My family’s from a farming community in Haiti. When my parents moved to Boston in their mid twenties, they had children pretty immediately. At the time, me and my 3 siblings lived in mostly illegal communities. It’s interesting because you don’t know that you live in that sort of community until you start meeting Americans who live a bit differently. We were very “green.” We used buckets of water to bathe instead of running shower water. Our front lawn was a garden. My parents were not accustomed to refrigerators so they became a pneumonia scare in our household. In fact, to them everything caused pneumonia and everything could be cured with a cup of tea.

“At the time, me and my 3 siblings lived in mostly illegal communities. It’s interesting because you don’t know that you live in that sort of community until you start meeting Americans who live a bit differently. We were very “green.” We used buckets of water to bathe instead of running shower water.”

Growing up I was a very, very inquisitive child. I constantly asked questions, and context clues meant everything to me. It always confused me how people would do things without asking why? My parents had a lot of difficulty answering my questions due to the language and culture barriers. They encouraged me to read more, with the mindset that the bigger the book, the smarter I would be. The older and dustier the book, the smarter I would be. The harder the cover, the smarter I would be. Really interesting context when you really think about it. I eventually started reading dictionaries and encyclopedias, searching for answers.

When I was 11 years old, I noticed an advertisement on the back of a magazine with the words, “Do you have questions?” I took this as a sign to get tons of questions answered. I ran away from home in search for the magazine headquarter, which happened to be in Boston. Upon arrival, there was a massive exchange of questioning and they soon realized that I had no idea what my address, phone number or birthday was. They sat me in front of a computer and taught me how to play solitaire until my mother eventually found me. My question started to shift from day to day questions, to questions around machinery, interface and context. That began my path into the world of User Experience.

How were you were first introduced to Computer Science and/or UX?

Well my mom brought me back to the magazine HQ the following Monday and told me not to tell my father. In our household, the girls were very protected. I was supposed to go to school and get home as quickly as possible. I was not allowed to make friends. But my mom was a bit of a secret feminist and encouraged me to outsmart the boys and teach her all I had learned in school. Staff at the magazine were pretty impressed by me and encouraged me to continue learning about technology. They eventually were able to take me to a place called The Computer Clubhouse while my mom worked. The Computer Clubhouse was a free technical after school program designed by professors and students at the MIT Media Lab. They targeted inner city kids as young as 8 years old and taught us how to use industry level technical tools. They believed exposing underrepresented individuals to a number of technical skills early on, could help bridge the digital divide. The additional blessing was the frequent visits from people of color at MIT pursuing PhDs in Computer Science and Media. At age 12, I played with actuators and sensors. I also was introduced to coding and programed the very first driverless lego cars.

When I was 14 years old, I ended up in foster care due to a variety of reasons including domestic violence and cultural friction. I ran away a lot and was very depressed through those middle school and high school years without my family. Despite all the personal struggle, I always found my way back to the computer clubhouse. I had all these cool tech skills and loved teaching. By the time I was 17 years old, I was teaching girls how to make their own web pages and remove the proof watermark off photos they had not yet purchased from school. I shortly became an assistant manager at the computer clubhouse, a Tech coordinator at the local YWCAs, the Museum of Science’s technology courses instructor and an IT risk auditor at Harvard University all while I attended undergrad.

“When I was 14 years old, I ended up in foster care due to a variety of reasons including domestic violence and cultural friction. I ran away a lot and was very depressed through those middle school and high school years without my family.”

Despite all of my technical ability, I was too scared to pursue a computer science degree. I believed it was a man’s job despite the fact that I was already doing it. So I went to school for Information Systems and sociology while teaching computer science on the side. When I was in my junior year at undergrad, I decided to take a java course and was pleasantly surprised. I already knew how to do a lot of this stuff. The wave of questions began again. “Does that mean I can code? What’s the point of the degree? Do you need a degree to be a coder? I’m confused. Can you just learn this stuff on your own? Are you not an engineer unless you learn to be engineer in school? Are Haitians who build bridges without degrees not engineers? Wait, what do I do with this sociology degree?” Sociology was the field that touched my heart and technology was the field that stimulated my mind.

I took several psychology classes and professors really felt that it might be my calling. But I could not imagine humanities paying back school loans. By the time I graduated I decided I wanted to do it all. I took to the Google search engine and typed in all my passions, “sociology, psychology, computer science, engineering, hands on, love, forgiveness…” And two fields popped up—human factors engineering and human computer interaction.

How did you make that transition?

I went to Michigan to pursue both degrees: a masters in human computer interaction and a PhD in Human Factors Engineering. It was EVERYTHING. I had somehow found fields that connected culture, engineering, empathy and compassion. And I got to doodle all day to top it off. The wonderful thing about the Computer Clubhouse is that it was funded by Intel. I was able to work my way through the network and worked as a human factors engineer while attending grad school.

At Intel, I met an amazing woman and Intel Fellow known as Genevieve Bell. Genevieve was an anthropologist and a human factors engineer who focused on cultural practices. That was the moment my entire life started to make sense. I had grown to a place where I truly appreciated cultural differences and empathized with day to day struggles of Keeping Up with the Silicon Valley Millennials. I knew I could help make life a little more easier. I wanted to help design products that showcased empathy. And I knew it was my destiny.

Walk me through your work and what you’re working on now.

I eventually went on to work on international projects as either a developer, engineer, or designer across many industries; from government to medical devices to worldwide leaders in IT. Today, I continue the great work at Google in the consumer operations space. I get to measure my work impact globally. I am also launching a personal global passion project called Tech Social Impact Conference in the first quarter of 2017. The conference sparks conversation about developing intentional awareness in product development. In Silicon Valley, we get to see how design and technology can provide social and ethical benefits (and sometimes consequences). I’d like us to share principles and approaches to contribute to a better tomorrow for the next billion users.

“Another goal I am working on is changing the way we do research in the tech industry. I want to make that our research takes into account social and economic backgrounds. Are we designing towards the average income in the United States? Are our studies mix gendered? Have we paid attention to accessibility? I’m all about making a difference in this world, and I know I am in a very privileged position to influence that change.”

Another goal I am working on is changing the way we do research in the tech industry. I want to make that our research takes into account social and economic backgrounds. Are we designing towards the average income in the United States? Are our studies mix gendered? Have we paid attention to accessibility? I’m all about making a difference in this world, and I know I am in a very privileged position to influence that change.

It’s so cool to see all of the ties to your work from your childhood to now. What parts of your work as a researcher really activate you? What do you love the most?

I get super excited when I get in front of people, and I mean real people (no offense to Silicon Valley folks), I’m so passionate and empathetic towards the people I design for. When they’re in front of me, I want them to be comfortable. I want to hear their truths. I want them to tell us how we suck. I want them to know that I appreciate it, and I want to make a difference for them.

It’s one of those things, when I’m in front of somebody, when I’m in front of an actual human being, to know that, “okay, maybe you don’t have the same technical abilities as I, or maybe you feel a little scared, but I’m going to change this for you. I’m going to make this easier for you.” It empowers me. I just ran eight studies today with folks, and every last one of them said, “I’m not really good at tech. I feel like I’m messing up.” I say, “This is exactly what I need. And you’re perfect. I need you to tell us everything we could be doing wrong, so we can fix this for the lot of you that may feel the same. It’s not about looking for a tech genius. If that was the case, we’d make no money. And we need you to keep paying us, so I need to know everything that makes you cringe and what makes you happy.”

I’m curious to know, in your eyes, the potential of research in tech and what are the problems that we should be solving with research? What are we not doing to approach this correctly?

The reason research is so beautiful is because it’s data. When folks try to say “This is how I feel this should be designed,” I can say “Well, 80 percent of people we tested won’t go through it.” Or when I hear, “Can these users really speak for the rest of the country?” I’ll say, “Well, you know there’s this little thing called sample sizing. Pretty dope stuff.” It’s just really empowering to influence people with research.

“We’re not building for just ourselves anymore. We’re a global society. Everyone is using our technology. There is a huge culture shift and focus on design for the next billion users and I think it’s a great direction. And guess what? Sometimes design requires contrast. That means we may need to have different people seated at the table to help us design. You might just have to hire that super poor person in the village you’re building for. It might just mean spending time living in the communities you are serving. It might mean better design for our products due to diversity of thought.”

The problems we should be solving for is cross-culture design. We’re not building for just ourselves anymore. We’re a global society. Everyone is using our technology. There is a huge culture shift and focus on design for the next billion users and I think it’s a great direction. And guess what? Sometimes design requires contrast. That means we may need to have different people seated at the table to help us design. You might just have to hire that super poor person in the village you’re building for. It might just mean spending time living in the communities you are serving. It might mean better design for our products due to diversity of thought. I see nothing but wins when you consider research as a primary practice to help think more critically about the ethical and societal implications of the technologies we design in this world.

Let’s go back to your personal narrative. Tell me about some of the bigger roadblocks and struggles, in your career that you’ve had to overcome.

Being yourself in a world where being yourself seems wrong. In the last year mentors have been telling me that I can fully be myself and be accepted. I never believed that. It wasn’t because no one was telling me I couldn’t be myself. The culture just didn’t seem to want me. So I faked it. I fake laughed at jokes, I fake pretended to see movies I hadn’t seen. I faked drinking beer when I thought it was disgusting. I tried to be a bro when there’s not an ounce of bro in me. It’s pretty draining because I would spend 80 percent of my day pretending to be somebody else­­ or I’d sit in silence when I’m not a silent person. There’s some parts of me I just cannot hold back, like when I disagree.

“In the last year mentors have been telling me that I can fully be myself and be accepted. I never believed that. It wasn’t because no one was telling me I couldn’t be myself. The culture just didn’t seem to want me. So I faked it. I fake laughed at jokes, I fake pretended to see movies I hadn’t seen. I faked drinking beer when I thought it was disgusting. I tried to be a bro when there’s not an ounce of bro in me. It’s pretty draining because I would spend 80 percent of my day pretending to be somebody else­­ or I’d sit in silence when I’m not a silent person.”

It’s still a work in progress but I’m trying to be unapologetically myself no matter where I go. I’m now about 70% myself which is pretty amazing. I would never have imagined that. And I have experienced so much good because of it. A mentor once told me that the Valley was a strange enough place where I could fit in and be appreciated for my differences because everyone is so different. Another mentor told me, “I don’t know if you know this, but when computer science first came out, it was considered a woman’s job. It was like secretarial work. But all of a sudden because somebody told us women we can’t do this­­ or that— that perceived ability has disabled some of our powers. It’s insane. And we as women are fully capable of doing any and everything in tech, if not better.” These words definitely helped.

When did your attention start turning towards educating minority communities?

I’m very passionate about that because someone took the time to show me that I wasn’t forgotten and look how far I’ve gone. And it’s important to know that it also took someone that looked like me. So I serve that truth right back.

I also truly believe this—if you want to hire somebody, look at their story. The story matters to me. That’s how you find out actionable potential. That’s how you know that you can take this kid off the street, show him a few lines of code, and all the sudden he’s the inventor of a killer startup. It’s about finding folks that are hungry. So I set up the environment, and the folks who are hungry, come to eat.

“If you want to hire somebody, look at their story. The story matters to me. That’s how you find out actionable potential. That’s how you know that you can take this kid off the street, show him a few lines of code, and all the sudden he’s the inventor of a killer startup. It’s about finding folks that are hungry. So I set up the environment, and the folks who are hungry, come to eat.”

How do you think the combination of your background and your life experiences impacts the way that you approach your work?

Everything I’ve done has been because of experiences I’ve had. At one point I wanted to prove my value because I felt tossed away by the world. Now, it’s about making people know they are valued and impacting the world that way.

Last question. What advice would you have for young women, young people of color who are really hoping to get into tech but just don’t know where to start?

Look at several LinkedIn profiles for individuals who are in the career you want. Write down all the things that interest you and the common themes/skills. Teach yourself those skills. Put said skill into practice. Slap new skill on resume. Rinse. Repeat.

The majority of the things I know came from tinkering, searching for free education online, and application of that education. Don’t believe the hype that you have to be in school to learn new things. Now I don’t mean drop out. College is awesome. Go to college if you can. What I mean is that you can teach yourself almost anything these days. if you allow for a little discipline. What kept me motivated was knowing that the short term sacrifice of taking the time to learn something on my own, was going to lead to longterm rewards.

“Look at several LinkedIn profiles for individuals who are in the career you want. Write down all the things that interest you and the common themes/skills. Teach yourself those skills. Put said skill into practice. Slap new skill on resume. Rinse. Repeat.”

And please, don’t be like me for the majority of my life and not ask for help. The world is so much better when you stay open and vulnerable about learning through others. Lastly, sounds cliche, but no such thing as a dumb question. Get your education on.

I come from Seattle, Washington. I was born and raised there. My parents were a typical blue collar, working class, immigrant family. They made tofu for a living, and so I grew up in a world where soybeans were everywhere. We sold the tofu to two kinds of customers: regular folks like teachers or gardeners, or to businesses like restaurants. And it was very hard work, working all the time, waking up early in the morning ­ two o’clock in the morning ­ working to six at night. It was pretty intense, but I learned how to work.

What did your parents expect of you in term of a career?

My mom’s the third generation and my dad’s first. They just wanted us to get to college somehow. That was just a dream, because both of them hadn’t gone to college. My dad didn’t go to high school.

When did you first feel any inclinations towards tech or design?

I was lucky to have been born in the era when the Commodore PET came out, which was a little computer. I was also lucky to receive the benefit of the civil rights work in the 60s. Seattle was de­segregated. The people on the poorer side of town were bussed to the richer side of town. I was in the poor side of town. I was bussed to the rich side of town and they had this computer in math class. That’s where I found my first computer in the 70s.

Then you ended up going into software engineering as a student, correct?

Yeah. It was really my parents’ dream for us to go to college and it was either Harvard or MIT. My older brother didn’t get into Harvard, so he was considered a failure [chuckles]. So I said, “Well, I’ve got to get into MIT,” and I got to MIT and studied computer science there.

“If you connect your understanding of technology with an understanding of the history of art, you can do something new. When you do something new, it hurts because nobody likes what you’re doing because it’s different. I think our inclination is to be afraid of that pain.”

When did you become interested in design and then the integration of the two?

Well I think as a child I was said to be good at math and art, but my parents would never tell anybody I was good at art because they felt that couldn’t get you a job. I was “good at math” is what they’d always say. I loved drawing. I loved thinking visually. When I got to MIT, I tried to defect. I discovered this department called “architecture.” My dad figured out what I was doing so, “No, no, no, no, no. You’re not going to be able to feed yourself, so computer science; go back there,” kind of thing. But I used to go to the library at MIT and I would find these books on design. At the time I was probably one of the best icon editors on campus at MIT. Computers were just becoming visual and I was the guy that could make good icons. I thought I was really good at it. Then I found this book by Paul Rand, the graphic designer, and I thought, “Man, he is so much better than I am at this stuff.” [chuckles] That’s how I found the field of design.

Such a huge part of your work is combining tech and art and exploring the integration of the two. When did this feel like a focal point for you more than just doing the work that’s assigned to you?

That’s a great question. I forget all the time that I cared about that, if that makes sense. I’ll be waking up and saying, “Oh yeah, I care about how those two connect.” Then I’m off forgetting everything. “Oh yeah, I care about that.”

I guess it’s because I was lucky in the 80s and 90s to see how, if you connect your understanding of technology with an understanding of the history of art, you can do something new. When you do something new, it hurts because nobody likes what you’re doing because it’s different. Each time you touch that third rail, you’re like, “Ouch! I don’t want to do that. I want to be a regular engineer. Or, I want to be a regular artist.” So I think our inclination is to be afraid of that pain. I’ll come close to it and I’ll go away from it [chuckles] and I’ll come close to it and then go away from it. I’ve always been having this problem. I’ll be in art school, I’ll be in engineering school, I’ll be in Silicon Valley. I’ve always been running from and towards the third rail.

“I’ve always experienced push­back. In art school, I remember in the early 90s my conservative design teachers told me, “Stop making things move on the screen. That’s not right.” Or being at MIT, and my engineering teachers telling me, “Why do you care how it feels, just make it run faster.” I think that anyone messing with the field they’re in, and how it’s “supposed to be” gets in trouble and it goes back to that key question: “How much pain can you take standing at the intersection of fields?” I guess I’ve always wanted to feel that pain. I guess I feel alive in it.”

I don’t think we have time to run through the entire course of your career but at a high level, what aspects of your work have you been proudest of, and what about your work activates you?

Wow. Well I think any creative person you talk to will tell you they’re not really proud of what they’ve done, because they’re still searching. So I don’t think I’m proud of anything I’ve ever done. I think that I’m always surprised when I see something I did in the past ­. What I’ve seen about getting older, is you’re like, “Did I do that? I don’t remember doing that. I guess that was kind of okay, but I could have done better” kind of thing [chuckles]. So nothing in particular, really. I’m glad that I’ve continued to learn, try new things. Being in venture capital is my most ambitious art project to date.

I definitely want to go into that with you, in a little bit. In terms of integrating the tech and art worlds, did people see it the way­ or as naturally as you see it? Like, from a political perspective, has there been push­back from either side, when you’ve for instance been pushing tech onto RISD, or pushing art into Silicon Valley?

Yeah. I think. I’m glad you asked that question. I’ve always experienced push­back. In art school, I remember in the early 90s my conservative design teachers told me, “Stop making things move on the screen. That’s not right.” Or being at MIT, and my engineering teachers telling me, “Why do you care how it feels, just make it run faster.” I think that anyone messing with the field they’re in, and how it’s “supposed to be” gets in trouble and it goes back to that key question: “How much pain can you take standing at the intersection of fields?” I guess I’ve always wanted to feel that pain. I guess I feel alive in it.

What are the problems that you seek to solve with your work?

Right now I want to address the fact that most of the power in the world is controlled by people who understand money, and in many cases have understood it for multiple generations.

Creative people are trained to not care for money. I think because of this, creative peope—when I say creative people, I mean like arts, design, or even engineers who love to make things—or “makers” tend to believe that money is evil, bad, corrupting, dangerous. My passion is to enable makers to understand that money is just a medium. And like all media, it can do good, it can do bad. In the same way we can’t say that all art does good—there are bad artists. There are Evil artists. and so money can be used in the same way: for good, for bad.

Similar but slightly different question: What are the biggest motivators in your work? What drives you?

To question what I know, because I’m supposed to know a lot of things. And each time I feel, “Maybe I understand this,” I’m like, “Oh, I don’t get it.” Being in Silicon Valley has been so humbling. To meet people like yourself who are really in a whole different way of thinking that I overlooked, and didn’t fully understand, and I wasn’t a part of. That’s why for me, living here­­ I’ve been living in like a Millennial, I have no possessions, and am living in Airbnbs and Uber­ing everywhere. To understand how your generation feels right now has been an exciting moment for me. I love this project you’re doing and I love how you imagined it and I love how after you have gone through most iterations of yourself, you came to see this as important and there’s nothing to stop you. You just said, “I’m going to do it. Suddenly, I have 500 people who want to be a part of it.” And I thought, “Thank goodness that people like you are saying, ‘Of course I can. Because technology is something I’m not afraid of, but I’m not just technologist. I’m a person of culture, and I’ll combine them together and show them.’”

“Being in venture capital is my most ambitious art project to date.”

Amen and thank you. This is a little bit of a side step, but you’re on the board of Wieden, and I’m curious to hear how you apply your perspectives and methodology to advertising.

Oh. Well, a lot of my passion is going back to the world of money, the world of control. I’d like to be a creative person who is in board roles who can argue for creative. So on Wieden’s board, I channel the guy who can talk money, but can talk creative too. The questions always have to be not about pure profitability, but creative integrity. And the reason why Dan Wieden brought me into his world is that he wanted to make sure that all the discussions come back to, “Are we a creative culture?” So I like those kinds of roles, where creativity matters at the very top. I recognize that such opportunities are precious, and are meant to be made into something, and to be taken to their fullest.

When was the moment when money became important to you as something integral in the design process?

It was in the year 2001. It was the dot­com crash. And some of my colleagues at MIT owned a lot of stocks. And we were at a meeting where they were facepalming and going, “Oh no, oh no,” because they were losing all kinds of money. I had no money, so I didn’t know what they were talking about [chuckles]. And oh my gosh. Shortly thereafter, MIT did some restructuring, and I remember there was a CFO type person who said to me, “John, you’re the creative person, so don’t worry about the money. We’ll figure it out. You just go and be creative.” And he was maybe the third person in my life who had said the same thing to me. And when someone tells you, “Don’t worry your pretty little head, John. It’s going to be okay,” I get worried. I wonder, “What are you hiding from me?” And I realized, I would read newspapers and not understand the financial terms ­­ and the legal terms too. Sure, I could read People Magazine, one of my favorite things. And it’s so vacuous, and easy to read. But I couldn’t read The Wall Street Journal. And so I did my MBA to begin to learn the language of the finance and business world to get to feeling, “Oh that’s what you’re saying. Oh that’s what I didn’t understand.” Here I was, limited to being told that I’ll do the creative part, and you someone else would do the money part. I wondered, “How much am I giving away? How do I take back my integrity?” That’s where this drive all came from.

