Bio
Darya Sesitskaya is an entrepreneur with more than 10 years of experience in product design, marketing and product launches. Today, as a founder and CEO of Shader, a startup launching the first text-to-AR mask app, that does not require design or coding skills, Darya is targeting the emerging content creator economy, which is now estimated to be worth $104 billion.
Darya was fascinated by art from a young age, and had ambitions of founding her own business. She was born into a family of business owners in the small town of Pinsk, Belarus. Graduating in 2012 with a mass communications degree from the European Humanities University, she delved into marketing and advertising.
Over five years, Sesitskaya crafted innovative social network promotion strategies for brands like Danone, Nestlé, KIA, Volkswagen, and Pernod Ricard, shaping her storytelling career.In 2018, fueled by a growing passion for design, Darya shifted her career to join WANNABY, a startup, where she became the UX/UI team lead. Balancing roles in PR, product development, and management, she supervised designers and completed a Design program at UC Berkeley.
Her impactful work at WANNABY facilitated collaborations with Gucci and Adidas, culminating in the startup's acquisition by Farfetch for $24.5 million.With an O1 visa, Darya immigrated to the US in 2019. Two years later, she was leading product development at Lens Studio at Snap as the AR Platform Design Lead. The primary challenge Darya faced was streamlining and improving the usability of the web version of the AR object creation studio. With the knowledge and skills she acquired from her work at WANNABY and Snap AR, Sesitskaya founded Shader in 2022.
Shader is a startup showcasing technology that speeds up AR production from hours to seconds and cuts AR advertising costs in half. These kinds of innovations will open up AR generation technology to users without design or development skills as well as to businesses. In order to help anyone express themselves in any way they choose, Darya wants to improve the user-oriented design of AR content creation tools.
Darya was fascinated by art from a young age, and had ambitions of founding her own business. She was born into a family of business owners in the small town of Pinsk, Belarus. Graduating in 2012 with a mass communications degree from the European Humanities University, she delved into marketing and advertising.
Over five years, Sesitskaya crafted innovative social network promotion strategies for brands like Danone, Nestlé, KIA, Volkswagen, and Pernod Ricard, shaping her storytelling career.In 2018, fueled by a growing passion for design, Darya shifted her career to join WANNABY, a startup, where she became the UX/UI team lead. Balancing roles in PR, product development, and management, she supervised designers and completed a Design program at UC Berkeley.
Her impactful work at WANNABY facilitated collaborations with Gucci and Adidas, culminating in the startup's acquisition by Farfetch for $24.5 million.With an O1 visa, Darya immigrated to the US in 2019. Two years later, she was leading product development at Lens Studio at Snap as the AR Platform Design Lead. The primary challenge Darya faced was streamlining and improving the usability of the web version of the AR object creation studio. With the knowledge and skills she acquired from her work at WANNABY and Snap AR, Sesitskaya founded Shader in 2022.
Shader is a startup showcasing technology that speeds up AR production from hours to seconds and cuts AR advertising costs in half. These kinds of innovations will open up AR generation technology to users without design or development skills as well as to businesses. In order to help anyone express themselves in any way they choose, Darya wants to improve the user-oriented design of AR content creation tools.