Three Levels of Consciousness: How Leaders Respond to AI

He's been designing and building for a long time. He's also lived a nonlinear path, which he wore lightly. Aerospace engineering to JavaScript, to advertising startups, to Facebook, to Spotify, to where he is now: working in behavioral health, designing for therapists trying to give their clients more time and care.

When I asked him what conscious leadership meant, he didn't give me a one-liner. He gave me a framework.

"Level one consciousness," he said, "is just being conscious of what you're being tasked to do. Knowing the tool. Empathizing and guiding and training."

This is baseline. Showing up. Understanding your craft. Teaching others.

"Level two consciousness is understanding the impact of the tools you're using. What are the pitfalls? What are the risks? What are the trade-offs? Are there accessibility implications? Ethical implications?"

This is where many of us live. We think about consequences. We try to do the right thing. We ask good questions.

"And then level three," he said, "is really understanding your role in choosing to change and evolve. Not just being performant with these tools, but doing the right thing and solving the right problem."

He gave an example. SimplePractice (where he works) could have launched large language models through therapists' practices two years ago. But they made a decision to go deeper first. To understand what would actually happen if hallucinations made it into therapy notes. To test it themselves. To see what was broken.

"There's no way therapists should be doing this end to end all on their own," he realized. So instead of shipping a tool that worked 80% of the time, they built something actually safe. Something conscious.

"It's funny," he told me, "because I've been criticized for oversharing. But I truly believe in the idea of stream of consciousness. When something feels important, you should share it."

So he talks. In meetings, on LinkedIn, in hallway conversations. He shares frameworks. He records voice memos when a good idea hits him. He sends that out.

But the deeper way he spreads consciousness through his team is mentorship. He goes to the local coffee shop he helped brand, mentors students from San Jose State, gives back what was given to him.

"It's not lost on me how many people I've benefited from," he said. "So it's why I give it back."

That's how consciousness spreads. Not top-down mandates. Not policies. But through relationship. Through someone caring enough to spend time with you, helping you think.

His path wasn't straight. Aerospace student who loved coding. Engineer who got curious about frontend. Designer who became a founder. Founder who led design at Yahoo. Then Facebook, then Spotify, then joining a company solving a real human problem in healthcare.

When I asked if he'd envisioned this path when he started, he was honest. No. But he had something deeper. A pull. A sense that despite choosing engineering for safety and smartness, something in him kept calling back to creative work.

"Being surrounded by that," he said, talking about his creative siblings and his father who was a mechanic but also did fine arts, "I always had this integral key draw for creative. Even though I went to engineering, I kind of knew in my heart that I'd come back to designing at some point."

He came back. And that return, that willingness to follow what matters instead of what's safe, shapes everything he does now.

When I asked about the next year, he didn't give me predictions. He gave me a plea.

"The more important question is, when are you going to stop and focus and take what is available to you to solve some of the challenges that the world needs?"

AI capabilities are doubling every few months. There's more coming. But that's not the question that keeps him up at night.

The question is: what are we actually trying to solve? Are we using these tools to make someone's life better or to pad a quarterly report?

He's designing for therapists. Every feature he builds removes friction so therapists can spend more time with people who need help. That's level three consciousness. Knowing the tool. Knowing the impact. Choosing to solve something real.

"Unless you know everyone was doing everything the way that you would, with your insight, with your knowledge, with your experience," he said, "it's never going to be good design."

So we can't copy-paste solutions. We can't blindly apply AI to every problem. We have to know why we're doing it. We have to stay conscious.

He mentioned that 1% of UX designers are in positions to make decisions. I'd done that math too. One million designers globally. Most of them have no power.

But Leonardo doesn't seem worried about that percentage. He's focused on the people he can reach. His team. His mentees. His community.

Level three consciousness isn't about scale. It's about depth.

It's about asking better questions. It's about understanding your tools and your impact. It's about choosing what to build based on what the world actually needs.

And then it's about sharing that consciousness with others. Not through lectures. Through showing up. Through mentorship. Through caring enough to help someone else think.

That's how the 99% become more conscious. One relationship at a time.