Interesting. Did you ever expect to be in Silicon Valley Venture Capital?

Never. I actually had never heard of “venture capital” until I got to Silicon Valley. Well, I kind of heard of it; but I didn’t know what it was at all. In full disclosure, I just sort of bumble into things. With the attitude like, “Oh, I’ll try that,. I’ll try that.” I remember feeling, “Venture Capital? What is that?” Two months before I arrived I bought a book on venture capital. I read it, didn’t quite understand it. So since I’ve arrived, it’s just been a lot of learning. I marveled at how a little bit of money can become a large amount of money? I didn’t know it was possible.  I then wondered, “Wait, so what are the letters? What do they mean? Oh, they’re in sequence. Okay, I get it.” All these things that I had no idea about­­ and just to realize it now in my lifetime has felt like a blessing.

I’ve also found that people who find out I work in venture capital will say to me, “Oh, venture capitalists, they’re bad, bad”. I don’t know what they’re talking about. I know a lot of bad people in the academic world – and some good ones. And I can say I know a lot of good venture capitalists – they’re pretty amazing. I love how their goal is to see the impossible happen. And when we think in this start­up, Silicon Valley world, that’s a kind of a mantra—you know, “Make the world a better place” or whatever—I love that the people who have the funds to power these things, a significant percentage of them, do believe the impossible is possible. I think that’s magic.

Tell me more about your first impressions of Silicon Valley.

Well, you know that my first impression was – the lack of  diversity in tech, and how there aren’t enough women, people of color, and it’s not addressed sufficiently. I noticed it from the very beginning. But then I noticed that it was because I myself wasn’t making a conscious effort to change that in my own activities. Maybe in my first few months I met mainly young white men, because they would introduce me to more young white men. And so after a while I realized, “Oh, maybe I’m doing this wrong. It isn’t that the system is doing me wrong; what do I have to do differently?” So I began asking myself if I’m having ten people that I’m seeing, how can I now consciously edit my direction. I found that my conversations and gatherings became so much better than when they were less diverse.

So when people say that diversity is important, I like to say instead, “No, it isn’t important. It’s essential to increase the quality of discourse.” When I was leading RISD, I had the opposite problem because there were ~70% or more women in the student body. So I would always be like, “So where are the men?” So again, we have to recognize the situation we’re in and we have to take action. But I’m by no means perfect with regards to my diversity record, but I do strive to be conscious, aware, and take action on the matter.

“When people say that diversity is important, I like to say instead, ‘No, it isn’t important. It’s essential to increase the quality of discourse.’“

Tell me about how kind of the culmination of your previous work impacts how you’re approaching your work in VC.

Oh, absolutely. I became president of a college in 2008 because I read the “Audacity of Hope,” and I listened to the audio book and it was so inspiring as an American to hear that anyone, any American, no matter what age, race, or creed can make a difference. “Yes, we can.” So, when the headhunting firm, Spencer Stuart, called me up and said, “Hey, you want to be president of a college?” And I said, “I can’t do that.” But yeah, I finished my MBA, but I don’t have any experience, and I was never a dean or a provost or all these special titles along the way. I can’t do that. And in my voice I could hear, “Yes we can. Yes we can!”

And so Obama became president that year—the same year the financial crisis happened. Me too, I was brought in as a person who was going to bring in new ideas, and then shortly after I arrive I’m overseeing the worst layoff in the history of the place. And I’m no longer a person with ideas, and immediately assume the role of the pragmatist and operator working to navigate a financial crisis. And it was kind of like a sock in the gut and in the face. And so I had to become a different person. And I’m grateful because otherwise I wouldn’t have learned how to operate at scale as a leader.  I wouldn’t have had to reform the business model, or really understand the business of a university, and to understand where every dime goes. That was a great outcome, but a hard process along the way. And so I come to Silicon Valley to learn that this knowledge of how to run an organization at scale through difficult times is valuable here, which I find very promising and positive. It isn’t that people here are all about fail fast. It’s, “Can you recover fast?” And I’ know how to recover – it just takes hard, and smart, work.

Let’s go really macro for a second. How do you feel about the state of Silicon Valley Tech in 2016? What excites you, what frustrates you?

I think what excites me is that there’s a kind of awareness that maybe we need to make things for more kinds of people than those who live in Silicon Valley. You can call it diversity, inclusion, all kinds of things ­­ it doesn’t matter. We recognize there’s a strong business case for matters that impact people who live outside this region, and by knowing what they care about, we can  actually have a bigger impact. That excites me: not the technology. There’s a realization occurring here in this region.

What turns me off? ­­ I don’t know. I mean, so many things get me grumpy in general, I guess [laughter] if there were one thing that ticks me off, it is that certain voices still cannot be heard, and I believe that with the fortune and responsibility in the voice that I have, I want to do everything I can to amplify those voices. But more work has to be done.

I saw that you started a newsletter recently, for Asian­ Americans in tech.

You noticed that. I guess that I woke up one weekend realizing that, “Hey, I’m Asian.” It was this weird moment that came to me. I mean, as an Asian American, I try to hide. I try to fit in, and that’s been my whole life. I’ve always fought for everyone’s cause whether it’s African Americans, Latin Americans, LGBTQ, and any group feeling social injustice at unfair scales. Anyone. Because I know what it’s like to feel different, but I realized recently that I don’t do anything for Asian people, and it was just this, “Why don’t I?” It’s because I don’t want to people to pay attention to the fact that I am not like them. I realized what a disservice I was doing. When I saw Tracy Chou, ­she’s amazing – I felt I had to do something.

She’s in my project!

She’s like Legolas. She’s  like Legolas with the arrows in how deeply she is engaged in these matters. She made me think, “Wow, I’ve got to get off my butt and say something.” That’s why I wrote the essay, “Did I grow up and become the yellow hand?” Am I the type­-O hand on the emoji keyboard that doesn’t stand for any particular skin color or culture? I felt that maybe I should stand for something. That’s why that began. Thanks for noticing that.

I keep an eye on things [chuckles]. I’m on Twitter a lot when I’m not shooting. Let’s see, I’m curious to know your thoughts on how Silicon Valley seems to approach design.

Oh, it’s very exciting. What’s so exciting about how Silicon Valley works is that it lives in the true era that no one could have imagined, where the product is no longer five zones removed from the consumer. There is no need for the intermediary to sell the water bottle that you drink; it’s right there on the other side of the phone’s glass. You’re using the product, and not only that but it’s being used not by a few people but millions of people. So Silicon Valley designers deal with a significantly different kind of design, the design where the product is the brand, is the expression, is delivered in real time, and it can be changed every day if the budget existed. Whereas the old design is, “I’ll make these glasses, I hope they’re awesome. We shipped them; they didn’t sell. Well that’s because I was a genius and people didn’t get it.” Or, “I shipped my glasses and some sold. Hmm, okay well let’s get lucky next time.” Silicon Valley designers live in a world where the thing they’re selling is never going to be done being made, and is being shipped live. That is an amazing thing, and these design outcomes are fundamentally different than how design was done in the past. And the designers suffer at the same time too, because people who made things like in the old world got to finish it. “It’s done. It’s been finalized. It will never change now that it’s done. Isn’t it amazing? It so amazing. It’s done.” Whereas people who design in tech never get to be done. So when I saw that you were a photographer and you were taking photographs, you were able to go back to the world of “done,” because done is the best place to be. But you have both in you. You know exactly what that’s like, you know what this it is like for designers in tech. And you’re still so young, so you’ll find all these new things in your life. It’s being in this imbalanced place, that makes you a unique person in the future, I believe. That new person is part of your project. I think you’ve just started.

Thank you.

You’re like, “Oh, this is something. What is this?” Scratch head, scratch head. This is a good beginning.

This is the kind of work I’ve been wanting to do my whole life, and this is the first month that I feel like I’ve had the time and the resources to do it.

That’s good. You’ve earned it.

I do feel like I’m just at the beginning. So I appreciate the encouragement.

Absolutely.

What are your thoughts on the relationship between tech and art here?

It’s tough. In New York, it’s easy to be an artist, because there’s a lot of artists there. There’s a history of art galleries there. For example, if you’re in Paris, it’s easy to be an artist – it’s also easy to be a mathematician, I hear. Here the spirit of art is not a strong spirit, which I think signals great opportunity. And I think people, like yourself, who can seize the moment and think, “Well, maybe there isn’t a strong art community of a certain art, but maybe there’s a strong community for a different kind of art.” I think that work will be done, and that work has to be done.

Even the fact that you’re reaching out to the world and pulling people into this world that you have ­­ that’s a different kind of art. It’s like Jenny Holzer taking portraits, 80 portraits, live around the world. That feels like a kind of art that’s natural here and can be celebrated, versus old school, like “Let’s take a motor and let’s attach it to a paint can and let’s make art.” And hearing a gallery crowd cheer you on and say, “Oh, my gosh. That was amazing art. It’s right in front of me. It’s finished. It’s done.” That’s not art anymore – at least for people in the future. The new art lives with people. And I think this region would be more likely to understand that. So I’m hoping that the gallery system can evolve to accept that future. I’m sure it’s going to happen, but it’s going to be a problem for a while. If you have more of that kind of art, then the new kind of galleries will emerge, and the market will emerge from that. And I hope that you, Helena, will sell different aspects of your process as products to find that different audience and to help this region talk about art in the new language your generation will create.

One thing I’ve noticed interviewing designers, particularly designers who have worked on the East Coast and in New York city, is the frustration at a lack of philosophy in start­up design. In my experience, I remember at least, when I worked in Tech, how much technical specialization is valued versus philosophy, and I’m curious to see I you have felt any of that yourself.

Yeah. This may be a kind of blasphemy, but I used to be a member of those cults of the old world’s philosophy. I was long a part of the Swiss Typography mafia in Shinjuku. At the time, I loved the perfect movements of type by 0.001 points – where the average human being couldn’t really tell anything had changed. Invisible details, you know? I used to love that. And then I realized it was a cult, and a form of brainwashing. It was a constraining thing. It was a safe place to be, and great to have learned.

So both skills are important – the place of safety that the past provides, and the new things that can be made in the medium of technology. It’s the people who can go across the two, fluidly, that I think this region needs more of. But if you take a viewpoint of, “I know philosophy; you don’t. So you suck.” Or, “I can code; you don’t. So you suck.”

“If there were one thing that ticks me off, it is that certain voices still cannot be heard, and I believe that with the fortune and responsibility in the voice that I have, I want to do everything I can to amplify those voices. But more work has to be done.”

It’s almost like both sides are the same in that way, which is funny to think about.

That’s how sides are made. There are those who say, “I know this; you don’t know that.” Then another person nods in disbelief, “What? You don’t know that? Really? You didn’t know that?” Hmm. I’m so over that kind of thinking. I’m not into that at all. We can all learn from each other.

What are your photographs behind you? What are they?

Some are mine, some are from friends. I try not to have my own photos up there, because it feels like I’m looking at my own iMac screensaver or something.

I understand.

Or having like a portrait of yourself in your bedroom.

It’s a bit awkward, I understand.

Okay, where do I want to go now? What are you working on right now, in 2016, either for work or for yourself?

I’m working on the 2016 #DesignInTech Report ­ ­the second edition. Last year it came out at SXSW. I thought it would get 50,000 views—it had 850,000 views. So, surprise! Sheer luck. I’m like, “Woah.” I’m making the new version—that’s coming out in three weeks, so I’m sitting in front of Keynote, moving things around, and tossing things out. I hope it’s able to communicate this relationship between business, design, and tech that I care about.  I want to keep showing how it’s valuable, and that you can assign dollar signs to it: DESIGN is DE$IGN. Some people consider the dollar signs as being dirty, or just outright wrong. But I consider it work that I get to do right now. So I’m going to do it.

How is life without possessions right now? Do you feel like you’re going to stick to that for a while?

It’s been really great. I was observing how younger people live lighter lives, so I’ve been getting to live that right now. When I was at RISD, I had an 18 room mansion with six bathrooms or whatever, and I didn’t have that much stuff anyways. Now I just kind of have a suitcase and travel light, and after I broke my right arm over the winter holidays by tripping while on a run, I can’t carry as much now. So I’m even lighter now.

That’s interesting because I’ve historically been a person who gets rid of everything she owns every time she moves­­.

Interesting.

And I’ve moved a lot. And this is the first time I’ve ever put things on the wall in my apartment. It’s the first time I’ve ever had more than a Craigslist couch or a Craigslist bed. It’s really new and interesting for me and I think it’s been good for me in a way because I think I would have moved from San Francisco for reasons that don’t even make sense, like, “Things are great. Let me just completely like throw it all at the air and move somewhere else. But this have forced me to be stable for the first time in my life. So I think it might be good for me for now.

That’s the thing; you live different lives. So this part of your life is this.

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years?

Wow. I hope that I’m still involved in the start­up world. I hope I’m making a start­up, or I hope I’m at a start­up. I’ve just learned so much from the start­up generation. I figure I have to learn more by being in that world. That’s what I hope.

My last question for you would be, based on the lessons you’ve learned through your own experience or the experience of those you’ve taught, what advice would you give to young designers just getting their start in tech?

I would strongly suggest that they be curious about business because business is only scary when it’s not understood. People who are creative especially in the tech world will be looked down upon unless they are curious about business. Everyone’s got a different language. The more languages you speak, the more positive damage you can do on the world [chuckles]. So that’s my take.

“I would strongly suggest that they be curious about business because business is only scary when it’s not understood. People who are creative especially in the tech world will be looked down upon unless they are curious about business. Everyone’s got a different language. The more languages you speak, the more positive damage you can do on the world.”

I was born in Brooklyn, New York to a pretty warm family. They’re predominately blue collar on both sides. My dad was born in Nigeria and lived in Sweden. My mom was born in Trinidad, an island seven miles north of Venezuela. She moved to the States when she was a teenager to continue her education. After college, she settled in Brooklyn, New York where a lot of her family lived. My father-to-be was still a continent away in Scandinavia.

My mom had a good friend who, just like her, loved to travel the world. This friend was doing her master’s in Sweden and invited my mom to visit. On her trip over, she caught a cold but mustered the strength to still go out and do things. Then one day she went to a local church and found herself sneezing a lot. A gentleman sitting behind her kept saying “bless you.” Later that day, the church had choir practice. My mom, an amazing singer, ended up practicing with them. Further into practice, she started singing a song that the “bless you” man started playing the piano along to. She turned around to who would become my dad. Obviously he got her number.

They started dating and, after some time, got married in Sweden. This was 1993. I was born September 14th the following year in Brooklyn, New York. But my dad, in need of a sponsor, wasn’t able to make it to the US in time for my birth. He was distraught. I was cool with it because I was five minutes old. My dad was still finishing up his Master’s/MD program, so the distance from his family definitely affected him. He was finally able to move to the US in 1998. In the four-year period before this, I briefly lived in Trinidad to learn about culture and be near my mother’s family. Then we lived in Sweden to be with my father. “We” was my mom, myself, and my half-brother. We have the same mother and different fathers, but my father was definitely a father to him too. I’m close to my brother. We’re 12 years apart, so growing up wasn’t your typical sibling-relationship, but it worked and still works for us.

“Maybe that’s why computers were so interesting to me. A way to “escape” into a new world, full of possibilities. Where the cure to loneliness was a Cmd+T away.”

Growing up in New York, I was surrounded by South Caribbean culture. Most of my father’s family lived in Maryland, so although I knew and occasionally visited them, I didn’t know their culture too much. However, when it was time for my brother to go to college, my father suggested we move to Baltimore, Maryland. We did, and all of a sudden I was surrounded by African culture. Stark difference.

Baltimore was a major change from Brooklyn. New York is fast-paced. Maryland is not. New York is dense. Maryland isn’t sparse, but it’s not New York level either. And we lived in Baltimore County, not the city. So it was even more laid back than my previous home. People drove more and rode the bus less. The transportation system was complete crap. I got used to all of it though. I also got used to my dad’s family’s culture. My mother has two siblings. My father has six. Four of whom also lived in Baltimore at the time. His family is very close, so I’d see my cousins more than some people saw their siblings. They all felt like brothers and sisters to me, but then I’d have to go home to no kids whereas they had their own siblings. Looking back now, I realize that I often felt alone as a child, yearning for my brother. I’d see him like twice a year when he was doing his Bachelor’s and Master’s, but I got used to it. Maybe that’s why computers were so interesting to me. A way to “escape” into a new world, full of possibilities. Where the cure to loneliness was a Cmd+T away. Still, my family’s culture taught me the value of family. I finished up elementary school in Baltimore, then attended middle and high school. Childhood was fine though. No sleepovers, culture thing. First job was cleaning our church. Oh, and I got a ton of migraines. They’re gone now. Thank God.

I remember in elementary and middle school, I used to talk a lot. I also asked “too many” questions. My parents said it was because I didn’t have a sibling around to play with, so I’d get bored. When I’d finally see another child, it was like a seeing a new species and I’d feel the sudden urge to tell them all the things. Of course this was much to the dismay of teachers, so I’d often find myself in trouble. However, one of my teachers in elementary school didn’t see my talkative nature as being a “disruptive child.” She saw boredom and sought to challenge me. She put me in a program called GT, or Gifted and Talented. It was a track for students who should probably be a grade or two above, but didn’t skip. One year into it, I was still talkative, but it was much more bearable. I also felt challenged. Looking back, I really appreciate what she did for me. Most of my teachers told my parents that I had a learning disability, or that I exhibited traits that often lead to dysfunctional people in society. This teacher just saw me for who I was. A bored child. Thanks, Ms. Gaston.

This was probably the first identification that maybe my skills and interests were not aligned with those of my classmates. I was the “draws all over his homework” kid. Of course, I learned to conform. Just like I had to conform to desks designed for right-handers when I was part of the left-handed club. Then in middle school, my attraction to web went through the roof when I stumbled upon code. I found it so intriguing to be able to do whatever you want and put up whatever you want with no teachers around to strike you seven points. It was ultimate freedom and I wanted it. So I taught myself HTML and CSS, then starting hacking around.

I started doing websites for family, then family friends, and finally strangers. I remember setting up a Paypal account to collect payments. I connected it to my checking account that my mom let me sign up for. It was a branch of Wachovia built for children. I remember taking on some projects that required Flash or some heavy JS. Instead of turning those projects down, I’d say “oh, I can do that!” Then I’ll read up tutorials or would find things around the web I could build off of, like Wix. Ugh, I used to use Wix. I would figure out what the yearly cost was for services like Wix, then would add on a premium to the project total so that I’d collect a profit at the end. It was cool getting those monthly or yearly charges from services I would use for the projects. Sometimes I’d mis-plan and go in the negative, but I was learning. Design and business. After two years of this grind, I was able to save up for my first Macbook. Third-hand off eBay.

Daytime, I was in school. I started identifying the classes that interested me the most. Math, psychology, and English. Math had systems and frameworks. Psychology broke down the way people think. English, had creative writing – freedom of expression. I found it very interesting because it was the one type of assignment where your teacher could only grade you on grammar and spelling. There was no such thing as a bad idea. These things stuck with me, and ultimately influenced my design career.

English class ended up leading to another passion – blogging. I started my first blog over a school summer. It was called mediainfive.com. The goal was to capture the top news of the day and synthesize them into a five minute digest. The site probably got 100 views per month. I’m pretty sure they were my mom and her friends showing me support. I ended up pausing the blog when I returned to school. My second blog was called trendingweb.com. It consisted of interviews I’d conduct with entrepreneurs from around the web who were building cool stuff. Their products often had little-to-no users at the time. Some of these companies turned out to be Zerply and 6Wunderkinder, makers of the todo list app, Wunderlist. These blogs also led to writing opportunities at bigger sites. I did an internship at AppAdvice, a blog that focused on Apple’s iOS store. At the time, it averaged a million views per month, so that was a big change for me.

Writing 5–8 articles a day for them taught me discipline and polish. A lot of the practices I learned there would stick with me down-the-line. Afterwards, I wrote for a blog called Macgasm, also focused on Apple. This site was incredible. It was the first time I “hit” Hacker News, Google News, and broke a site from web traffic. It also led to me visiting San Jose to attend a tech conference, where I got to meet really inspiring people who would become friends in the future. Chris Anderson, the founder of TED, and Mark Johnson, then CEO of Zite, were a couple of them. On my way back from that trip, I remember reaching out to Mark for an interview. I wanted to play around with a new format of recording an interview, transcribing it, then summarizing it into a sort of story with pull-quotes. If you saw my recording setup, you’d laugh. But it was different, and he was down for it. It spawned a series of interviews of a similar fashion that I did for Macgasm, and led to me getting my own column. I met other friends through this column like the Sparrow, Flud, and Instacast founders. Looking back, it was an evolution of TrendingWeb. I’m grateful for having had that experience. And I’m grateful to my parents for letting me pretend to be sick, so I could skip school for a few days for the San Jose trip.

