Martha Valenta

Human-centered Design Professional, 1904labs

St. Louis

Martha Valenta is a seasoned Human-centered Design professional. She is currently a Human-centered Design Lead at 1904labs, where she balances the needs of Users with both the realities of business and input from developers through a variety of workshops.

During her career, she's lead innovation efforts on projects ranging from creating the enterprise- and consumer-facing digital experiences for a 360-degree view of aggregated cardholder intelligence for a Fortune 500 financial services corporation to leading customer experience transformation design sprints for another financial services firm.

In the corporate world, Martha has been a human-centered experience designer for two decades. But, all the while she’s been sketching more than application screens. She’s been quietly sketching, photographing, & painting anything that's on her mind. In 2016 she founded I Need That Art, an art gallery where she brokers sales of works by a handful of artists including herself. In 2020 she re-imagined "Louis Vuittaco" from her Luxury Foods series as a putt-putt golf hole for The Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries' Golf the Galleries. The current iteration of this gallery is at 7735 Clayton Rd. in Clayton, Missouri.

The first-place win at Start-up Weekend in 2015 kicked off a two-year period where Martha dabbled in the start-up world. She brainstormed experience design and funding ideas with fellow founders who got further along in their start-ups than she did in hers.

She is an advocate for community and continuous learning through her work as co-founder and former President of STLX (the St. Louis Experience Design organization), a board member of the Vatterott Foundation, an instructor with 1904Coders at Lift for Life Academy, a guest instructor at LaunchCode CoderGirl UX, and as a guest instructor/speaker at Washington University.

She’s driven by a desire to create better experiences for everyone.