the creative outputs of talent, becomes a place where that talent can rise unhindered.

Cover image credit: Kerning The Gap