By now I was in high school. I attended Overlea High. It was a big change from my middle school. Parkville Middle was in the top 10 in Maryland. Overlea High was in the bottom 10. Why did I go there? In our school system, each student had zone schools, or schools they’d attend by default based off location. Golden Ring Middle and Overlea High were my zone schools. After elementary school, I applied to Parkville for their magnet program. In it, I got to take interesting courses like Mass Communication, Visual Arts, Environmental Sciences, and Applied Engineering. When high school time came around, I applied and didn’t get into my school of choice, Eastern Technical High. The number one in the state and top 5% in the country. In the future, I learned that some parts of my application were mixed up with another student, costing my acceptance. No one thought to correct it and I ended up at Overlea. Most of my friends went to Eastern, so day one of Overlea was definitely an adjustment. It was pretty bad. First day, there were at least five fights and three suspensions. We even had metal detectors at the school’s front entrance.

“I remember students joking during my first few months that I probably got into numerous fights, or that I was a thug, etc. The theme was that I was lucky for even getting into Eastern, and that I wasn’t going to succeed at the school. I mean, during week one people would literally move out of my way in the hallways.”

But I found the good. Our school had a program called DECA – Distributive Education Clubs of America. It’s very similar to FBLA – Future Business Leaders of America. It was a business club for high school students that had competitions at the county, state, national, and international level. My club-mates and I competed our way to internationals which took place in California. We traveled for the contest, and although we didn’t place at that level, it was an amazing experience. It was a big deal for our school. It was also my first dose of California weather. I knew I’d be back one day.

Halfway through my first year of high school, Eastern Tech announced that they would do something they had never done before – allow students to apply to enroll in 10th grade. My parents were all over this. I applied and got accepted. I later learned that only two students were accepted state-wide. My mom was excited, but I didn’t care anymore. I had gotten used to Overlea, built some friendships, was top of my class, and didn’t mind the fights anymore. My mom wasn’t having it and, come the following August, I was an Eastern Tech student.

Tenth grade. I remember showing up to school on day one. People looked at my funny. Was it because I came from Overlea? Was it because I didn’t look like anyone there? Maybe both. I was coming from a school that had a very negative stereotype. I was entering a school that was probably 75% Caucasian and 2% African-American. I remember students joking during my first few months that I probably got into numerous fights, or that I was a thug, etc. The theme was that I was lucky for even getting into Eastern, and that I wasn’t going to succeed at the school. I mean, during week one people would literally move out of my way in the hallways. Like, did they think I’d shove them or something?

It took about half a year for me to settle in and for the negative sentiment to “settle down.” Like Parkville, Eastern provided magnet courses that students could major in. The options were Health, Automotive Technology, Business Management and Finance, Interactive Media Production, Construction, Culinary, Engineering, IT, Law, and Teaching. I chose IT, the closest I could find to my evening passion of coding. I later learned there was little overlap, but I still learned a lot. By graduation, I was CCNA-certified and could work entry-level for Cisco or the NSA. I didn’t do anything with that certification, but the knowledge was valuable. I remember learning how to make ethernet cables from scratch, and at least retained the knowledge for fixing my wifi when it acts up. However, I realized in 11th grade that although it was interesting, IT was too technical for me. I didn’t want to fix the Internet, I wanted to build awesome things on it.

“Online, I experienced more ageism than racism, primarily because I hid my face for a long time.”

This realization led to me noticing that my true passion lied with websites. How they looked and how they worked. Up until then, I had messed around in Photoshop and tried to design, but I didn’t consider it a skill. So I decided to change that. I started reading blogs like A List Apart and Think Vitamin. Then I’d find designs from around the web that I liked and would try to reverse engineer them in Photoshop. I did 2–3 a night. It didn’t take long for the practices to commit to memory. However, I couldn’t find much content on what it meant to a designer. Or a content that covered the developments of the design industry. Like, what tools were people using nowadays? Or what we could learn from the most recent hot app? I don’t know why I felt like I was the one to do it, but I told myself I’d create a blog for this. I met my blog co-founder, Drew Wilson, on Twitter. A couple months later we started The Industry.

This was November 2011. Our tagline was “covering design-focused startups and people.” In our first month, we had a couple thousand visits. 6 months in, we were averaging one hundred thousand. Drew handled the design, development, and promotion. I handled editorial, and sponsorships. We ended up building an editorial team of 12 people. Our first, and most loyal sponsor, was Squarespace. We started a podcast with Adam Stacoviak, and within months, it had surpassed the blog in popularity. It also represented a majority of our revenue, which I used to pay our editorial team. The team was distributed. None of us met in person until years later, but it was a true passion project. I remember writing, editing, and coordinating with the team in the evenings and weekends, then reviewing articles to publish at school during lunch time. The team is all in great places now. One’s a designer at Microsoft by way of Sunrise, another is just crushing it in New York, another is a writer at Invision, one’s VP of Design at Acorns, etc.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the podcast which we called The Industry Radio Show, would play a huge role for me. Each week, we’d have guests on to chat about design. I’d notice patterns in their background stories, what they did day-to-day, and what they were most passionate about. They were describing my job description. A lightbulb went off in my head. I told myself, “okay, this is the kind of work I want to do. The best of all worlds. Write, design, code.”

“My dad’s an optimist, but it hit him in that moment. Because he knew that something as small as someone just slightly discriminating against you could destroy your life. For him, it was something that could have kept him from his family indefinitely. For me, it was something that could have ended my chance of going to college and put in jail.”

High school was wrapping up soon. I applied to one university in Maryland, and two in Pennsylvania. UMBC, Drexel, and UPenn. I got into them and was now faced with a decision, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t need any of them to pursue my newfound job description. I had become jaded to the whole college thing, but didn’t throw it out altogether. I knew it was important to my family, and that I would be judged by my peers if I didn’t go. After all, there was a stereotype. I opted for Drexel with a major in something design-y, and a minor in psychology.

That was the plan. Graduation came. I remember sitting down with my class and facing all the parents, thinking to myself “I wonder how many of them are doing what they love as a career?” Then I looked around to members of my class. Some had huge smiles on their faces, knowing that they got into the school of their choice, their boyfriend was coming with them, and that “everything was going to be awesome.” Some had partial smiles on their face, knowing that they were going to get the education they wanted, but at the cost of their parents savings or theirs. Some, like me, were expressionless. Were we all thinking the same thing? Were we all thinking “is the future really as simple as getting a degree and getting a job? Or must we find our own path?” I don’t know, but I know that’s what I was thinking. In that moment, while our valedictorian spoke, I decided to choose my own path. Step one was finding an alternative to college.

I started thinking about the guests from the podcast again. How did they find their path? I also started weighing the education system against this “choose your own path” model. It leaned heavily to “choose path.” I recalled the feels I’d get when I’d ship a website for someone, or publish an article on the blog. Or the fact that Drew, although years older than me, didn’t care about my age or race. He just appreciated my work. I then thought about school, and some of my teachers dating back to elementary school. My quarrels with how tests were set up for memorization and not comprehension. The racism and stereotype I felt coming from Overlea. And finally, how I nearly lost it all by an ungrounded accusation.

“I know that’s what I was thinking. In that moment, while our valedictorian spoke, I decided to choose my own path. Step one was finding an alternative to college.”

About that accusation. About 1–2 months before graduation, I woke up late for school. The night before was a long one for The Industry. My dad drove me to school. I exited the car, walked into the front office, signed the late slip, then proceeded to my homeroom. In my second class of the day, the assistant principal and another faculty member came into my class and stopped it. They asked me to come to the front office with them. The tone was anger. I was completely puzzled and remember hearing mumbles from students that I was probably in big trouble. But for what? We finally got to the assistant principal’s office and the other faculty member said in a demoralizing and assertive voice, “We were informed this morning that you have been dealing marijuana around school and that you came in this morning smelling like it.” I was shocked. I asked where they got that information from and they said they couldn’t reveal that information. I then told them to check their cameras outside and at the front-desk. “My dad drove me to school. You have a camera outside looking at everyone who walks in. If you check that camera and check the timestamp, you’ll realize that 15 seconds later I was in the front office, which also has a camera. You’ll see that I signed in and left for my homeroom. You can then talk to my substitute homeroom teacher and ask when I got in. And then you’ll know that there was no way I could possibly have done anything in between that time.”

As I was saying this, it hit me who made the accusation. My substitute homeroom teacher. When you get to school late, they’re the first person you go to before heading to your class. That day, I went from my homeroom teacher to the class I was pulled out from. It had to be her, so I asked. They froze. Without speaking, they had answered. At this point I was just trying to keep my cool. I started smelling myself out of curiosity. I wasn’t sweating or anything, and I showered that morning. I smelled normal. So I asked them to smell me. One of them asked, “what?” “Well you said that a teacher said I smelled like weed. You just pulled me out of a class. I’ve only been in school for 30 minutes. I haven’t changed my clothes. Smell me and tell me if I smell like weed.” The assistant principal did. So they leaned in and said, “Yeah, I don’t smell anything.” By this point, logic had won. I had also proven a point. Before doing the simple act of following up with the teacher, or checking the cameras, they were convinced. That was wrong. Not to mention, they threatened that I could lose my college acceptances, scholarships, and that I could be arrested right then and there by the police officer standing outside.

Even though logic had won, there was something painful in the back of my mind that I learned growing up. By being black, I was at a disadvantage by default. So when faced with such situations, I had to keep my composure and let nothing else show but my logic and reasoning. Somehow it worked. The faculty guy said I could go back to class and that they’ll talk to whomever to get to the bottom of the situation. I nodded, but before getting up I noticed something outside the front office. It was a wall of the names of students who got higher than a 2,000 on the SAT. For the mic drop, I turned and said “by the way, I notice that my name is missing from that wall. So after you get to the bottom of this, do you think I can be added?” Then left. The rest of that day was draining. I couldn’t think, eat, or talk. I went home looking like a zombie. It didn’t really hit me until I got home. I started breaking down. Why the hell was this happening to me? And so close to graduation? Could I really have lost everything in that moment? What would have happened it I didn’t react the way I did? I was afraid to tell my parents, but finally mustered it right before going to bed. They were in pain after hearing it. It reminded my parents of something that happened to my dad in Sweden that nearly put him away for a long time. Something he didn’t do, but was accused of doing because he “looked like someone who would do it.” Sad part? The thing he was accused never even occurred. By anyone. Now his son was experiencing something similar.

Holy shit.

My dad’s an optimist, but it hit him in that moment. Because he knew that something as small as someone just discriminating against you could destroy your life. For him, it was something that could have kept him from his family indefinitely. For me, it was something that could have ended my chance of going to college and put in jail.

Wow.

Needless to say, that dampened things for me. After he was told, my brother took a train from DC to Baltimore with the intention of going into my school. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I didn’t want to be “that kid.” The one who doesn’t let things die, but drags them out after a resolution had been reached. But my brother made a valid point. “It’s not a matter of settling things. They need to understand; one, what they did; two, why it’s wrong; and three, to never do it again to any student, right.” I felt confident that he’d handle the situation well. If you think I’m articulate, just meet my brother. He doesn’t lose. He didn’t. I don’t know what he said to them, but the same teachers who pulled me out of class showed up to every one of my classes that day to deliver the same message. As if from a script, “Hi. We just want to come by and let all of you know that yesterday we pulled Jared out of the classroom because he was suspected of an act. We know some rumors have spread around the class. Rumors are detrimental to students. They can hurt your reputation. We want to clarify that Jared did not do anything. He’s fine. He has not done anything wrong. We will not tolerate rumor and gossip.” I felt so warm inside. My family had my back. My brother had my front. Being his younger sibling, he felt the need to protect me at all costs. Especially from something he knew was real and out there. Obviously, students still gossiped, and to some I remained “guilty” through to graduation.

So that evening, the evening after graduation, I pondered on the podcast. I knew what I wanted. I remembered an episode with a designer who was also an advisor to a company called Treehouse. I loved Treehouse. I remembered Carsonified, the company it came out from. I use to read a blog they published called Think Vitamin. I was intrigued by Treehouse’s mission, so I reached out to its founder, Ryan Carson. I told him what got me excited every morning, what got me excited about Treehouse, and how I felt I could contribute. After a series of interviews, I got the job! I came on as editor of Treehouse Blog, a spinoff of Think Vitamin. It was a dream come true. To help shape the presence of a blog that came from something that inspired me just a couple years prior. Of course I still did The Industry nights and weekends, but we discussed and agreed on a way that the sites would not compete with each other. Our tone, content, and audiences were different.

My job involved helping on building an architecture for what would become their blog, newsletter, and marketing. It was my first time working with product designers. They were my favorite. A month or so into the job, the remote Treehouse employees were flown into Orlando for our team get-together. It was an amazing feeling seeing other people who were all part of the team, building towards the same vision. However, by the end of it reality started settling in that maybe I might still have to go to college. Although I wasn’t the most passionate about it, my parents still expected it. I remember having a conversation with Ryan telling him the possibility. At first, he was caught of guard. And of course he was. After all, part of the mission of Treehouse was to provide the education I was passionate about, so that people of all ages didn’t have to spend tens of thousands acquiring the skills. Especially if the curriculums had a high chance of being out of date. But he understood where I was coming from. Ultimately I left Treehouse after about four months, but it was an incredible summer full of lessons and confidence boosters that I wouldn’t be aware of until months later.

I met up with two guys on the Internet. Both were from Kansas, but none of us had ever met in person. We all shared a passion for emails. I became fascinated by it when I interviewed the Sparrow founders a year earlier for the Macgasm column. We also shared a passion for the potential use of iPads in the workplace. We were like, “let’s start a company.” We called it Evomail. Evolved email. In hindsight, bad name. Sounds like evil mail. We really had to enunciate the “vo” or people would look at us awkwardly. I’d like to say that we were on to something. Some of the things we built are now in products like Inbox, Outlook, and other apps. Didn’t come directly from us, but patterns make their way around eventually. Some of the things I’ve yet to see in a product. One of the things we wanted to do, was to recognize if an email came from a person, or a service. If it came from a service, was it informative or a subscription? If it was informative, could we treat it like a notification? Imagine if you got an email from UPS, that should not take up the same cognitive space as an email from a close friend.

Evomail was going well. We knew what we wanted to build and we were building it. It was an amazing experience cutting new builds everyday, and putting them in my parents hands. Although they didn’t exactly know what was going on, the builds were enough to show them that I had found my passion. Communication. Communication by words, process, and pixels. It also bought me some time off of college. I negotiated my parents into letting me take my first year off of college to work on Evomail and The Industry. On my 18th birthday, I decided to write a blog post on the blog. The target was other creatives in my age group. Those who had a burning flame of passion inside them that they were constantly afraid would be blown out. Blown out for age, race, gender, and what have you. I wanted to address the age piece, so I spent my entire birthday drafting a 6,000 word biography of my journey to finding my passion. With an undertone of “keep at it, friend.” Somehow it blew up! I woke up to it being #2 on Hacker News and the most read article on our blog! I started getting comments from others saying “I’m 17 and I love blank!” “I’m 19 and I do blank!” It was an age-coming out party, and everyone was loving it, or so I thought.

Although he never said it directly, I sensed a perspective change from one of my co-founders. It’s as if I went from being an equal to being an intern. It was ironic. I “revealed” my age for the first time because I was finally confident. And apparently lots of people were hiding it for the same reason. But who knew that my decision would hurt me in my own company?

The following January, Mailbox announced their app with an awesome product video. In one of their initial press articles, a reviewer mentioned that a big problem for the app might be their lack of labels. I felt otherwise. So I wrote an article on my blog expressing that although they were competition, I felt that they were approaching the inbox from an interesting perspective. And that I looked forward to the hustle. Without intention, the article made its way around and ended up as something Mailbox would reference on Twitter when asked by people why they didn’t support typical labels. Felt like good karma. The CEO then reached out a few weeks or so later. He mentioned the article and Evomail, having seen some of the design on Dribbble. Although nothing was said directly, he seemed interested in what we were building. Especially why we started with the iPad. I remember telling my co-founders this–expecting a positive response. Instead, the CEO reacted a bit displeased. As if I had done something wrong by it being me who interacted with Mailbox and not him. A month or so later, Mailbox was acquired by Dropbox.

“Although he never said it directly, I sensed a perspective change from one of my co-founders. It’s as if I went from being an equal to being an intern. It was ironic. I “revealed” my age for the first time because I was finally confident. And apparently lots of people were hiding it for the same reason. But who knew that my decision would hurt me in my own company?”

Around this time, I learned about a program in San Francisco called Bridge. It was a 3-month program targeted at Product Designers who wanted a dose of Silicon Valley. I was intrigued. After weeks of negotiation, I convinced my parents. The deal was “3 months in California, then you come back to start college.” Come April 2013, I moved out to San Francisco. By this point, the collaboration at Evomail had significantly broken down. We were all working hard, but not as a team. I still felt the same vibes from the “birthday article,” and other events occurred that just amplified the feels. Around three weeks into San Francisco, I got a phone call. It was my co-founder. We talked about ways for me to push the Evomail brand now that I was in San Francisco, but then the conversation started to changing to “so what if you move into more of an ambassador role?” Of course this seemed completely weird to me. Every founder is an ambassador of his or her product. We agreed that there was no need for a “role change.” A month later, I got another call. I was getting kicked out of my own company. My stake was depleted, and I was left with nothing. The product launched a few weeks later with mixed-to-positive tech press. I received no credit for my work, but I didn’t care. What pained me the most was that the product I had invested the last 10 months of my life into, deferred college for, didn’t take a paying job for, was gone. Just like that. I felt like I had lost a child. I felt so sick for the next three months. I won’t go into details, but trust me. It was not fair, it was cold, and it came back to bite the company. I learned so much from Evomail. It was the first digital product I designed from scratch. It was my first startup. It was my first termination. It was my first sense of purpose. It was my biggest sense of defeat. God, it hurt, but looking back I loved that I went through all of that. Of course, that’s how I felt in the moment. It made me feel my age and race again. How many other people would do this to me in the future? I started dressing older, forcing myself to talk deeper, and prioritizing phone calls over in-person meets.

A few weeks later, I got a call from a big tech company, public, voicing interest in Evomail. This company would have made me a millionaire… before taxes [laughs]. Although I told them that I was no longer financially invested in the company, they pushed for a conversation. They were kind of like, we still actually want this thing, so we can either hire you for our mail team, or you can reach out to your ex-founders and push for a deal… getting your stock back in the deal. I remember having to deal with that. I sought advice from close friends and my parents. The feedback I heard was either, “I don’t know what to do. It sucks to be in that position.” Or, “don’t take it.” I didn’t take it. I told the person I was in contact with that I would be passing altogether. And that if they still wanted the product, to reach out to the remaining team. I didn’t tell the team because communication had ended between us. However, I did end up making peace with the other founder, not the CEO, a year later when he visited San Francisco. I never really had issues with him. He was just too on the fence. There are certain things you’re just not on the fence about. I feel like he – and he kind of admitted this a little – just didn’t speak up. Apparently, after I was kicked out, a few months later, the CEO tried to remove him too.

“I started dressing older, forcing myself to talk deeper, and prioritizing phone calls over in-person meets.”

But the “fear your age and race” thing started to creep back up again. Was this graduation all over again? Thankfully, I didn’t experience it much at my first job in the city, Omada Health. I was hired as their first full-time product designer. I remember having a good experience there, but I did feel treated like a child at times. Especially by co-workers who had children. Some with children around my age. To some of them, I could be their child, which is true. But, I’m not. I’m your co-worker at a company that we both work for. Don’t treat me like I’m your child. People asked why I left after six months. Part of it was that I worked on an interesting project, finished it, and felt good about it.

I was only really supposed to be there for three months anyway. My parents wanted me back for college. I stayed on longer because the project was fascinating. Building a product that allowed pre-Type II Diabetic people take back control of their health. My project was over, and I felt like I had gotten a good dose of the medical field. Most of my father’s family is in it, so my tolerance was only so high [laughter]. But part of it was that I didn’t like feeling like a child amongst adults. It wasn’t that I wanted to be treated like a boss. I just wanted to do good work and be respected by my peers. I felt like I was doing one, but only getting half of the other. I still appreciated my time there and the people I had an opportunity of working with. They gave me a beautiful send off. I left the day before my 19th birthday.

