Hillary Black Portfolio
Head of Marketing and Conversation Design at Mav, and founder of a job board and online community specifically for conversation designers. Publishes detailed public critiques of other designers' conversation-design portfolios rather than only showcasing her own.
What makes it work
A breakdown of the choices that make this portfolio stand out.
Building field infrastructure, not just individual case studies
A job board and community built specifically for a niche, still-forming discipline is different portfolio evidence than a case study — it shows she understands the field's talent pipeline problems well enough to try to fix them.
Teaching through public critique of named, real portfolios
Rather than only asserting best practices, she names four specific designers' actual sites and explains what works about each — a format that proves fluency by application, not just by claim.
A dual marketing-and-design title that reflects the role's real blur
Her title itself (Head of Marketing and Conversation Design) honestly reflects how conversational AI roles at smaller companies often combine functions — useful signal for evaluating what the job actually looks like.
What Conversational AI Designers can take from this
Specific, actionable tips to apply to your own portfolio — no generic advice.
If you can't share NDA'd client work in detail, consider writing public critiques of other real portfolios — it proves the same judgment without breaching confidentiality.
Building shared infrastructure for your field (a community, job board, resource hub) is itself portfolio evidence, separate from individual project work.
Be upfront in your title and bio about which parts of a hybrid role are actually yours, rather than implying a purely specialized function.
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