Michael Saravia🇨🇦

About Michael Saravia

Senior manager, product design at Momentum Financial Service Group

I’m a director of product design with 18+ years of experience across product design, design systems, ecommerce, fintech, marketplaces, and large scale digital products. What matters most to me is helping designers become thoughtful, confident practitioners who understand why they’re making decisions, not simply what to design.

I believe good mentorship should provide context, challenge your thinking, and create a safe space to ask questions, make mistakes, and grow. I won’t give you a formula to follow or expect you to design the way I would. I’ll ask questions, share what I’ve learned, and help you develop your own judgement.

I can support you with product thinking, design leadership, stakeholder relationships, portfolios, career development, and navigating the business side of design.

Expect thoughtful conversations, direct feedback, curiosity, and plenty of questions. My goal isn’t for you to depend on me for answers. It’s to help you become more confident finding and defending your own.

Expertise

Sessions with Michael Saravia

• Product design career & leadership review (45 min): Bring one product design challenge you want to work through. It could be your career direction, portfolio, stakeholder challenge, leadership transition, design strategy, design system work, or a difficult product decision. We’ll start by understanding your situation, what you’re trying to accomplish, and what is getting in the way. I’ll ask questions to challenge your assumptions, share relevant experience, and help you identify practical options rather than prescribe a single answer. Depending on your goal, we can use the session to: • Review your career direction or next role • Discuss moving into lead, staff, principal, or management roles • Review a portfolio or case study • Work through stakeholder or cross-functional challenges • Discuss product strategy, design systems, or design operations • Strengthen how you communicate design decisions and impact You’ll leave with clearer direction and practical next steps you can act on.
• Product design growth mentorship (45 min): A structured mentorship for product designers who want to strengthen their craft, strategic thinking, influence, or leadership capability over time. We’ll begin by understanding where you are today, where you want to grow, and what may be holding you back. Together, we’ll define a development focus and use each session to work through real challenges from your role, career, or portfolio. Our sessions can cover areas such as: • Product and strategic thinking • Career progression and leadership development • Stakeholder management and influence • Design systems and design operations • Research and evidence-based decision-making • Portfolio and case study development • Communicating design decisions and business impact I’ll provide direct feedback, ask questions, share context from my experience, and help you develop your own judgement. Each session will end with practical actions to work on before we meet again. The goal is progress you can apply independently, not dependence on a mentor for answers.

What mentees say

“Michael is a highly experienced design professional who consistently provides thoughtful, relevant and practical guidance. He helped me work through my inquiries step by step, offering valuable perspectives and asking the right questions to help me think through the problem more effectively. What I particularly appreciated was his thoughtful approach to collaboration.”