My plan was to take a break, but that lasted all of one week. I joined Obvious Corp, the organization behind Branch, Medium, and Lift. Lift, the habit tracking app. I worked on that. It was great. I worked on the 2.0. I was only there for less than a year though. My parents, coming from a different generation, felt that four jobs in two years seemed weird. They wanted to know if I had a plan, or if I should just move back east and go to school. “I promise you. I’m not fickle. I have a vision, and I’m making mistakes along the way. But these mistakes are lessons and I’ll figure it out in the end. I learned, four times.” I told them that my plan was to contract, build work and social credibility, and when I’m ready, to find a role where I will be respected and do good work. They agreed.

I did some contracts. One was Nuzzel, a news app. Another was Bloomthat, an on-demand flowers product. I did some other niche products too. It was really fun! I got to work on Bulan Project, something by my friend Elle Luna, with other friends of mine. Those were creatively liberating and fun. Then a really close friend of mine reached out and was like, “Hey man, if I told you there was a company that I would join, would you join?” And I’m like, “Yeah, if such a company existed.” Background on this dude. He does not full time. Period. So I asked him why he wasn’t there already. “Well, I just finished YC, I have a company, I’m about to have a child, and we’re thinking of moving to Hawaii.” Fair. So I said intro away. He introduced me to a company called Teespring. I met their co-founder, Walker. Within minutes of talking to him, I knew he hired talent and only talent. He didn’t care who you were, what your background was, your race, age, or gender. He just cared if you could do good, passionate work. I never left a meeting so passionate about a company or so trusting of its leadership. I joined a month later as Creative Director. 

The first thing I did was redesign the logo. Second was build the team to five product designers and one brand designer. By the end of 2014, I was designing and managing a team at the same time. I had to learn fast. With time I found myself less and less in Photoshop or Sketch, but in meetings working to figure out the direction of a business that, between joining and leaving, had 20x. The growth was fun to watch. We went from 30 people to 300+. But with the growth of the team and product, I had to juggle managing a team and still designing. It wasn’t easy, but I developed invaluable muscles from the grind. The lessons were numerous. From what it means to grow a team, to growing yourself, which is just as important. If not more. My time at Teespring was similar to Omada Health. Great product, culture, and growth. But people are people, and everywhere you go, you’ll meet some who are partially blinded by attributes that don’t pertain to your output. After a year and a half, I left to take a break and detox from the grind. I intentionally didn’t have a plan.

“But people are people, and everywhere you go, you’ll meet some who are partially blinded by attributes that don’t pertain to your output.”

I took about two weeks to do nothing. I read, called my parents more, caught up on some shows, and took more walks. Greylock and Fuel Capital became my home. I started working out of one, and contracting for the other’s portfolio companies. It was fun getting to work with founders again on very early product. I took up one more advisory position. One of my contracts, Copper, really intrigued me. I was introduced to its founder, Doug, by Fuel Capital months before. He was on an ambitious agenda to “kill passwords for people.” We built a close working relationship over the next few months, and he finally asked me to come on board full-time. I pondered over it for a while. I wasn’t planning to go all in that soon. I sought advice from some mentors of mine. I was torn between ramping up my contracting and possibly starting an agency, going in-house at a VC firm, or going all in with Copper. A friend of mine, Daniel Burka, made it all so clear. He asked me what I longed for the most. I said I wanted to make real impact again. I wanted to ship an idea to the world. I wanted to take a huge bet on something so ambitious, it was “destined” to fail. I realized I was describing Copper. Agency and VC life could wait a few years. So I joined. Now it’s three of us. We are trying to replace passwords. I think we have a fair shot. Keep an eye out in the coming months.

And that’s 1994 to 2016. Online I experienced more ageism than racism, primarily because I hid my face for a long time. On Twitter, my last name is Nigerian, but you can’t tell. And when I say, “hid my face,” I mean it. My avatar has evolved over the years. It stared as a silhouette, then evolved to a half-shot of the side of my face, to the entire side of my face, to my face. I’d like to think that it mirrored my evolution of my self-identity. I’ve always been self-aware, but now I know myself too. I know my strengths, my weaknesses, and my faults. I know where I’ve come from, and I have a plan for where I’m going. I’ll be dammed if I let people kill my vibe because I look a little different to them. I could care less.

“Online I experienced more ageism than racism, primarily because I hid my face for a long time. On Twitter, my last name is Nigerian, but you can’t tell. And when I say, “hid my face,” I mean it. My avatar has evolved over the years. It stared as a silhouette, then evolved to a half-shot of the side of my face, to the entire side of my face, to my face. I’d like to think that it mirrored my evolution of my self-identity.”

I still experience the “symptoms” of being black in a predominantly white city. Walking down a street, it’s not uncommon to see a woman pull her purse a little closer in, or cross the street before we cross paths. It’s not strange to notice an Uber driver eyeing me through the rear-view mirror. On buses, it’s not weird to see someone stand instead of sitting in the only empty seat that’s next to me. I’ve sadly desensitized myself to these micro-interactions over the years. So that’s why when people ask if I experience racism, I don’t immediately recall these interactions to memory. For me, racism and ageism had to smack me in my face to get a reaction, and everything else was just “how life is.”

But I don’t want the people I work with to ever feel this way. Copper understands this. Yes, it’s only three of us right now, but it’s already part of our identity. We want diversity of people, backgrounds, and thinking. Not to meet quotas, or to look good in Medium articles, but because it’s critical to a company. And because we care. Why would you only want one point of view?

All right. Okay, four main questions I want to dig into. You’ve touched on this, but what do you look for in a job now? What is important to you in your job now vs in the beginning?

One – companies that understand the roles they’re hiring for and how those roles may bleed into others. When you start a company, especially in Silicon Valley, there are things you just do—like setup Heroku, use Stripe for payments, and AWS for file storage. Then when it gets to people, you’re like, “Okay. I need a technical co-founder. I need two engineers. I’m going to contract some designer. At some point, I’m gonna need someone in customer service.” Instead of asking yourself, “What in particular, do I need for my business?” It may not be the same as the company across the street from you. Maybe your co-founder should have a background in customer experience because of the type of product you’re building. Such people don’t hire because a blog told them to. I think there’s a strong correlation between people who hire without understanding the roles they’re filling, and the people they hired leaving. If you don’t know, find out. Your hire will appreciate it. It sets up accurate and attainable exceptions. Alignment is good.

Two – empathy. People who understand that people are people. When you hire someone, you are entering a relationship. There’s this understanding when it comes to co-founders that you’re finding your partner. You’re marrying this person for the next 5+ years. I think the same applies to employees. They’re not just headcount, they’re people, family. The marriage and family correlation is interesting because it also implies that you’re no longer just thinking about yourself. You think about them and their needs. You try to uncover their problems, blockers, and fears. Then you try, to the best of your ability, to mitigate them. This is empathy. Companies that understand this are in a much better position than those that don’t. Their employees feel valued and empowered to do good and to do more.

Three – a plan, or at least a shadow of one. Yes, the future is the future, but if you’re just shooting in the dark believing you’ll eventually hit something, I’ll pass. I’m also curious to see how much of a plan a company is willing to reveal to me. Little reveal is a red flag. This also includes mission. I’ve got to be excited about what we’re working towards, or else what’s the point?

Four – the people. Are we compatible? Sometimes we’re not, and that’s okay. Just so the non-compatibility isn’t a result of you being assholes. That’s not okay.

How do you feel like your background: where you’re from, the places that you’ve lived, your family, the culmination of that and your life experiences, how do you think that that has made you a better designer and even manager?

My dad’s culture is proud, but they are very hard-working people. Recently, a colleague of mine traveled to Nigeria for a project. She came back enlightened. Going, she knew about 419, something that’s synonymous with Nigerians. But she was surprised to learn that 419 represented probably half a percent of the Nigerian population. Yet somehow, it’s something the entire nation is stigmatized for. Being half Nigerian and working in tech, I remember sometimes being wary about revealing that detail. It was the fear of “he got in?” Or “you’re contracting him? He’s 419, man! You can’t trust those people!” Interesting, that never even crossed my mind, until this moment.

They are so proud and so hard-working because they have to fight that stigma every day. That they’re not corrupt people, but that they are people just like anyone else. But also people who have to work a lot harder than their peer to fight a stigma that pertains to such a small percentage of their people. This impacted me in two ways. It taught me to work hard and be proud of my work. Looking at my family, it always impresses me how much harder they had to fight to get to where they were. And as for pride, it was less ego and more knowing when you did good work, then defending it. I’m not the person to defend disproved work, but I am the person to defend good work. My work, my team’s work, etc. Especially when “good” could be backed up with data. Quantitative or qualitative. I’m the person who says “I will go to war with you. It’s not that I’m right, but that this is right. So if you want to fight me, that’s completely fine. But don’t fight something that is actually going to benefit the company or product.” That’s my family’s type of “proud.”

“Being half Nigerian and working in tech, I remember sometimes being wary about revealing that detail. It was the fear of he got in?’ Or ‘you’re contracting him He’s 419, man! You can’t trust those people!”

On my mother’s side, I learned empathy and the power of giving. If you needed $700 and my mom had $699, she would transfer a dollar from her savings and wire you the $700. I’ve done that before. I remember in my first months in San Francisco, a friend was in need of $500 and I had $510. I just sent it. I stretched that $10 a week until payday that Friday. To stretch $10 for a week in San Francisco is hard [chuckles]. Not easy, we’re talking buying a pack of Top Ramen, and breaking the squares into halves to double it. Then trying to get the water to ramen ration just right so it doesn’t taste like flavored hot water, but “soup.” Nowadays I mentor when I can. Andreessen Horowitz does this program where they pair professionals with college students interested in the same line of work. Its a great way to give back. To impart some of the things I’ve learned over the years, in hopes of having that student replicate my successes and avoid my failures. I try to respond to every email I get. If that person took the time to message me directly, it’s only fair I take the time to respond. We’ll see how far that scales though [chuckles]. Inboxes are dangerous. And I still relearn these traits, empathy and giving, everyday from my girlfriend. She’s the most caring person I know outside of my parents. I love her for this. It’s funny, she’s probably the true designer in our relationship.

Empathy is the number one thing for a designer. By definition our job is to remove friction for our customers so the best way to do that is to, in a sense, become the customer and go through your own product. I remember when there was this big renaissance of design thinking a some years back where everyone started saying, “designers, talk to customers!” It’s funny to me, because that sort of thinking should have never been forgotten. If you’re not talking to your customers, what kind of empathy are you employing?

Being exposed to different cultures at a young age also impacted me. Seeing different cultures quickly taught me the power of diversity. The thing about being a minority is, if you grow up in an area where you are the majority, your tendency is to stay there because it’s the one place you feel at home. If you look at areas in the US where African-Americans are dominant, you’ll notice that most don’t leave. And why would they? Most of them are taught from young that the world sees them as second-class citizens. That they are at a disadvantage by default. So that it would in their best interest to “settle in and call this home.” The Brooklyn neighborhood I was born in was such a neighborhood. My neighbors are all still there. Same street, same home, same floor. But I was forced out of that reality from a young age. Now, as a designer, I seek diversity to supercharge my solutions.

Okay, macro now. How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016, like what excites you, what frustrates you?

I’m excited about the evolution of interfaces. Messaging is becoming a new interface, but I doubt it’s going to be the only one. And it’s not going to be that simple. That tends to be the case in tech anyway. We jump into new territory, explore, identify the patterns that emerge, and then turn them into new platforms. For example, I don’t think Slack is the future; I think the essence of Slack is part of the future. I’m excited for these new platforms. They reduce the cost to start something new, and they expand your reach.

Copper, I hope, will one day be such a platform. Every company is trying to build their identification layer. It’s time consuming. We want to eliminate that overhead for them. Then you have companies like Uber and Airbnb where there’s so much contingent upon you knowing that the people on your services are real and trustworthy that they have to invest millions into their systems. Why couldn’t we solve that for them and their customers? Imagine if you just walk up to any service or any door; there’s one simple protocol by which to identify yourself and it’s free to you, convenient, and secure. More businesses are coming up like that. We’re doing it for passwords and identification but there are people doing it for all sorts of stuff. I’m really excited about that.

“I’d like to believe that the companies that rise up from this correction will be stronger in the longterm because they had to work a little harder to raise, make a profit, make an impact, and make a return. It kind of parallels my life.”

I’m also excited for the correction that’s going on in the tech sector right now. People are calling it a bubble; I don’t think it’s a bubble. Let’s use balloon as a metaphor. What happened in the Dot Com era was like someone who blew a balloon too big and it just popped. Then a few years ago when we had another correction, that was like someone who blew a balloon kinda big and someone else poked it with a needle before it popped on its own. I think what’s going on now is like someone blowing a balloon and someone else saying, “ah, I’ve seen this shit before,” then just squeezing the air right out of it; so there’s no pop. Just deflation. That’s our current correction. I’d like to believe that the companies that rise up from this correction will be stronger in the longterm because they had to work a little harder to raise, make a profit, make an impact, and make a return. It kind of parallels my life.

True.

One thing I’d like to see change is our transparency as an industry. When I started out, we were very open with each other. Especially the design community. I attribute that openness to us being able to “level up” in the eyes of businesses so quickly. Or what others call our “seat at the table.” However, in the past year or two, we’ve become more secretive. We’ve switched out that open collaborative-ness for bickering and petty bantering. We talk just as much, if not more via mediums like Medium. But I fear we’re moving forward, slower. Nowadays, the people who are the most transparent with me are my closest friends, and even with them there’s still a filter.

I understand confidentiality and competitiveness, but the opaqueness leads to slower progression as a community due to a lack of knowledge sharing. We’re more on the sharing of Sketch tips than topics we’re all thinking about, but avoiding. Things like diversity at work, women in tech, and processes to advance the sector as a whole, not just our immediate companies. I don’t know how we get back to the good ol’ days. I don’t know, maybe it’s just nostalgia. Maybe it’s just me. But we’ve been thinking about this a lot at The Industry. We’re building a resource for the design community to help. It’s called Playbook and I hope to put it live in the next few months.

One of the biggest things that hurts a business or people is miscommunication. What causes miscommunication is people not being transparent or clear. And I think that good communication unearths topics that need to be discussed. I’m rooting for Techies Project, Helena.

My last question would be, based on the lessons that you’ve learned over time, what advice would you have for other young designers who are hoping to get in tech or are in tech, and are feeling some of the same challenges that you faced?

Let me break the fourth wall here. If you have impostor syndrome, don’t feel like you’re all alone. Everyone has imposter syndrome about something. Anyone who says otherwise is either a narcissist or just lying. Impostor syndrome is different for everyone. For some, it’s weight. For some, it’s height. For some, it’s accent. For some, it’s hairiness. For some, it’s not having a college degree. For others, it’s having a college degree. For me, it’s age and race. I don’t think that will ever change. But the point is to know this. It introduces you to empathy. Just as how you want people to be empathetic to your insecurities, be empathetic to theirs.

Another thing – if you work somewhere that’s eating you from the inside-out, leave. It’s not worth it. I know other industries say to stay for ten years, but you’re in an industry that’s barely 30 years old. We’re blessed in the sense that we can leave a company after a year, and get a job the next day. Most people leave, because they got a new job. We’re one of the few communities where, when you hear someone say, “I quit,” you say, “Congratulations.” In any other industry, it’s like, “Oh, shit, what are you going to do now? That sucks. Do you need a place to stay?” Of course, if you think you can change your situation, persevere and sort it out. Don’t just bounce. But when you can’t deal with it anymore, kill it, before it kills you. If you’re in an industry that you love, don’t let anyone drive you away from it. You’re a techie, stand tall.

“If you’re in an industry that you love, don’t let anyone drive you away from it. You’re a techie, stand tall.”

I come from a big, New York City, Irish-Italian Catholic family.  I have eight older brothers and sisters and 21 nieces and nephews. I’m a bit of a black sheep in my family, politically and otherwise. I come from a very practical family of doctors and lawyers and bankers, and I was this artist and the performer. Nobody knew what I was going to end up doing including myself.

Interesting.

When I was young, I changed my mind every other day about what I was going to do, what I was going to be when I grew up. I probably stressed my parents out because they are very practically-minded. When it comes to language, they said, “Take Spanish!”, and I said, “I’m going to take French!” For a while, I majored in Art History, and my Dad recently admitted to me that he thought, “Oh my God, she’s never going to get a job.” To his credit, he never said anything at the time.

“For a while, I majored in Art History, and my Dad recently admitted to me that he thought, “Oh my God, she’s never going to get a job.””

I eventually majored in theater. It’s actually some of the most useful training that I did. You acquire an extraordinary set of skills in creating live theater. It’s highly collaborative, you have to work under stressful conditions, find ways around all kinds of constraints. It also develops your ability to empathize with other people and their stories, which is an essential skill for good design.

I definitely enjoyed the humanities and art, but I also had some interest in technology and science early on. Mostly as it related to how we can help people communicate or how can we use these tools to help people do things better and improve people’s lives. Always in an extremely applied way.

My graduate program really aligned with that kind of thinking. I was initially planning to apply to the NYU film school, but when I got the catalog, they had this program in it called the Interactive Telecommunications Program. The title sounds a bit dry, but the it ended up being a life changing experience for me. This was in 1994-95 when the web was really coming into its own, a time of really interesting experimentation. The program tries to meet at the crossroads of arts, technology, and people. It’s in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, so it’s kind of like a Media Lab run by poets. It’s really a remarkable place. Its student body was a mix of teachers, film-makers, policy makers, writers, journalist, artist and graphic designers. It continues to be an incredible advisory the experimentation. That’s where I taught myself how to build websites, then found myself in a startup, and a few acquisitions and 3 babies later, ended up moving to California to work for Google, then Youtube, and now at Facebook.

“I taught myself how to build websites, then found myself in a startup, and a few acquisitions and 3 babies later, ended up moving to California to work for Google, then Youtube, and now at Facebook.”

What was it like moving to Silicon Valley?

I should say I was born in Manhattan and then I grew up for chunks of time in New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Tennessee. So we moved around a lot, but all on the east coast. I never lived west of the Mississippi. I went to college in Boston, then studied art in France where I met my Canadian husband. I attended ITP in New York City, and then we got married we moved to Williamstown, Massachusetts in the Berkshire mountains where I was at a startup called Tripod. Then we moved to Boston when Tripod was acquired by Lycos. At that point, I was pregnant with my second baby, and the industry was in the doldrums. I decided to stay home for a while and we moved to North Carolina to be closer to family and live on a leaner budget. You see, at that point I had had three kids in four years and so was home full time for about four years in the middle of all of my different jobs.

And then I went back to work when my youngest was two. I joined the design team at Wachovia of all places, may it rest in peace. It was a great company to work for and a great re-entry for me after four years of being checked out and up to my eyeballs in diapers.

I had established a lot of strong relationships with designers at Wired Digital which also got acquired by Lycos. People like Jeff Veen and Doug Bowman. Extraordinary designers who also happened to be good people. They had gone to work for Google and next thing I knew, so was I, dragging my husband and kids with me.

I remember when I got the offer from Google, it was a big deal to move the family. We had a nice house. The kids were in good schools. I was close to my parents. I was agonizing over it, because I was asking my husband to quit a job he loved, which is not easy, and to move three kids. And he said, “When you get asked to pitch for the Yankees you don’t stay on the minor leagues. You must go and do this.” And that was about eight years ago. So I don’t know. I feel like it’s been an extraordinary experience because the concentration of talented, passionate people is so insanely high here. Just the level of competency and ingenuity and energy that people bring towards things is really special. And I think if I were ever to move to live some place else, I know that I would miss that.

“I remember when I got the offer from Google, it was a big deal to move the family. We had a nice house. The kids were in good schools. I was close to my parents. I was agonizing over it, because I was asking my husband to quit a job he loved, which is not easy, and to move three kids. And he said, ‘When you get asked to pitch for the Yankees you don’t stay on the minor leagues. You must go and do this.'”

For sure.

That being said, it’s also an extraordinarily work-oriented place. When I visit other places that aren’t as work-focused, I am reminded that most people don’t live their lives this way, and that there’s a certain level of sanity associated with not having everything revolve around your work. When we go back to the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts to visit friends, they don’t ask that much about Facebook, or technology, or start ups to invest in. They want to talk about art, music, go for a hike, visit a farm. I miss that sometimes.

Silicon Valley is like DC and LA. They are one industry towns, and so all of your friends are your colleagues and all of your colleagues are your friends, and even if you want to not think about work, it’s almost impossible not to. It can also be a pretty isolating place to live if you aren’t in the tech industry. There’s so much value put on tech that it almost feels that if you’re not doing that, you must not be doing something worthwhile, and that’s a shame.

So it’s a remarkable place to work. I have absolutely no regrets about being here, and I feel lucky every day to work at Facebook, a company with leaders and that I admire and respect and a mission I really believe in. AND it would be nice to have a little more balance sometimes.

“When I visit other places that aren’t as work-focused, I am reminded that most people don’t live their lives this way, and that there’s a certain level of sanity associated with not having everything revolve around your work. When we go back to the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts to visit friends, they don’t ask that much about Facebook, or technology, or start ups to invest in. They want to talk about art, music, go for a hike, visit a farm. I miss that sometimes.”

