Marianne Ashton-Booth is Head of Design Systems at ITVX, previously Lead Product Designer at CNN

Specialising in design systems and user-centric design, with a passion for design system strategy, vinyl records and a strong cup of tea.

Marianne joined my team through a series of reorg. Over the years, I’ve been fortunate enough to witness her immense growth, both as a professional and as an individual.

Consistently curious is a good way to describe Marianne. She’s always on a quest to learn new things about the design craft and about herself. I admire her relentless efforts in seeking feedback from her peers. It has made her a better and even more empathetic partner for her colleagues.

Marianne’s perseverance and grit has played a large role in bringing CNN’s Design System to life. If I told you that standing up a Design System is a linear journey, then I would be lying. It has been a long and oftentimes frustrating road to break down silos within CNN’s complex organization. I’ve watched Marianne handle the ups and downs with grace and positivity. Her ability to connect with people makes her the perfect person to help spearhead CNN’s Design System.

Coaching Marianne has been one of the highlights of my people manager career. She has helped me become a better leader in many ways. I’m so proud of everything she has accomplished and I’m even more proud of the person that she has become.

It’s easy to say great things about fantastic colleagues — even so, my praise of Marianne’s knowledge and collaborative efforts may still be understated.

During our tenure together at CNN, Marianne was a strong design partner with a very keen technical aptitude — this was effortlessly expressed in our work on building and implementing a new Design System across multiple products.

With a deep understanding of product design, UI, and consistency across multiple presentation formats, Marianne is an ideal cross-functional partner, with rich insights and capabilities to match.

I worked with Maz for over 3 years at CNN - what an amazing colleague! Huge impact as a designer and also founding the Design System as it is today in CNN. Plus a wonderful human being.

I miss working with you Maz, and hope we work alongside each other again in the future.

I’ve had the pleasure of partnering with Maz for the past 2 years at CNN. I’m often impressed by her dedication to collaboration, process implementation, and a democratic approach to design system governance. I leaned on Maz heavily when I first joined CNN. She helped me contextualize the past, present, and future efforts of the design work. She was more than willing to take the time and walk me through many of the nuances of how the design team arrived at certain decisions. Part of my success working at CNN can be attributed to the support Maz provided at the start and continues to provide to this day. Without a doubt, one of my favorite coworkers and a good friend.

I have had the pleasure of being Marianne’s colleague for 3+ years at CNN Digital and her hallmark contributions to our design system. Without Marianne, there would be no structured system; she championed the beginnings of our structure alignment that we continue to build on today. She has an inherent talent that is drawn upon daily as we continue to improve our offering. Maz is an asset to everything she touches and a fantastic contributor to our teams!

It was a joy working with Marianne at CNN. She led the overhaul of the design system -- a monumental project considering that CNN consists of numerous brands, worldwide. Marianne balanced the work beautifully, chipping away from all angles. She gifted designers with a system that is flexible and fun to use. To promote fast adoption, she built a marketing video to hype it. She built a chatbot to solicit new requests. She's a marvel! And I hope to work with her again.

Marianne is a tremendously gifted and passionate designer. Naturally curious, Marianne strives to reach across teams, learning and growing her understanding to solve complex challenges efficiently. As a key leader on the CNN Design System initiative, Marianne has helped establish and refine new workflows and define systematic components to service a complex global digital brand. I think Marianne's core strength lies in her ability to both deliver effective solutions quickly, but also in her ability to always approach design objectively and strategically. Marianne is a valuable team member, instilling joy and fun in her work — a quality that resonates across teams to help build a strong, unified and fulfilling design culture.

I had the pleasure of working directly with Marianne when she was the product designer on my team during the monumental effort to migrate CNN's entire infrastructure and CMS. This effort also included the implementation of the new CNN design system - Vossi. She was an invaluable member of our team and very knowledgeable in best practices in UI/UX.

Marianne designed CNN's new page templates for the migration effort and played an important role in advising on component UI/UX and reviewing the implementation of these pages and design system elements.

Marianne is undoubtedly one of the top designers at CNN and demonstrates enthusiasm for her craft through her positive work ethic and friendly personality.

Working with Marianne as she led the establishment of CNN's new design library was a great privilege of mine during my time at CNN and she's undoubtedly one of CNN's most creative and impactful designers! I worked quite closely with Marianne for my final 2 years at CNN and her passion for her work and level of collaboration - set a high bar for the organization. Winning teams have Marianne on them, and I wish her nothing but the best!

There's no better User Experience genius in the world! Marianne is one of the most dedicated, experienced, and empathetic leaders in her field and I'm not alone when I say this. We've collaborated on several projects during my time at CNN and her contribution consistently made a huge impact on our successes. I'm still impressed by her detail-oriented UX/UI skills, her extensive design knowledge, and her ability to relate to people which makes her great to work with. Anyone would be lucky to have Marianne as a colleague.