How do you think your background and life experiences have informed your work, and how you approach design at a global scale?

Well…

That’s a loaded question, I know.

Listen, I’m a well-off white person. So I feel like I need to tread carefully on saying, “My life experiences have helped me design for the entirety of humanity.” It’s a big challenge for companies like the ones that I’ve worked at to try to—with all good intentions—design for the scope and the diversity of the human population when we are so un-diverse as a workforce. That being said, there are a few things about the way I grew up that shape my perspective.

I feel like growing up in a very large family with a lot of personalities helps me to be adaptive and collaborative in a way that served me professionally. I can get along with most people. I’m just naturally inclined to figure out compromises and facilitate conversations, because that’s what you do when you have eight siblings. It’s just a basic survival tactic. Working in teams of people from different backgrounds and disciplines, these kinds of interpersonal skills are not something I take for granted, and I think I have my family to thank for a lot of that.

“Listen, I’m a well-off white person. So I feel like I need to tread carefully on saying, “My life experiences have helped me design for the entirety of humanity.” It’s a big challenge for companies like the ones that I’ve worked at to try to—with all good intentions—design for the scope and the diversity of the human population when we are so un-diverse as a workforce.”

I also really cherish my humanities and liberal arts education because I feel like it’s made me more curious and empathetic towards people with different experiences than me. I really appreciate the push towards getting more people, especially women and underrepresented minorities, into science and engineering. At the same time, I worry a bit that we are forgetting how important the humanities are to rounding out your education. Subjects like philosophy, anthropology, and psychology teach us about humans and their needs and desires. Without that training, I fear we’ll know how to build things but we may not have the compass to understand what to build and why. And that compass comes in large part through the humanities.

And obviously my training at ITP. The founder, Red Burns, was an important mentor to me. She really influenced my perspective and my philosophy on things. I don’t think I realized just how much until she passed away a few years ago. She was a total firecracker of a woman. She wasn’t that interested in the question, “What can we do with technology,” but instead asked us, “What can technology do for people?” Really putting technology in in service of people and not enslaving people to it. That’s something I really feel really passionately about.

And finally, I think that the people that you surround yourself with ultimately are the biggest influencers. My husband is a really wonderful person. Just by virtue of him, being from Canada and growing up in Quebec and just having a lot of different perspectives on things, I feel like he’s influenced my learning and development a lot over the years too. We’re celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary this year, so I’m thinking a lot about that right now. Obviously I was 12 when I got married [chuckles].

“I worry a bit that we are forgetting how important the humanities are to rounding out your education. Subjects like philosophy, anthropology, and psychology teach us about humans and their needs and desires. Without that training, I fear we’ll know how to build things but we may not have the compass to understand what to build and why.”

Obviously! As a designer, what is really exciting to you about your work? What activates you?

Something that always energies and inspires me is when I get to observe or experience the way other people live and and how those life experiences might cause them to see or value the products I build differently than I do. Years ago at Wachovia, we did a lot of research into how we could better support customers with severe visual impairments; this work was way ahead of its time. For most of us, online banking is a convenience, so we don’t have to go to the physical bank branch. But the people we met through that study couldn’t drive to a branch to take care of it themselves. For those who are blind or have seriously impaired vision, online banking is the difference between having financial independence and having to rely on someone else to do your banking for you. And the independence was crucially important to their well-being on so many levels. That made me realize something I’ve observed many times since…these technologies can mean very different things to different people depending on their context.

Most people look at Google search and think, “It’s so convenient to be able to look up whatever you want.” But, if you live in a place that doesn’t have libraries, Google in the difference between being able to educate yourself versus not. Or YouTube. Some people think of it as a place with entertaining videos, but if you live in a place that doesn’t have freedom of speech, it’s the difference between knowing what’s going on through citizen reporting or not.

I get really excited when we launch something and then get to see what people do with the things we make. When you are designing for a huge global audience, you can have a sense of what problem you are solving and try to design it in ways that will work for most people. But invariably, people will take that thing and apply it to things you never thought of. A good example is how Facebook Safety check came to being. Facebook wasn’t created as a crisis communications system, but with so many people connected on the platform, it was the natural and logical place for people to let their friends and family know they are Ok in the wake of a natural disaster or even a terrorist attack. So a team at Facebook observed this and designed not just for people but with people. I find that idea of co-designing with humanity to be really inspiring and exciting.

“When you are designing for a huge global audience, you can have a sense of what problem you are solving and try to design it in ways that will work for most people. But invariably, people will take that thing and apply it to things you never thought of. I find that idea of co-designing with humanity to be really inspiring and exciting.”

Ultimately I gravitate towards working on things that are good for the world. I know that sounds like a platitude. But I have to feel like the thing I’m working on intends to lift people up, in a very broad and democratizing way. I love breaking down the hierarchy. Whether it’s media hierarchy, or communication hierarchy, or whatever it is. I like the fact that a blind person wouldn’t have to rely on somebody to drive them to the bank. Or that a singer songwriter would be able to support themselves through YouTube videos instead of having to sign with a record label. Or that people could raise money for a cause they care about and actually move the needle on medical research like the ALS folks did on Facebook through the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Sometimes people look at what I’m working on now—digital advertising tools—and think, “Wow, you’ve gone 180 from there!” But I don’t see it that way at all. Ultimately what I’m working on now is about economic development and job creation. I think sometimes we look at the world’s problems—poverty, inequality, you name it—in very surface level ways, and what I’ve really enjoyed over past four years of working on the business side of Facebook is becoming smarter about how the world works, how society works, how the economy works and understanding that if you can help people provide for themselves, you have less war, you have less poverty, you have less terrorism, even.  

I definitely have a bit of an activist in me. I hate injustice and I hate unfairness and so I think I’ve been on this, I don’t know, 20 year voyage just trying to figure out how can design be a part of the solution. Because I feel like design is still only being applied to a very small percentage of the problems that it can solve. That’s what I’m doing more recently in my writing; just trying to encourage more designers to look past the obvious flashy thing they can be working on and think, “What could I change if I applied myself to software for the government,” or “How can design get involved in making the criminal justice more equitable and humane?” These are all design problems. They may be less sexy, behind the scenes. It’s not necessarily going to get you a big splashy article in the technology magazine, but who cares?

“I definitely have a bit of an activist in me. I hate injustice and I hate unfairness and so I think I’ve been on this, I don’t know, 20 year voyage just trying to figure out how can design be a part of the solution. Because I feel like design is still only being applied to a very small percentage of the problems that it solve.”

When did you start writing about your work?

I’ve always enjoyed writing and storytelling. As a leader, one of the most important skills is to be able to craft a narrative, a vision for what you want your team to aspire to, that captures their imagination. So in some form or another, I’ve been writing and storytelling my whole career, though I didn’t as publish my writing as much until more recently. The big driver of that was fairly practical.  We faced a big challenge a few years back attracting people to work on the business side of Facebook. It wasn’t visible to people. They knew the consumer-facing Facebook products, and that’s what most people coming in wanted to work on. I get that. And if it was visible to them, many were like, “Mmm, I don’t really want to work on ads.”

Making the work visible to people, helping them understand the impact, both on Facebook as a business and on society as a whole, how we can help improve the experience that people have at work day to day, as well as grow economies and create jobs…those were the big things that I focused on in terms of writing. About business design, and the way designers can have impact on a whole host of important issues.

Occasionally I’ll just get mad about something and write about it. A few months ago, I published an article about my uterus [chuckles]. I don’t know if you saw that.

Oh yeah [laughter]. We’re going to get to that in a minute.

I have 100 ideas of things that I’d like to write about. It frustrating to me that I haven’t succeeded in more consistently making time for it because I feel like it’s something that I’m good at, it’s something that I enjoy, and I feel a connection to people when I do it. But it’s always about capturing the time. You know how that is. I’m sure that’s how you feel about photography and other things.

“I was so frustrated and fed up on behalf of women in this industry who are trying to position themselves as equals and sometimes deserving to be seen as superior to some men in the industry, and just constantly having to pay this tax that men don’t have to pay around having talking about their personal lives. Or having it being positioned as, ‘Wow, you did all this in spite of being a mother!’ It’s just constantly minimizing their professional contributions. I don’t have any problem with anyone talking about their families and their role as a parent. But it should be on their terms, and they should never feel obligated to do it, in a context where they were asked to talk about their professional accomplishments. That’s my beef. And if you are going to ask those kinds of questions like, ‘How do you do it all?’, then ask the men too.”

Yeah, this project will very much be a snapshot of tech culture in 2016.

I’m a maker. I got into management a long time ago and realized that in the corporate context, the biggest value that I could provide is that I’m really good at building teams. So I had to let go of a lot of the hands-on contribution in the interest of making space for other people to do it. But I still have the urge, the urge to produce things, to find an outlet for that, to connect with what other people that are making and to be inspired by that. So I find different ways—you know, we have the Facebook Analog Research Lab where we print beautiful posters. I love just seeing what they’re making, and I get so excited about communication design that’s going on at Facebook. I think it’s really magical.

And then personally I do all kinds of things. I knit a lot, and I like to draw, and so writing – in addition to doing it because I think it’s really helpful to my work – is just a creative outlet for me. I never thought of myself as a writer until more recently, which is kind of interesting. I’ve always thought  of myself as a visual person or a performer, but I’ve surprised myself with how much gratification I get from writing.

Let’s talk about your uterus [laughter].

Everybody else is, why not? When I published that piece, I said to my husband something like, “At some point, I will regret making my uterus a topic of public conversation. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but…”

You’ve written about the bias that you’ve seen on stage or at conferences. You also touched on, as you got older, you became more cognizant of bias in tech in general. Can you expand on that?

Yeah. It’s interesting, often I’ll take weeks, even months to write a complex piece about design. But with the piece about women in tech, I wrote the bulk of that in about 45 minutes at a Starbucks. I was so frustrated and fed up on behalf of women in this industry who are trying to position themselves as equals and sometimes deserving to be seen as superior to some men in the industry, and just constantly having to pay this tax that men don’t have to pay around having talking about their personal lives. Or having it being positioned as, “Wow, you did all this in spite of being a mother!” It’s just constantly minimizing their professional contributions.

I don’t have any problem with anyone talking about their families and their role as a parent. But it should be on their terms, and they should never feel obligated to do it, in a context where they were asked to talk about their professional accomplishments. That’s my beef. And if you are going to ask those kinds of questions like, “How do you do it all?”, then ask the men too.

When I published the article on Medium, I wasn’t surprised to hear from a lot of women who said it really resonated with them.  But it was really interesting to hear from many men, too, who were like, “You know what? I’m really pissed because I realized nobody ever asks me about my family. I think it’s because they think I don’t care as much about my family as my wife does.” The whole thing is dehumanizing to everyone. It’s like, “Women, all you are is a group of people who help make families, and then also could work. Men, you are people who work, and maybe you have a family.” It’s all based on really unfortunate stereotypes and doesn’t allow people to define themselves and how they want to be seen.

I also noticed in your writing that you gave people books for Christmas and I did the same thing.

Oh really?

Yes. I gave all my best friends like 10 books that affected me deeply in 2015, because last year was a year of reading self-help books and being a hermit. You also mentioned that you’re not like a huge books person. What was it about those books that impacted you so much?

Well, it’s interesting. I’ll tell you something that hardly anybody knows because I’m still processing it myself. I just got diagnosed with dyslexia a month ago [chuckles].

For real?

[laughter] My daughter has dyslexia, and when we were going through the process of getting her assessed they interviewed me and my husband. And after they interviewed me they were like, ‘’You probably have some undiagnosed issues.’’ I’ve always been a very slow reader, and I struggle to keep up with a lot of written information. I reverse things all the time and have a terrible sense of direction. There are a lot of things that in hindsight make a lot more sense. And so when they said that to me I was like, ‘’Hmm, that’s interesting.’’ I thought, ‘’I think I’m just going to get assessed, too, just to find out.’’ So I went through a formal assessment with the clinical psychologist, and boom, here I am.  

It’s kind of a wild thing to find this out a lot later than kids like my daughter discovered it. But I think you’re much better off finding that out today then when I was a kid. I don’t think people really understood it then. I think they may have thought that it was correlated with intelligence, which it isn’t at all. Maybe you get put in special ed when you didn’t need to, you just needed time accommodation. You know what I mean? I just think there’s a lot less stigma attached to it today. I see my daughter going through that. She’s like, “Yeah, it’s fine. I’m not embarrassed about it. I have a bunch of friends who are dyslexic [chuckles].” It’s like no big deal.

“If you survey successful, CEOs, there’s a disproportionate percentage of them that have dyslexia, or some kind of learning challenge. This makes sense because for those people, everything’s harder. They’re just naturally inclined to be tenacious and have grit, and to work through problems, and to recover from failure, because that’s how it is when you are a dyslexic in a world awash with written information. That whole notion of going beyond what you were born with is really appealing to me. It’s such an optimistic way of looking at human opportunity.”

I’m still processing what that means for me. But generally, I’m excited because I’m just a big believer in self-awareness and self-knowledge. If that’s true of my brain, I want to know it so that I can figure out how can I work more effectively. Just the recognition that I’m probably working X percent harder than I need to, and maybe there’s technology and tools that can help me have to work less hard at things is hopeful and liberating. I think I’ve believed in some contexts that I wasn’t as smart as the people around me, but the reality is that the mechanics of my brain were just slowing me down. I think we should all be interested in understanding how our minds work and how we can harness technology to work better.

When the psychologist asked me, “Margaret, what’s your relationship to reading?” I said, “I love stories.” She’s like, “That’s not the same thing. How do you feel about reading?” I said, “I love audiobooks.” I asked my mother one time what I used to do when I was a kid and she said, “You spent hours in your room, listening to those books that had the records that went along with them.” So interesting. Kids are amazing. They just figure out sometimes what they need even if adult don’t recognize that there’s an issue. Because one of the classic recommendation for people with dyslexia is to listen to audio versions while you’re reading the same written material. I guess I figure that out when I was three.

Anyway, I have hundreds and hundreds of books. I love stories and narrative so much, and yet reading a book just really takes me forever. If it’s not unbelievably engaging, I just don’t get through it. Which is frustrating because I’m an incredibly curious person and there’s 1,001 things I want to learn about. But I’ve found other ways to learn and grow. I don’t need to feel bad about it anymore. The reason this relates to the piece that I wrote about growth and vulnerability is two-fold; and this is so interesting in hindsight.

One is that Carol Dweck talks a lot about people with learning challenges in her book Mindset, because if you survey successful, CEOs, there’s a disproportionate percentage of them that have dyslexia, or some kind of learning challenge. This makes sense because for those people, everything’s harder. They’re just naturally inclined to be tenacious and have grit, and to work through problems, and to recover from failure, because that’s how it is when you are a dyslexic in a world awash with written information. That whole notion of going beyond what you were born with is really appealing to me. It’s such an optimistic way of looking at human opportunity.

The hardest thing sometimes is for people to get over their fear of failure, whether it’s professionally or personally. They pull punches all the time. They don’t take the risk, because they’re afraid of failing, and they miss all of the learning comes from failure. Mindset is a book that’s really been influential to me as a person, as a manager and a colleague, and as a parent, quite frankly. I really try to drive this into my kids, like, “Do your best and don’t worry about failing. I don’t actually care what classes you take, or what you study. But, don’t shy away from something because it’s hard.

And then, Brene Brown — who doesn’t love Brene Brown.

That was one of the books I gave to my friends this year.

Have you listened to any of her audio books? Her voice, her accent is just amazing. And she is so funny. But I think that book has been really influential for me, and just her teachings in general. And by the way, not coincidentally, both of those I listened as audio books. I never read the physical book [chuckle].

Funny, I think one of the things that I realized about myself, and I don’t know why this is, is that I am in a lot of ways unconcerned with admitting to my weaknesses. Sometimes it perplexes me about why people are afraid to do that. It’s absurd to think that we are all great at everything. Like its just an absurd notion, and I always tend to feel like if you own your bad PR, nobody can say anything about you that you haven’t already said about yourself. It’s very liberating.

What advice would you give to kind of young puppies starting out that you wish that you’d known in the beginning?

Take risks, especially when you’re young. You can fall down, but you won’t fall down that far because you’re already close to the ground.

[laughter]

It always makes me sad when people in early career play it too safe. I believe you can take smart risks through your entire career and most of the good things in my life have come from going with my instinct with no guarantees of success. Just figure out what’s the opportunity that’s going to challenge you and help you grow the most and not worry about the short term outcome. Because what you’re doing is you’re just building your toolkit, building your confidence, building the scenarios where you can be effective.

“It always makes me sad when people in early career play it too safe. I believe you can take smart risks through your entire career and most of the good things in my life have come from going with my instinct with no guarantees of success. Just figure out what’s the opportunity that’s going to challenge you and help you grow the most and not worry about the short term outcome. Because what you’re doing is you’re just building your toolkit, building your confidence, building the scenarios where you can be effective.”

I come from Sacramento, California. I come from a mixed-race, mixed-identity household, and that set me up for a really open view [chuckles] growing up. I’ve always been into creative things, but never really honed in on it or went to any kinds of young art schools or anything like that. It was only through being diagnosed with cancer that I even discovered design or anything that I’m doing now.

“It was only through being diagnosed with cancer that I even discovered design or anything that I’m doing now.”

That is wild. How old were you?

I was 14.

Walk me through that: getting diagnosed and discovering design at the same time, how does that even work?

I went to the doctor after having some discomfort in my neck for a few months, and then carried on about my business like nothing was wrong. Initially, I was diagnosed with a lymph node infection, so I just went to school. After a couple more days though, they retested the sample and it turned out that I had cancer—so they abruptly pulled me out of school out of nowhere. My mom was like, “We need to go to the hospital right now. Don’t worry about class. Don’t worry about any of that.” And I go there and they sit me down and say, “Hey, you have stage three Burkitt’s lymphoma. We need to start chemotherapy immediately.”

How does a 14 year old even know what that means?

I don’t know. I was on my way to lunch and then took the detour. So then I started chemo the next day, and it was pretty intense. I had to shave my head, I lost the rest of my hair, couldn’t keep food down—I was throwing up pretty much every day. And then one day, I was laying in the ICU—isolated because I had zero white blood cells due to treatment—and I saw the little icons to adjust the bed angle up and down. They stood out to me because I could understand them but they didn’t have any words. Maybe it was just because I wasn’t really talking to people—I was in my head a lot and I started asking myself, “What’s the thing that lets me understand what this does? Like why can I read this symbol? It’s not a hieroglyph, it’s not a word, but why do I know what it’s doing. Like what’s that magic or that secret sauce behind understanding symbols?” And then I started researching things like ISOTYPE and iconography, and then that led me down the rabbit hole of digital design and now here I am.

“After a couple more days though, they retested the sample and it turned out that I had cancer—so they abruptly pulled me out of school out of nowhere. My mom was like, ‘We need to go to the hospital right now. Don’t worry about class. Don’t worry about any of that.’ And I go there and they sit me down and say, ‘Hey, you have stage three Burkitt’s lymphoma. We need to start chemotherapy immediately.'”

Wow. In a similar vein, did you know that you’d end up in tech, or when did you first get intrigued by that?

Working in tech kind of came as a really big surprise. The only reason I’m even working in tech is because a friend of mine who I knew, back from when I used to do graffiti in college, told me about some event that Google was holding and he said, “You should throw your hat in the ring and see if they pick you for it.” I was like, “Eh, I’m not going to get picked. I don’t have any art background or I don’t really even know how to use Photoshop, but I’ll do it.” So I applied for a thing called Google +20 at the recommendation of a graffiti artist in Australia. +20 was Google’s search for a top-20 selection of emerging creatives around the world, which teamed up for a hackathon, as part of Semi-Permanent LA. I pitched them a moonshot, and I was picked for it. From that, I met a lot of great designers at Google, Maud, and from Wieden+Kennedy. That introduced me to my first set of mentors and I decided to take it seriously, and that’s how I got my start in tech.

Since then, what are your proudest projects and what have been the highlights of your career?

I guess I’d consider my ‘career’ as starting before my first actual job in tech. There was one big challenge that I took a leap in, that was coming out of the +20 event with Google. I wanted to hold my own similar thing. I had just been introduced to the idea of moonshot thinking, and I was riding this high of like, “Nothing is impossible.” So I held a design sprint with Google on civic innovation when I was 22. Most of the mentors from the previous Google event came out to Sacramento to help me run the event. That kind of gave me the spark that I still kind of hold on to—that with enough planning and focus and determination… so far I’ve encountered nothing that’s impossible.

“It is a pretty big daily struggle. I’m still going through scares about, “Oh, my God. What is this bump?” Or, “This fever’s lasted too long.” I was at a gastroenterologist yesterday getting an ultrasound and a biopsy just because it’s such an ongoing concern.”

One of the mentors that came to the event—her name was Krista Sanders, and she was the design director at a company called Whistle. They make a GPS tracker for dogs. That’s where I still work now as the Sr. Visual Designer. Just getting to build that kind of trial by fire has just been one long, very drawn-out accomplishment, in my eyes.

What have you felt are your biggest struggles?

I think one of my biggest struggles is—and I talk pretty openly about how cancer has been the catalyst to why and how I became a designer—but it is a pretty big daily struggle. I’m still going through scares about, “Oh, my God. What is this bump?” Or, “This fever’s lasted too long.” I was at a gastroenterologist yesterday getting an ultrasound and a biopsy just because it’s such an ongoing concern.

Also coming from a self-taught background proved to be a huge challenge. I studied communication and mass media in college, and I took one design class once and decided to switch my major because I didn’t like how it was taught. But I found that I have to learn a lot of things really quickly when I found out I don’t know them because it wasn’t included in the self-taught curriculum of just learning Photoshop and Illustrator. There’s so much that I realize I don’t know that I have to be really agile in learning. It’s kind of an ongoing challenge, I kind of like it, but it is kind of tough at times.

Yeah. You had a freelance time in your career, right?

Going through college, one of the ways I made a living was doing commissioned artwork and freelance design. I met some interesting characters throughout the freelancing [laughter].

Would you want to go back to that or do you prefer what you’re doing now?

In freelancing?

Yeah.

I mean, I’ve always  I’ve had this idea of one day, just owning a studio and doing strictly client work on a more structured basis. I just don’t want to go back to how I was doing it previously [laughter].

“There’s no class to learn how to do graffiti. You just had to figure it out, and take your knocks, and your critiques. And people will cover your stuff with expletives, which is more in your face than a design critique, but in the same way that’s kind of really helped me be able to kill my darlings and focus on bettering my craft. I don’t get attached to things. Everything I’ve created since day one has been temporary, from graffiti to iterating in designs, so if we’re going to kill it and make something better, I’m all for it. I think it’s a strength [chuckles].”

Yeah, for sure. So, your background’s in graffiti, which I think is really cool. And how do you feel like that informs your work?

It showed me the underbelly of society—the good and the bad of it. It helps humanize the strangers out on the street, and it absolutely helped me empathize in things like user testing or doing emotional design. It’s also helped me really cut my teeth to some hard challenges. There’s no class to learn how to do graffiti. You just had to figure it out, and take your knocks, and your critiques. And people will cover your stuff with expletives, which is more in your face than a design critique, but in the same way that’s kind of really helped me be able to kill my darlings and focus on bettering my craft. I don’t get attached to things. Everything I’ve created since day one has been temporary, from graffiti to iterating in designs, so if we’re going to kill it and make something better, I’m all for it. I think it’s a strength [chuckles].

Have you had mentors or folks that you looked up to for inspiration on the way?

Yes, I think the core group of mentors that—that during Google+ came out to my little event that I held—I really looked up to them in such a serious way. They’ve made me the designer I am today. Among them are Mike Buzzard, Brynne Evans, Chris Messina, Christa Sanders and Chikezie Ejiasi. In each of their own ways, they each taught me so much about design and tech, building my soft skills and design chops. They helped to demystify my preconceptions about what I saw, at the time, as the ivory tower of tech.

“I was worried it would be a bunch of privileged, rich, Harvard-dropout types. While the stereotypical person in tech certainly exists, it’s not by any means the norm that I’ve experienced. From what I’ve seen, it’s people who are drowning in debt and struggling to make it by, and people who lost their previous jobs when the economy tanked, and who have real worries.”

What were your preconceptions? What were you worried about going into it?

I was worried it would be a bunch of privileged, rich, Harvard-dropout types. While the stereotypical person in tech certainly exists, it’s not by any means the norm that I’ve experienced. From what I’ve seen, it’s people who are drowning in debt and struggling to make it by, and people who lost their previous jobs when the economy tanked, and who have real worries.

How has being different—like coming from a graffiti community, having a diverse racial composition—how have those things been both an asset and a hindrance to you?

I’ve met a lot of people, between previous clients and other designers I’ve met, that have been pretty vocal with judgmental concepts about race. I’m Persian, and I have a lot of family from the Middle East. I went to a design meet-up, and I heard a couple designers right in front of me talking pretty offensively about people from the Middle East. Because perhaps they looked around and didn’t see anyone wearing a turban, they thought it was okay to talk like this. People say what they want to say when they think it’s okay. They’ll do a quick racial check around themselves, and then they can take the filters off. It’s made me a little bit more distrustful, or maybe a bit more cynical, of the design and tech community. For every bit that is the optimism I have, there’s a part that’s wanting to cautiously question who I’m talking to, or the people around me.

“I’m Persian, and I have a lot of family from the Middle East. I went to a design meet-up, and I heard a couple designers right in front of me talking pretty offensively about people from the Middle East. Because perhaps they looked around and didn’t see anyone wearing a turban, they thought it was okay to talk like this. People say what they want to say when they think it’s okay. They’ll do a quick racial check around themselves, and then they can take the filters off. It’s made me a little bit more distrustful, or maybe a bit more cynical, of the design and tech community. For every bit that is the optimism I have, there’s a part that’s wanting to cautiously question who I’m talking to, or the people around me.”

I talked to someone earlier today that spoke of the concept of “white enough.” Someone white enough that he passes for certain things, but also hears racial aggressions that probably wouldn’t be said in front of him otherwise.

It’s kind of turned into not so much a daily thing, but at least two or three times a week and that’s just in talking to the extended design community.

“One time I had a client very blatantly ask me, ‘Where’s your name from? Like ethnically?’ I’ve always dreaded any ethnic-related questions in interviews, and I’ve had a couple of times people break what’s acceptable to talk about in interviews and ask me what my ethnicity was in tech, just generally.”

That’s wild.

It sounds made up for so many reasons. I want to not believe it, despite having witnessed it.

It gets a little depressing after a while. One time I had a client very blatantly ask me, “Where’s your name from? Like ethnically?” I’ve always dreaded any ethnic-related questions in interviews, and I’ve had a couple of times people break what’s acceptable to talk about in interviews and ask me what my ethnicity was in tech, just generally.

Wow.  On the flip side of that, where do you find your support networks?

I find my support networks with designers who’ve been around the block a little bit more. Thinking back—it seems like everyone who’s been saying such extreme and inappropriate things has been earlier in their career—no more than 4 or 5 years into their career. Despite falling within that range, I find myself identifying and just appreciating more with how people who are closer to a decade or two into their career. Maybe it’s because all of them who chose not to clean up how they act, didn’t make it that far [chuckles].

“Thinking back—it seems like everyone who’s been saying such extreme and inappropriate things has been earlier in their career—no more than 4 or 5 years into their career. Despite falling within that range, I find myself identifying and just appreciating more with how people who are closer to a decade or two into their career. Maybe it’s because all of them who chose not to clean up how they act, didn’t make it that far [chuckles].”

Yeah, I hope so.

Yeah, same [chuckles].

Let’s see. Have we talked about motivators? We talked about mentors. I don’t know if we talked about motivators.

I don’t think we talked about motivators.

Kind of similar, but different. What motivates you, and what are the motivations behind your work?

To me, finding design inspired me with something to really fight through chemo for. I was so depressed and just mugging through everyday. It gave me something to really purpose myself towards. Ever since then, I’ve always had this greater idea – or greater purpose, or need – to just do massive amounts of good. And I’m really trying to refrain from saying the stereotypical, “Make the world a better place.” [laughter] That’s kind of become a trademarked term in Silicon Valley.

“Finding design inspired me with something to really fight through chemo for. I was so depressed and just mugging through everyday. It gave me something to really purpose myself towards. Ever since then, I’ve always had this greater idea – or greater purpose, or need – to just do massive amounts of good.”

There’s some genuine good work being done out there. I’d rather use design to solve problems that people can’t afford to not have solved. To me it’s not necessarily about calling a ride faster, but maybe how to get clean water. Or how to get food. Or the basic necessities to life. I think that kind of design, for me, is my greatest inspiration.

Do you think your background and life experience—do you think that feeds into that desire to affect greater the world than just here in Silicon Valley?

Absolutely. Even as a kid, I had a pretty broad world view just like having family in the Middle East but also being Native American. I think that’s really humanized a lot for me.

How do your friends and family feel about the work that you’ve done?

They love it. My current work at Whistle is a common point for a lot of friends and family. We all have rescued dogs, so it’s a huge motivator to design with those pups in mind.

“There’s some genuine good work being done out there. I’d rather use design to solve problems that people can’t afford to not have solved.”

It’s nice that you are designing something your family can use.

Yeah [laughter]. It was part of the reason why I was so excited to work at Whistle. It’s just really cool to build something for something that’s so close to my heart, and the hearts of my friends and family.

It’s cool to hand them a tech device and say, “Hey, I helped make this thing. Open your phone and I’ll show you how to use it.” It’s really nice.

That’s awesome.

It feels very tangible.

What do you think about the state of tech in general in 2016? What excites you about it, what frustrates you about it?

Whoa. [laughter]

Loaded question.

Yeah, a lot excites me. I think that there’s a very democratic change happening to how companies are founded, and how they are threatened by one another that lets the users ultimately win. I work with IOT devices—the Internet of Things—and the space is really starting to really feel validated. I see a lot of huge opportunity in connecting various devices, and letting them all interact with one another – especially in the medical field. Biometric sensors have a long way to go and I can think of personal times in a hospital bed being covered and tangled up in IV lines—could have been relieved by having everything be wireless and connected. [chuckle] It’s a pretty graphic image to think of, but imagine being lined up with IVs in your arms and then falling is the worst thing ever. IOT could make that fear never exist again. [chuckles]

“I can think of personal times in a hospital bed being covered and tangled up in IV lines—could have been relieved by having everything be wireless and connected.

Quite literally my worst fear.

One day, thanks to technology, no one will ever have to experience that fear come to life.

But I am curious, because when I—recently I had my first major surgery. When your appendix bursts you could die, and that moment was kind of getting struck by lightning for me. And my priorities have completely—they haven’t changed necessarily—but all this other little shit that used to take up mindspace doesn’t matter anymore.  And I’m curious how becoming so sick so early and almost losing your life—how do you feel like your perspective and your priorities are different than other young designers around you?

I feel like my priorities are definitely different than my peers. It’s going to sound like a super old dusty thing to say, but “fun” isn’t exactly what excites me about life or what I, in any way, feel the need to focus my time on. I’d much rather spend 36 hours a day building something that’s going to outlive me, because at any moment—very literally—bad news could come in. And your present self is the culmination of all your choices in the past. I want to make sure that whenever that ultimate day comes along, I’ve got a lot of shit that stays around after I’m gone.

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years? Do you think you’ll be in tech?

I think I’ll definitely still be in tech in five or ten years. Specifically in product design. Not entirely sure about still being in San Francisco. Nothing against the city—but I’ve traveled a lot my whole life—and I just love the idea of one day designing in Brooklyn or something, and one day designing somewhere in Colorado, or Portland, or Zimbabwe. Or Vietnam. [chuckles]

“I feel like my priorities are definitely different than my peers. It’s going to sound like a super old dusty thing to say, but “fun” isn’t exactly what excites me about life or what I, in any way, feel the need to focus my time on. I’d much rather spend 36 hours a day building something that’s going to outlive me, because at any moment—very literally—bad news could come in. And your present self is the culmination of all your choices in the past. I want to make sure that whenever that ultimate day comes along, I’ve got a lot of shit that stays around after I’m gone.”

I’m curious what advice you would give to folks from similar backgrounds—or folks that have been through similar struggles—that are in tech or hoping to get in.

“Don’t give up.” I don’t want to soapbox, but I’ve been through some pretty shitty experiences—I’ve gone through cancer, being robbed, debt, etc. But at the same time it’s been just as motivating because I firmly believe—and maybe this is just the optimist in me speaking—but I firmly believe people and life are intrinsically good. There’s such a bright light at the end of this tunnel. At the end of this career I want to look back and see so much cool stuff I’ve built. And that’s not going to happen if I let everything get to me, or if I get bummed out by material things. So I guess just focus on what’s really important if you’re looking back from the end of your life and let that guide you.

]]> /arman-nobari/feed/ 0 /everett-katigbak/ /everett-katigbak/#respond Tue, 29 Mar 2016 03:01:50 +0000 http://techies.wpengine.com/?p=96 Tell me a bit about your early years and where you come from.

I grew up in this really janky town called Fontana, which they nicknamed Fontucky, which pretty much sums it up. It was a really rough and tumble part of the inland empire, and I spent most of my young years there and remember it pretty fondly, although there was definitely a lot of racial tension out there.

I grew up in this really janky town called Fontana, which they nicknamed Fontucky, which pretty much sums it up.

In elementary school, we moved to this place called Chino. If you’ve ever watched the OC, Chino is “the other side of the tracks.” There were a lot of Hispanic, African American, and Asian gangs out there. I grew up really into skateboarding and punk rock, and that was my way of being outside of all that stuff. I still had a lot of friends that were involved gang different gangs and I remember seeing the older high school people get into a lot of trouble, which had a big impact on the younger generation. But also still having this thing that was my own, which was skateboarding, music, and my friends. We still got into our share of trouble, but were luckily on the edge of a lot of the really bad stuff that was happening around us.

I grew up in a musical family. My mom is a singer; she sang in church. My grandmother was a pretty amazing multi-instrumentalist back in the Philippines. She sang, played violin, and piano and all of that. My brother played music growing up; he was a pianist and violinist. My dad was a guitarist. He’d do rock and roll guitar, and was super into Santana and the Beatles. He used to play in rock bands in the Philippines and they’d ditch school just to play music and stuff which is where I got it from, the DNA. I was definitely the nerdy band kid playing saxophone in marching band, but that influenced my musical taste because I started getting more into jazz music through the saxophone.

I started playing a lot of jazz because it was stimulating for me mentally, and my curiosity was piqued the more that I got into the technical aspects of music. But then there is this raw emotional side of music that, listening to punk-rock and stuff also satisfied for me. There are two separate things that attracted me to these kind of polar opposite types of music, and I think resonated with me as this person who lived in two worlds.

Many of my friends were really into gangs and drugs, getting into a lot of trouble. I was never into that, but I definitely tagged along and got into loose mischievous things. Some of them went to jail, and it just didn’t end up well for them.

By the time I got to high school, Chino had now split into two parts, and this new city had formed called Chino Hills. It was this old part of town that used to be cow pastures and stuff, but it became this weird middle-class and yuppy part of town. But we still lived in this part that was on the outskirts, I guess, but still a part of Chino Hills. The new high school was this weird mix of suburban yuppie kids, but also other kids from Hispanic neighborhoods. Everyone from the surrounding area went there since it was the only school around. That was a funny, interesting time, because all of these other little subculture started to emerge. It’s a lot different than it is now because you had to meet people with similar interests. That’s how you discovered music and cults and all that. There wasn’t the internet or Facebook groups. I definitely gravitated toward those more outcast, black sheep type of people. I played in ska and reggae bands, and played some rockabilly music too, but still in the jazz band in high school. It was a big part of my life.

It seems like a really positive childhood experience, considering how rough it was where you grew up. Like you were super curious and hobby-focused.

Yeah, definitely—when something piques my interest I get obsessive about it, and that drives me—I get tunnel vision and that really is the thing that just encompasses all of my time. And I’d say that’s the stuff that kept me out of the really dark parts of where I grew up. Like, my parents and I were not on the same page, if you know what I mean. They’re super religious, Filipino Catholics. My brother and I weren’t super close. We’re like two totally different people. I think we were close when we were really young, but I think the older he got, like Jr high school, we didn’t really hang out at the time, because he’s 4 years older than me. By the time I got to high school, he’d graduated and he went to the military.

Many of my friends were really into gangs and drugs, getting into a lot of trouble. I was never into that, but I definitely tagged along and got into loose mischievous things. Some of them went to jail, and it just didn’t end up well for them.

Take me on the journey from that to getting into tech.

I was still really obsessed with music. I studied Jazz composition as well as recording engineering right after high school. I thought that’s what I was going to do, so I got a degree in recording engineering. After that, I started working in a small studio on Melrose. That was interesting because I was still relatively young,maybe 19, 20 when I was doing that. I was working for other artists. I was tracking their sessions and it was really weird because I think one of my main clients was this group of Pasadena Blood gangster rappers. They would pack the studio and just get insanely stoned and argue over stupid stuff. I was just not into that music. It was just a weird mix and I was like, why am I in here recording their sessions. It was still a good experience, and really good exposure to something different.

For a good three or four months, I was interviewing relentlessly. It was before web design was super prominent, so I had a physical portfolio full of books and printed pieces and I just talked to anyone that would check out my work or even give me some advice. I’d say I had maybe thirty or forty interviews in this short time span.

George Clinton was the main cash cow for the studio. Whenever he would come in, he would kick out whoever was in their at the time so they could record, but I got to spend some time in some of their sessions. Basically, they’d just get blitzed and then turn on the microphones, and then just creating this weird mix of sound that was part babble and part music. Long story short, I was about to have a kid and the music biz wasn’t cutting it. My girlfriend was 19 at the time, freshly out of high school. I was 20 or 21—and I decided that I needed to step it up. Being young and naive, I thought, “Hey, I’ll go to art school,” thinking that would be better. I went to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and took fine arts, printmaking, as well as environmental design. My passion in terms of design, was the built space. So once I graduated there, I was pretty adamant about not going into tech. In early 2000, web design was really hadn’t caught up to traditional forms of graphic design, and you didn’t have a lot of control. Being very classically trained as a designer, you just—in those early days—were like, “Oh, God. I don’t even want to touch the web. It’s pretty atrocious.”

I started working in the Getty Museum as an exhibition designer. I did interior architecture, environmental graphic design, and furniture. It was lots of fun working in an academic space, with very low consequences in the sense that I’m designing educational exhibits about historic art, or famous people, or just bodies of work. It was the best place for me to learn my craft and I was able to explore all different mediums. But the pay was shitty, and having a newborn child and working in a museum…I knew it would be a fun opportunity, but I couldn’t do it forever. It’s crazy for me to see people there for 10-20 years. Just thinking how they lived off that salary, because I wasn’t getting paid anything and and could’ve made more working in retail or doing something like that.

San Francisco was always a special place for me. It’s like my second home away from Los Angeles. And I’d gotten so burnt out from sitting in traffic and just grinding it out in LA, that I thought that I would try to move up to the Bay area. And once I made that decision, then I just came up here and pounded the pavement.

For a good three or four months, I was interviewing relentlessly. It was before web design was super prominent, so I had a physical portfolio full of books and printed pieces and I just talked to anyone that would check out my work or even give me some advice. I’d say I had maybe thirty or forty interviews in this short time span. Then, one of my friends that I went to school with that was a little bit older than me got a job at Google. He was the first brand guy there. So I met with him, and then I met with someone at Facebook. I think that was actually kind of serendipitous because my portfolio had nothing to do with tech, it was all environmental design. But I think some of them had gone to the Getty and seen an exhibit, and I told them that I designed it, and it was like, “Oh my God, that was a great exhibit.” I think that’s how I caught their eye, because I just applied through a random ad on some kind of job listing site. I didn’t have any ambitions of going into tech, per se, but I thought Facebook would be an interesting gig, and all the people that I met were these really idealistic young entrepreneurial types, and they really sold me on the opportunity at Facebook. All my friends were like, “Facebook sounds like a horrible job, why would you work there?” Especially going from the Getty, which is this Mecca if you’re into high design or whatever. But again, I just couldn’t live like that. It was just really bad. Facebook didn’t have a brand per say, it was much smaller than Myspace. I think Friendster was still around at that time. Honestly it just seemed a lot easier for me to get my family up here through Facebook. Also there was this opportunity to build a brand at a consumer internet company that I don’t think had really been done super successfully before then. That’s kind of what got me up to the Bay area—happenstance. Not even looking for tech, jobs but just looking for a job in a city that I was really interested in living in.

All my friends were like, “Facebook sounds like a horrible job, why would you work there?” Especially going from the Getty, which is this Mecca if you’re into high design or whatever. But again, I just couldn’t live like that. It was just really bad. Facebook didn’t have a brand per say, it was much smaller than Myspace. I think Friendster was still around at that time.

That’s cool. How big was Facebook at the time?

We had just opened our fifth office which was in New York. It was New York, Chicago, and a couple of random cities in the United States. Five offices, most of those people were sales people. So I would say it was maybe 400-500 people. In terms of design, the design team was still really small—definitely less than 10, maybe 7 or 8 people. Engineering was rather large but product design was a tiny little team.

Was your role defined as soon as you got there? Or was it just up to you?

There wasn’t a bunch of projects waiting for me there. I think I asked my manager at the time what I should be working on, and he just pointed to some people across the room and was like—“go talk to them and see what they’re doing.” He encouraged me to put myself out there and start seeing where I could dive in and have the most impact. Which was something super foreign to me because working in an exhibition design studio—especially the Getty Museum—they have their exhibits planned out probably a decade in advance to be honest with you. They’re like, we know what we’re doing 5 years from now in August. So it’s kind of like a machine there.

At Facebook I had no idea what I was doing. I knew that I would be focusing on communication design and more of the brand aspects of it, but I don’t even think we knew what that was at Facebook. It was still early in my career so I didn’t have any formulated opinions on it. It was this perfect storm of “just go with your gut and see what happens.”

Walk me through some of your projects over the course of your tech career, they vary quite a bit.

Early on, I was kind of feeling my way out through the place and understanding the identity system, which wasn’t really apparent. It was a logotype, color, and basic stuff. But it didn’t have any voice in terms of the visual identity. In fact, we intentionally didn’t have a brand voice in the early days. I worked with some of the sales and marketing teams to create some of their collateral, like brochures, little handouts for sales events. And that’s how I started—a lot of those relatively small design tasks. Working with HR to do the employee benefit packets, stuff like that. After a while I think we started to just go for it and take the reins.

The more the company grew, the more initiatives we started to realize were happening that were pretty large, at least for the company at that scale. Having some experience in environmental design, I took on some work doing their conferences. We did their first F8, which is their developer’s conference. At the time, I think they had done one already, but it was relatively small in scale, and it was almost this popup thing. We had some insight on budget, and we had some direction on the content, but for the most part we had very little oversight in terms of how it was going to manifest physically.

At Facebook I had no idea what I was doing. I knew that I would be focusing on communication design and more of the brand aspects of it, but I don’t even think we knew what that was at Facebook. It was still early in my career so I didn’t have any formulated opinions on it. It was this perfect storm of “just go with your gut and see what happens.”

So the other partner that I had at the time was this guy, Ben Barry. He and I were both similar, young and wide-eyed, hungry designers, and I think we just started making and designing and building things for this physical event. It was just the two of us alone in a warehouse with screen printing tables, assembling them ourselves, and people were just like “why are you doing that, why don’t you rent them.” And for us, no one was going to give us money to do this stuff, so we were just going to make them on the cheap, and we wanted this aesthetic to feel very DIY and handcrafted. Mainly just out of necessity, because if we had a bigger budget we would have spent more money to make it a little bit more elaborate. Most of it was just working with our hands and trying to bring this—it’s like this idea of what a hacker-based visual identity might look like. We were just trying things and making stuff. It was super fun.

For me, the biggest opportunity at Facebook was that we were building this product, but the story of the company was very focused on data, and privacy, and this young renegade CEO. Everyone forgot about what the product was enabling. Which was just communication with people and families—communities sharing information and really changing the way they they interacted.

So early on, using film was one of our easiest ways to capture a lot of those stories, document them, and get them out there. We started doing small brand video projects. Then we started doing bigger product launches and creating narrative pieces around specific products. But then we also got into documenting human stories that were on Facebook, which for me was the most fun part of being there, getting to travel and hear about these communities and different people that were doing interesting things with Facebook, in some remote part of the world. A small crew of people shooting, editing, and creating this channel to deliver stories on behalf of the brand, was a really powerful thing for me. It was this big arc for me, thinking I was going to design web pages and ultimately doing these really big brand initiatives over the course of about five years.

I think the Analog Research Lab is one of the coolest things I saw when I first visited Facebook’s campus, and you created it. How did that come about?

I mentioned the F8 conferences that we did early on — I would say that was the impetus for us to build a space to make stuff. We had this huge warehouse that was basically used for storage, and no one knew that we were in there. We just started making stuff in the corner. I think somehow we just weaseled access into the garage, and then they looked the other way and let us do whatever we wanted in there.

For me, the biggest opportunity at Facebook was that we were building this product, but the story of the company was very focused on data, and privacy, and this young renegade CEO. Everyone forgot about what the product was enabling. Which was just communication with people and families—communities sharing information and really changing the way they they interacted.

We started bringing in our own supplies. I think the Analog Research Lab started with some homemade silkscreens and some power tools that we had that was our own personal equipment. We just started making and building in the space, and accumulating equipment over time. Officially made it a thing after these F8 conferences, once people saw some of the output, then we started working out of there more and more, Ben Barry and I.

Before Ben Barry came to Facebook, he worked at a screen-printing studio in Austin called The Decoder Ring. I used to teach letterpress at Art Center before moving up here, in Pasadena. So we had this strong connection to the tactile and the physically made design stuff. And being in a world of engineers, and product, and web designers, it was a hyperdigital space. We just wanted to keep our hands dirty and still keep those skills sharp.

It was a way for us to break out of that very technological world. Then we bought some legit screen printing equipment. I found an old letterpress that I restored, and it’s still there today. We just started producing tons of hand-crafted stuff. Not just to make pretty things, but a lot of it was centered around the messages themselves. We were trying to bring the company’s values to life, but also use the lab as this provocateur inside the company. We would print posters, slogans of things that were in the air—sayings, or mantras—and we would commit them to paper.

The fact that we were using these seemingly antiquated pieces of communication technology was very subtle; but it was conceptual for us in the sense that Facebook was building this communication platform which was a paradigm shift from all the different means of communications that existed. People didn’t see it in this trajectory of human communication; from cave paintings to scribes to the Gutenberg bible. All of these things increasingly ramped up the amount of information that people were producing and consuming. Facebook is no different.

My father used to work for Pacific Bell, the telephone company. There were payphones on every street. Now that I’m an adult, you can’t even find a payphone out here. That’s how fast these communication platforms are changing. We just wanted to use the letters as a way to tie these things together. It wasn’t a project that was delivered to us or that was cued up for us. It was a passion and a very personal thing for us. That was how it took off. Once we moved to the current campus, we put it front and center. It became a landmark inside of the campus. It has a full staff now. There’s a shop manager and designers that work full time in there, but for us it was definitely a “nights and weekends” type of personally driven thing.

I love that it was a side project and it wasn’t necessarily in the realm of specialty that you were hired to work. You were pioneers for work culture that way. You guys started the posters-in-the-tech-office movement, I don’t know what else to call it. Who would have thought that something that didn’t feel necessary to a digital company or a digital product actually made ripples across all of tech?

Yeah. It’s pretty wild that now it’s all par-for-the-course, I guess. When I moved over to Pinterest, early on someone asked me, “Hey, can you make posters of some of our values?” I’m like, “No. I’m not going to do that. Not because I don’t want to do it but because I don’t think it’s what we need.” We delivered an idea because that’s what Facebook needed at the time to catalyze the culture around these things. But Pinterest was different.

I want to go into Pinterest as well, but I’m curious about something. Just hearing you talk about your work—it’s so interesting that you worked in tech at a time when specialization was important. Yet you seem to have broken those rules all over the place. It’s so interesting to me that you were so successful at that and made so many impactful projects. Did people notice that you were all over the place, and were they okay with it? I’m just so curious as to how you were able to create that path of your own when it wasn’t normal.

I don’t think at the time that people quite understood it, I don’t even think we understood it. We were just doing whatever we thought was important or whatever floated our boat at the time, I guess. I would say, in hindsight, it definitely has become a model. There were always marketing designers inside of companies, tech companies or not, but brand-focused designers were never really given the autonomy in tech companies the way that engineers and product designers were. There is still, like you mentioned, specialization. I think there are still a fair amount of generalists that they hired early on at Facebook. It could be because it was what the early team valued, and they knew that people who can do lots of different things are going to be able to move the needle more in that very malleable time. I’d say now it’s very specialized. You need to be a certain type of designer or engineer on a specific platform.

My father used to work for Pacific Bell, the telephone company. There were payphones on every street. Now that I’m an adult, you can’t even find a payphone out here. That’s how fast these communication platforms are changing.

I would say even though my work is seemingly diverse, when you look at an exhibition, or video, or whatever, a digital piece, there’s still a central trend which is around narrative and storytelling. I think that comes through in a lot of work, and being thoughtful about the strategy—if I were to describe the specialty that I bring, it’s probably more on the strategic side of brand. Most people only see the output, and they see my portfolio and they’re like, “Wow, you do all kinds of different stuff.” It’s because I don’t start with an output. I’m not a video person, I’m not an environmental designer. Those are appropriate mediums for whatever objective I’m trying to accomplish. Having that approach gave me the flexibility, but also still tied all that stuff together. Now I think there is a model for that inside of a tech company. Although I still think it’s hard for companies to kind of wrangle them in. A lot of it is about the culture and the leadership, and how willing they are to give you autonomy, which is rare for a lot of companies.

How was designing the new Facebook building with Frank Gehry?

I don’t think I’ll ever top that in my career, ever. That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done. I got to spend a lot of time with him. He’s in his 80s and he’s still the hardest working guy in the studio. He’s not doing all the grunt work, but he’s still a pretty active individual. Just being able to see the way that he works, which for me was pretty interesting, I say like most people that you think about, when they’re at a certain level like he is like, “Oh, this guy might be crazy cerebral or just really out there and different.” But he’s just the epitome of California cool, super laid back, but also still has this punk rock ethos, you know? The more people that I work with and seeing them operating at the highest level of their field—that gives me hope for our industry. Because there are definitely people that are super smart and crazy talented, but I think they make a thing out of being crazy smart and talented. Some like Frank Gehry do really cool shit, and if it fails, he’s still pushing himself to do better and more interesting and more unique stuff. That was the best part of my career.

Then you went to Pinterest.

It was just fun to get back into a smaller stage of a company, around something that was more personally relevant. A lot of the stuff I did at Facebook, from a superficial and aesthetic standpoint, probably would’ve worked better at Pinterest because it is this creative platform and there’s a lot of very specific things that we’re doing in the Analog Research Lab that actually worked well content-wise on Pinterest, like the DIY stuff. Not that I didn’t like the mission at Facebook. I think it’s pretty amazing, but being a creative individual, and going to art school, and always being connected to that, I think Pinterest brought me closer to my roots. I was around a bunch of people that were more like me.

The more people that I work with and seeing them operating at the highest level of their field—that gives me hope for our industry.

Pinterest has a much stronger personal relevance to me. I think that’s why the work that I was doing—even though it wasn’t necessarily at the scale of Facebook—there was always this this intimacy about it. It felt a little better to me because I would use this product pretty religiously.

Across your time in tech, what have been your biggest hardships and the biggest obstacles for you?

On the one hand I love the autonomy and being able to try stuff and come to the table with ideas, but I still operate in a very structured way and if I don’t have a framework, then it’s really hard for me to move forward. I think that’s what a more traditional design setting gave me. We have this exhibit going out this day, and this is the process, and it enabled me to be hyper-creative in a very streamlined way. So the lack of that has been the biggest challenge. Theoretically, I should be the one imposing that stuff, but it’s not as straightforward as that. It’s a pretty fluid, yet tumultuous environment to begin with, and each company is trying to do something different, including building the company that they want. When you bring existing processes to the table, I think it takes a lot of energy to implement those things, because everyone’s pretty reluctant to in the beginning.

When I first started at Facebook, I would find myself around people that were Ivy league or maybe had a lot of money. Part of me growing up in inland empire and the east side of Southern California just thinking, “How did I end up here?” It’s kind of crazy. It’s this conflict of money, class and upbringing that has been a weird struggle for me.

I think culturally, it’s also been a challenge. The culture of Bay Area Silicon Valley tech. I didn’t grow up like that, so I think it’s really weird for me, to be honest. Even now, having lived in the Bay Area for a good 10 years, there’s a side of me that sees all the money, and the crazy entitlement that goes around, and it really bums me out. It makes me not super excited about it anymore. It got progressively more over time, but even when I first started at Facebook, I would find myself around people that were Ivy league or maybe had a lot of money. Part of me growing up in inland empire and the east side of Southern California just thinking, “How did I end up here?” It’s kind of crazy. It’s this conflict of money, class and upbringing that has been a weird struggle for me.

You describe yourself as a broke, punk rocker from L.A. How did you fit in, or feel like you fit in, in your early days in tech and even now?

It was hard and I would say what resonated with me was the entrepreneurial spirit of early Facebook. And I think if it wasn’t Facebook, I don’t think it would have worked so well for me. Mainly because they let me explore myself creatively. Not intentionally, they just were too busy doing their own thing, and I was still producing a fair amount of work that was having some impact. I was also able to do that in a space where I didn’t have a ton of oversight, which is super rare. A lot of the great designers that I look up to, seem to have a combination either a good patron, or a studio, or a client that allows them to take those risks, and I had that at Facebook. I always use that as a benchmark which for me is not the right way to do it because all the jobs after that, I’m like “oh man at Facebook it was so different.” But I realize that it was a time in my career that I’ll probably never be able to replicate. I mean, I shouldn’t try to, I should just let these other things be themselves, you know?

The culture of Bay Area Silicon Valley tech. I didn’t grow up like that, so I think it’s really weird for me, to be honest. Even now, having lived in the Bay Area for a good 10 years, there’s a side of me that sees all the money, and the crazy entitlement that goes around, and it really bums me out. It makes me not super excited about it anymore.

I still have my family too, so that was the biggest thing because part of my life goals at the time were getting my family on their feet, and I was super determined. I think in many ways I just blocked out a lot of things. I had my eye on the prize for a long time, which was really hard to achieve, like getting out of debt, and owning a home, and the basic needs stuff. That’s really all that I cared about. I think everything else just kind of tuned out for a while.

Were you one of the first parents at Facebook?

Definitely on the design team. It wasn’t until relatively recently that those people I was on the team with at the time started having children. Only a handful of them. I still see them in my Facebook feed and they’re posting newborn photos. My daughter’s a teenager now. She spent a lot of time with me at Facebook in the early days. She would come to work with me and hang out and I would just let her run around the office. She knows Mark and Sheryl. She’s seen all those people. For all she knew at the time, they could have worked for me. I’m like “no, that young guy over there is the boss of all of this stuff.”

I tend to work early. I would take the Caltrain and get there super early in the morning. Sometimes at 6:00, 7:00 in the morning and be the first one there for a good 2 hours. But then people would want to meet at 6:00 at night. I’m like, “I got to go home. I got to eat dinner with the family,” and that was a struggle. But I didn’t feel like it was too much of a compromise. Everyone’s like, “why does he always leave early?” It wasn’t super early, it was just normal time, but they were a young crew of people that worked super-late. Now they know because they’re all having little babies and they’re like, “This is so hard,” and I’m like, “No shit, try doing it when you don’t have the financial means and the support network!”

How do your friends and family from home feel about the work you’ve done and how you turned out?

I think my parents are proud. Just being at Facebook, they assume that I’m a billionaire.

It’s a weird environment. And I think if you don’t live in the Bay Area or work in tech it’s so foreign. Even being inside of it you’re just like, “What is happening?” It’s such a weird thing. Each company is different and there’s all these different groups of people. Someone will write a book about this someday—but at this point in time, you kinda gotta be here to experience it.

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years? Do you see yourself still working in tech?

I don’t know if I see myself working in tech. My goal is definitely to have my own design practice. In five years my daughter will be in college, which, for me is crazy because we don’t have another kid and I’ll still be 40 years old. Relatively young in the sense of having a child that’s already out of the nest. That for me is pretty exciting, because we basically did our family life backwards. We had a kid early. We kind of grinded it out at work and got on our feet as a family. I didn’t spend my 20s dicking around going to clubs and stuff. Now I’m able to go out without freaking out about a babysitter. I’m starting to experience the city from a young adult’s eyes versus a parent’s eye, which is a new thing for my wife and I. If I’m able to travel and still have my own clientele and do stuff, that would be pretty amazing. I can’t say I won’t be in tech because I think most people are somehow tangentially connected to tech. Even if you’re freelancing as a designer, you might have a tech client, because that’s the predominant industry paying good money. I do see myself doing more music. That’s been number one on my list, trying to get a group people playing again. Also, doing more makerly things, like furniture design. Or make something physical and tangible versus working on a computer.

What advice would you have for people from similar backgrounds who are hoping to get into tech?

I guess the philosophical side of me is saying: First examine your motives. Sometimes a problem isn’t in the motive, but in the fact that you have a motive at all. And I think for me, just being able to navigate these really weird situations at times, was because I felt like a conscious observer and I was trying to be really objective towards things. But I think, had I come in with a goal being monetary or superficial stuff, then I don’t know if tech would have worked well for me. So that’s probably my first advice, which I don’t even know if that’s advice. But if you’re following tech because that’s where the money is, or that’s seemingly the most fluid and flexible work environment, I’d say all of those things are superficial. Examine what it is that really motivates you and see how tech either gets you closer to that or doesn’t, and make a real decision.

Someone will write a book about this someday—but at this point in time, you kinda gotta be here to experience it.

Early years. I was born in Youngstown, Ohio, which is this sleepy little steel town right on the border of Pennsylvania. My parents, who’ve been split since I was two, both got job offers at the same time in Florida and took it as kind of providence, and so the whole family moved down there. So my mom still lives in Orlando, and my dad lives in Tampa. Went to high school in Orlando, and then college in Florida. And eventually I to New York for grad school. Worked there a little bit. Bounced around the country a little bit. A few different places. And then wound up here in October.

How’d you get into design and/or tech?

It’s interesting. So for undergrad, I studied politics. I didn’t think I was going into design at all and then started working in non-profits. This was right at the onset of the recession. So non-profits didn’t have the money to hire me to do anything, and they also didn’t have money to contract things like design. I had taught myself a little bit of Photoshop, and those were my first clients, where I was trying to build something to try and find ways to freelance and make money. I got into design from a perspective of wanting to do more social good projects, through more graphic design projects.

“I knew San Francisco, culturally, was on a short list of places I always wanted to live someday, but I didn’t ever have it as a target. I felt like it was a little bit of a whirlpool, where eventually, all designers who work in tech, find their way to San Francisco, and some stay, and some get spit right back out and keep going.”

It wasn’t until I went back to school for grad school, to actually formally study design, that I realized I was actually also very interested in technology. I was particularly interested in the way that games were now doing these more interesting, immersive narratives, and how they were really reaching, when they were done right, doing these really amazing things that were on a level of novels, that were even beyond film, because you spend so much time in the game, versus a two-hour film. That interest in mediums and technology then started me doing more design work in that realm.

I knew San Francisco, culturally, was on a short list of places I always wanted to live someday, but I didn’t ever have it as a target. I felt like it was a little bit of a whirlpool, where eventually, all designers who work in tech, find their way to San Francisco, and some stay, and some get spit right back out and keep going. I knew a few friends in New York who felt that way, or were from San Francisco and were still trying to escape it as long as they could, paddling away. I didn’t really know what to expect.

“As a designer in New York, the design community is very much about—it’s still very much analog. Publishing is still the main realm of design there and fashion, and you find different kinds of specialties. But most of them are still clinging to the analog world. There’s actually not a lot of tech designers or people who are super-enthusiastic about it. Most of the people are still trying to make an Etsy shop or revive some kind of ancient typeface, and that’s fine. That’s really cool, but it wasn’t my thing by the time I was done with school.”

As a designer in New York, the design community is very much about—it’s still very much analog. Publishing is still the main realm of design there and fashion, and you find different kinds of specialties. But most of them are still clinging to the analog world. There’s actually not a lot of tech designers or people who are super-enthusiastic about it. Most of the people are still trying to make an Etsy shop or revive some kind of ancient typeface, and that’s fine. That’s really cool, but it wasn’t my thing by the time I was done with school. And so a part of me was always thought New York was the center of the world for design. And I think I started to realize as I embraced the idea of moving out here that Silicon Valley might be the center of the universe for design and tech and that I might find more like-minded designers coming out here where I would be in the majority for once of most people like the technology side of things. And now the hipster typefaces are now on the fringes of the design world over here. And I think it’s more or less met that expectation. I think I’ve been more thrown by the West Coast cultural values more so than anything about Silicon Valley itself, I guess.

It’s definitely different from New York.

Yeah, very different. Although, I’ve heard that it’s not as different as it used to be. I was having this conversation with a friend not that long ago, and we were talking about how with the influx of New Yorkers it’s starting to kind of Manhattan-ize a little bit of San Francisco. And you can see it in certain neighborhoods where there’s still this kind of more hippy vibe of laidbackness. I lived in Austin for a while, and so my only comparison is to say that it’s just more of an Austin-y kind of neighborhood of more laid back people. So I feel like that has been the more surprising attention getting thing for me. More so than even any kind of preoccupation with my job, or the other people I work with, or anything.

Yeah it’s definitely changed a lot since it’s become more of a melting pot from other cities. Like people dress well now.

[laughter] That’s pretty cool. That’s a positive, I guess.

Yes. Definite positive, and there’s actually places to eat after 9pm now.

Yeah. So it’s funny that I’m finding in myself that I’m building connections faster with people who are from New York. And I feel weird about it because I set an expectation of moving out here, and kind of embracing a different world for a little bit, and I feel myself, and I don’t know if it’s as I get older I’m less open to these kinds of new experiences, new places, and so I’m just being a little lazy, and gravitating towards people that remind me of places I’ve been before.

I get it.

I also feel weird because I feel like I am the cliche. I am the designer from New York coming to work at Airbnb, and that becomes this emblem of what problems ail the Mission and other neighborhoods. So I feel like whenever I hear people talking about Silicon Valley and San Francisco, I just kind of shut up and listen. I don’t feel qualified to comment yet on it.

“I also feel weird because I feel like I am the cliche. I am the designer from New York coming to work at Airbnb, and that becomes this emblem of what problems ail the Mission and other neighborhoods. So I feel like whenever I hear people talking about Silicon Valley and San Francisco, I just kind of shut up and listen. I don’t feel qualified to comment yet on it.”

It’s a weird time.

Yeah.

Let’s go deeper on that in a minute. What is really exciting to you about your work? What are things you’re super proud of, what are things that really activate you right now?

I try to read a lot of philosophy actually, and I think I’m learning that that’s not usual for a lot of designers. A lot of designers are very interested in the aesthetics of things, and I’m really interested specifically in how the aesthetics influence behavior change. So the visuals are actually more of a means to an end for me. In that realm you find all kinds of really interesting philosophical questions. It’s a shame that it goes over so many people’s heads, because I wish they were reading more of the stuff I’m stumbling across.

“I try to read a lot of philosophy actually, and I think I’m learning that that’s not usual for a lot of designers. A lot of designers are very interested in the aesthetics of things, and I’m really interested specifically in how the aesthetics influence behavior change. So the visuals are actually more of a means to an end for me.”

Some things I’m interested about that make me so interested in this topic are things like Sherry Turkle, she was an MIT roboticist. She wrote this relatively cynical view of the way machinery is actually changing human behavior in cognitively lazy ways, which is interesting, again because she’s an MIT roboticist. For her to have a cynical view on tech makes you turn your head and listen to what she has to say. And then I like going into other stuff, like Umberto Eco talks about hyper-realities and these layers of reality on top of the real thing and all the moral quandaries in this. When you work in tech you are, in many cases, building a virtual version of things that– you’re not blind, you look around when you’re side and everyone’s on their phones and you’re building that – as Baudrillard would have called it – like the kind of map on top of the real world. You’re building that virtual on top of the real. So I think those, because of moral problems which I’m not always feeling like I’m on the right side of sometimes, also keep it interesting in a kind of “hard questions to answer kind of way” that make me kind of get up every morning and keep doing it.

Yeah, it makes sense to me that you’re feeling this way—as someone who’s lived in New York City, we have a heavy specialization culture here compared to there. In my experience, knowing about other disciplines were considered detractors from your specialty.

Interesting.

Being a generalist of any kind was frowned upon for a while. And so going to New York which is so not a one industry town, and how it was wildly different in that way. In New York, it was more like “Oh, what do you do? Okay, what else do you do, what other projects do you work on, what else are you into?” And I notice how that mentality affects the two cities tech cultures differently.

I can see that totally being a factor too, just like their density, right? Because there’s so many design tech workers here, they started to have to specialize to keep steady work, or to find their niche, or whatever. And in New York, again being on the fringes a designer in tech, you couldn’t always count on tons of design tech work, so you were probably pulling other skill sets to kind of stay afloat during all that. I could see that being a factor. New York in general though, I think just from the way it’s built, down to its demographic makeup, is just this collision of all kinds of crazy ideas, that– maybe you’re right, maybe it’s like a cultural thing that forces everyone to be a little bit more of a generalist there.

“The latest project I worked on, been working on it for about four months, and for the first three months I didn’t design a single thing. It was a lot of me leading up to the idea of the project, me working with content strategists, me working with researchers, me sorting through data sciences, tons and tons of previous experiments they’d run. There’s just a lot of immersion in all of the different things around the thing before I actually set pen to paper to make something. I don’t know if that’s typical of other designers yet; it doesn’t seem to be. I feel like other people are rushed into making something and they don’t fight back, and so they do that. Whereas I’m a little bit more opinionated about how I want to do it, and I’ll usually fight for that time before something actually gets made.”

Yeah. How do you think that background impacts the way you create your work here?

I’m slower [laughter]. Because I take in time to weave and detour and walk away from my desk for a while, and think about it, or read something and let it see how it kind of shapes my opinion of something. I’ve only been here since October, so I’m still kind of getting that sense of how it’s going to shape what I do. I think I’m more likely to write an essay on why I’m taking a design approach than I am to quickly and quietly say what I’m presenting today. It can only really compare to how I’ve seen other designers in my office talk about their work. For example, the latest project I worked on, been working on it for about four months, and for the first three months I didn’t design a single thing. It was a lot of me leading up to the idea of the project, me working with content strategists, me working with researchers, me sorting through data sciences, tons and tons of previous experiments they’d run. There’s just a lot of immersion in all of the different things around the thing before I actually set pen to paper to make something. I don’t know if that’s typical of other designers yet; it doesn’t seem to be. I feel like other people are rushed into making something and they don’t fight back, and so they do that. Whereas I’m a little bit more opinionated about how I want to do it, and I’ll usually fight for that time before something actually gets made.

Which makes sense when you are designing for a complex problem involving a lot of people.

And this is a relatively simple environment. I worked at IBM before which has massive systems at scale; it’s impossible to really ever feel like you’ve solved a problem. The job that I just most recently was working was in mobile advertising, so we’re talking about a moment, just a microinteraction to design. So I’ve seen all sides of that from a fraction of someone’s attention to tons and tons of people involved in the system. And so this doesn’t even feel as if it’s particularly hard in either one of those directions. When I get my way I get to spend lots of time thinking about something before I move on it, but you don’t always get the luxury.

“I’ve moved quite a bit for different jobs. And the last year or so that’s started to catch up to me where I wonder how that’s affecting my relationships.”

What have been some of your biggest struggles and roadblocks over the course of your career?

Struggles and roadblocks. It’s been some interesting ones. I’ve moved quite a bit for different jobs. And the last year or so that’s started to catch up to me where I wonder how that’s affecting my relationships. All my friends here even, who have lived here for ten years, and they have such deep roots with so many people and even when you move you stay in contact with some people, but even as close as you might feel when you live in the same city once you disconnect a little bit over time that all decays. And I realize that I don’t have a lot friends beyond the last two or three years just because, after you move around a couple of times you lose touch. So I feel like my job is kind of impacted. That’s been a challenge of the job. If you’re chasing the next best thing that’s always being offered to you, as exciting and as fun as it is to get better at what you do, and be doing more and more of what you love, you’re making all kinds of small sacrifices along the way that add up over time.

“If you’re chasing the next best thing that’s always being offered to you, as exciting and as fun as it is to get better at what you do, and be doing more and more of what you love, you’re making all kinds of small sacrifices along the way that add up over time.”

There’ve been weird ones too like; when I moved to Austin for IBM, it was before the Supreme Court had passed the gay rights legislation last year. So that was a weird one because I was living in New York where I could marry or date or hold hands out in public and never really think twice about it, and I got used to it after a couple years living there and then getting a job offer in Texas was the first time I was like, “Oh, I have to actually give this up.” I didn’t think it would  be as big of a deal until I got there. It really kind of messed with me for a while. Eventually, that was what I went to IBM with and said, “You moved me away from the state where I could be me and now I’m like a half citizen here. Especially in Austin at the time the governor was comparing homosexuality to alcoholism. And that’s two years ago, this is not like an exceptional amount of time. It was eventually why they let me move back to New York from Austin. So there’s been little things like that for my jobs and careers and stuff like that for a while not all the states were equal and you couldn’t just move to wherever the opportunities were. You had other things to consider. Luckily that didn’t last too long for me.

“I was living in New York where I could marry or date or hold hands out in public and never really think twice about it, and I got used to it after a couple years living there and then getting a job offer in Texas was the first time I was like, “Oh, I have to actually give this up.” I didn’t think it would  be as big of a deal until I got there. It really kind of messed with me for a while.

Yeah I’m from North Carolina and with their recent politics I can’t help but be like, “You guys are fucking yourself talent-wise.”

It really was a thing. IBM had set up this office in Austin because it was so much cheaper. Texas has done all these great business incentives to move these kinds of big companies to startup centers like that there. It was a weird place to try and recruit a designer because even though Austin’s great it’s still Texas. So it’s not exactly near any design mecca’s to draw people in. I remember that was something that cost them. I wasn’t the only person there was other people I know too that would struggle. People they were trying to recruit were like “Why would I move there if I can’t be who I am? What’s the point?” That was kind of eye opening. For a while there things were kind of half and half. So I’m glad that it didn’t last very long.

“Regarding tech, it’s interesting because statistically gay men are paid less than average, but gay women are paid more. It comes down to body language. If they’re more effeminate, they’re paid more like women and when lesbian women act more masculine they’re paid more like men which is kind of still a sad commentary on why that’s even a thing that we pay differently.”

Now being in San Francisco, what’s your experience been as a gay designer?

I’m a cliche now. [Laughter] I feel like you get into any kind of Lyft-sharing experience and you talk to the other passenger and they’re like, “I work at Facebook,” and you’re like “I work at Airbnb.” It’s almost nauseating sometimes how many people are working in similar spaces. It’s funny because if you remember it’s kind of what I asked for. I wanted to be around like minded designers. The gay culture in general is funny here in San Francisco. It’s different in a lot of ways. Regarding tech, it’s interesting because statistically gay men are paid less than average, but gay women are paid more. It comes down to body language. If they’re more effeminate, they’re paid more like women and when lesbian women act more masculine they’re paid more like men which is kind of still a sad commentary on why that’s even a thing that we pay differently. So I feel like also that gay people in general, because of the stigmas they’ve grown up with and depending on their homelife as they came out and all those different factors, like it’s a more, I don’t know—I feel like you see fewer gay men aggressively pursuing a career, becoming super successful. Like you find much more of a mixed bag, I feel like. And so, as a gay design tech worker, I feel like I’m kind of in a different bubble from other people. I don’t know. I suppose it’s no different than like any other kind of straight relationship or groups or something like that. But it is kind of its own little bubble, and again, this is more of a San Francisco thing, that like tech workers aren’t always super welcome depending on the party, depending on the group of people, and so you can sometimes feel a little weird. And in an environment where being gay should be like the unifying thing that keeps everyone in the group feeling close to one another, that can actually be kind of an undertone of a kind of rift in the room sometimes which is weird. That was not a thing in New York. There was no industry that was hated or like despised. And New York has some slimy industries like Wall Street and stuff there and there was still nothing like Airbnb that could divide gays. It’s more political here and that often trumps sexual orientation.

“Tech workers aren’t always super welcome depending on the party, depending on the group of people, and so you can sometimes feel a little weird. And in an environment where being gay should be like the unifying thing that keeps everyone in the group feeling close to one another, that can actually be kind of an undertone of a kind of rift in the room sometimes which is weird. That was not a thing in New York. There was no industry that was hated or like despised. And New York has some slimy industries like Wall Street and stuff there and there was still nothing like Airbnb that could divide gays. It’s more political here and that often trumps sexual orientation.”

On that note, what is it like straddling those two worlds? Tech and the queer community?

It’s weird. Like when you’d posted your call for subjects for this project, and there was one question about something like you were interested in things like minority backgrounds, or stories, or something like that. And that’s always such a funny thing, because I remember coming out and someone saying something to me about being a minority, or something like that. It was bizarre because I came out—I was 21 I think—and for 21 years I was a white male. I was the most privileged demographic in human history. I never thought I was being discriminated against for anything except for unfair advantage [chuckles]. And so then to suddenly come out, I was suddenly in a different group that was very marginalized. But I feel like I get it easy, because even there I’m not especially effeminate where that might be something that- it’s rare that someone from across the room is like, “Oh, you’re gay” and then I have to work with that. I can kind of go incognito if I want to, or need to, or something like that. So it’s not out of my control to control those kinds of stigmas sometimes. I still don’t fully identify as a minority. I feel my advantages still far outweigh any kind of setbacks and I think I was fortunate enough to live in a time where all of these things were rolling back. I mean, we forget, but 2007 and 2008 had huge bands happening across the country, and all of that reversed 180 degrees in a few years. I happen to have had my career rise at a time where all that was very quickly becoming normal. And so I don’t think that actually hurt me as bad as it certainly would have hurt other people even 10 years ago. Now we have Tim Cook head of Apple. So the stigmas I have to deal with are fading fast.

“I remember coming out and someone saying something to me about being a minority, or something like that. It was bizarre because I came out—I was 21 I think—and for 21 years I was a white male. I was the most privileged demographic in human history. I never thought I was being discriminated against for anything except for unfair advantage [chuckles]. And so then to suddenly come out, I was suddenly in a different group that was very marginalized. But I feel like I get it easy, because even there I’m not especially effeminate where that might be something that- it’s rare that someone from across the room is like, “Oh, you’re gay” and then I have to work with that. I can kind of go incognito if I want to, or need to, or something like that.”

Yeah, still need to get him for this project.

[laughter]

Kind of random, but you’re a colorblind designer. How does that work?

Yeah, it’s funny, some jobs I tell right off the bat, and some I don’t. I told Airbnb right off the bat, because the last one I tried to keep it a secret. It was almost as a game to see how long I could go before it was obvious. And I made it through the whole time I was there, and I never told anyone. In fact, I teach at General Assembly, I teach Visual Design and there’s actually a whole class that’s going to be next week on color theory, and I’ve taught that every single time without ever telling the class that I’m colorblind. So you can get by. I think some people misunderstand colorblindness. I see probably see like, 70-80% the same thing that everyone else does, so it’s not as dramatic. So it’s really only a couple of shades that as long as I avoid trying to call out that green button, or that blue text, when it’s actually purple or actually red or something like that, I can get by just fine. But there’s actually a host of like digital tools nowadays that make having to verbalize a color or something kind of unnecessary.

“I teach Visual Design and there’s actually a whole class that’s going to be next week on color theory, and I’ve taught that every single time without ever telling the class that I’m colorblind.”

You can just talk in hex code or something.

Exactly, with a lot of designers, it’s like a hex code that you are just copying and pasting anyway or even a Pantone that you are just memorizing the number of. And I even can take the hex code and if I just Google like “What color is this…”, there’s a website but I can’t remember the name of it that always pops up top, and I go in there and I can paste the hex code in it and it actually describes the color too. And so it will give me description and it will say this is the shade of yellow. And so if I am working within a palette that I know I’m going to be using a lot, I can almost always sense their balance to one another without having to see the exact, exact shade. But if I’m ever on the fence because it’s some kind of weird in-between color, I can always look it up that way and save myself.

There’s only one bad time that I actually worked with Milton Glazer in New York, which is an amazing opportunity. But he did a famous, very iconic Bob Dylan poster with, you know, the silhouette of Bob Dylan, all these really colorful wacky hair. And he had it in his archive the original one and he was talking about how they needed to re-evaluate the colors for some kind of new print job they were going to do to reprint it. He asked me. He said, “Can you go down to the cellar, get the poster out, and I need you to kind of match pantone colors so that we can reprint this.” and I immediately started to panic and have anxiety, because that is the absolute worst—that is the number one thing as a designer that I still could never do is take a color wheel and match exact shades, especially for such an iconic reprint of such a big work and, thank God, before I had to answer this, one of his other assistants said, “Oh, no, I did that last week.” And she had the notes and I slumped back into my seat. That would have been bad I would have had to admit that to him. I don’t know how he would have reacted.

Oh, man. I think back on how many meetings I sat in in tech deciding—spending so much time over the difference—like the tiniest difference between shades of salmon.

Totally, yeah.

Salmon.

I would have a harder time in like a branding agency where you’re coming up with brand new color pallets, but because I’ve usually worked in like in-house teams where you have a brand and you have colors to work with—and even at Airbnb we have a graphic design department where they specialize in visual design—and so I’m happy to let them take the reins on stuff like that because obviously that’s not my specialty. I can do a lot of good things, but that’s not one of the things I try to do.

But there’s been a lot of famous designers, believe it or not. Like, Tibor Kalman was another designer that was actually color blind. He actually founded Colors magazines and did lots of branding projects, and I’ve heard funny stories of him doing client presentations where he would just kind of be like, “And your green…” and then look to one of his assistants and they would just kind of point to the right one and he would move his finger. All these systems, they worked out before they could cheat with computers like I can. If you’re passionate about something you want to do then you find a way to work around it even if you have a little setback like that.

Let’s talk about your mentors. You’ve worked for some really great people—how have they shaped you and your career?

Yeah, sometimes I’ve had a mentor where they’re amazing and I’ve learned what to do, and sometimes they’ve been an example of what I don’t want to do, in pretty major ways. I think positives have definitely been all of them have encouraged me to teach, early in my career, and so I sought out a position with General Assembly last year in New York and started teaching their visual design class, which is perfect because I do it on Mondays and Wednesdays —it’s just two hours. I’ve done it a couple of times now where I know the curriculum pretty well. And it’s great for a lot of things. It’s humbling to go back to the beginnings of design and explain some of those things to people for the first time, and realize how much you’ve learned and how far you’ve come. So I really enjoy that and I think it’s also great to feel like you are helping people get excited about something you get excited about. Even just this week, because I’ve been rehearsing some basic principles with students, they were fresh in my mind and I was solving problems at work using some of the same basics. It’s easy to forget about them when you’re not rehearsing them on flash cards every day.  

“Sometimes I’ve had a mentor where they’re amazing and I’ve learned what to do, and sometimes they’ve been an example of what I don’t want to do, in pretty major ways.”

I think, I’ve also—people like Milton Glaser, Stefan Sagmeister, these kinds of icons of design, at least in the New York scene, less so here for some reason, I think because they’re graphic design. They’re great but they’re also kind of monoliths. They’re like examples that you can’t really follow because they’ve either had these insane success stories of how one design they made just blew up or they came from wealthy backgrounds where they can afford to just float on their family’s wealth while they launch their own studio for years and years and finally work their way up. Or they’re kind of dicks to everyone but that just worked for them because they had the right connections to make it happen. So there’s just been a lot of interesting examples. Milton’s a funny one because he’s 84 and still doing amazing work, still sharp as a tack. Working there was like working next to a philosopher where you could ask his lunch order and he would just say the most profound thing you’ve ever heard, right? But by the same token was totally dismissive of technology and kind of a cranky old man at times about where design was headed and a little bit cynical. And so, meeting your idols is always that dangerous, you know, the cliche of “never meet your idols”. It can be dangerous because they’ll inspire you in so many ways and in many ways be different from you. And sometimes that can challenge—maybe in a good way, maybe it challenges you in a good way because you hold onto the things that even that person, that amazing person that you always looked up to was unable to really change about you.

What do you think your biggest motivators are?

I like fixing things, and I guess that’s like the most basic way to talk about it. Like, it’s a problem solving act when you design things, and so I’ve worked in a lot of strange, disparate industries—like Victoria’s Secret where you’re around supermodels to IBM where you’re not around supermodels and it’s like engineers in dad jeans on these weird antiquated campuses on these weird softwares, to like mobile advertising which is a terrible industry but has so many interesting psychological problems to try and play around with. And I think the connecting thread between all of them were that they all just had some kind of interesting problem to solve. Even Victoria’s Secret, which is a brand that can easily be mistaken as being about supermodels and lingerie and angel wings and stuff like that, actually had a very sophisticated e-commerce platform and they were solving really interesting problems around like how do they in real time adapt this system to show people the exact products they’re interested in, and just the coordination between all these different teams was actually really fascinating.

“But something that’s bothered me recently is I’ve realized that even though I’ve always enjoyed solving a problem, that high kind of fades after a certain amount of time, and then I get kind of bored with the problem. And I’ve realized that it needs to be something more than that, that there’s been a handful of times where I was actually really passionate about the topic and I was really interested in the problem. There’s only been a handful of times where those both existed for the same project, usually it’s just the problem I’m interested in solving.”

But something that’s bothered me recently is I’ve realized that even though I’ve always enjoyed solving a problem, that high kind of fades after a certain amount of time, and then I get kind of bored with the problem. And I’ve realized that it needs to be something more than that, that there’s been a handful of times where I was actually really passionate about the topic and I was really interested in the problem. There’s only been a handful of times where those both existed for the same project, usually it’s just the problem I’m interested in solving. One time was my thesis project, which was an education platform that was trying to harness a lot of these game mechanics and find a really creative way to build a better online learning experience. I was really passionate about that topic in education and I was really excited about the problem I was solving. I tried to start that business out of school and realized that going 6 figures into debt of grad school loans and living in an expensive city like New York and not coming from a wealthy family to back my venture, was actually a really difficult time to try and start it. I still have that idea kind of logged away and maybe when my stock at some startup goes big, I can try and invest in that. But the only other time is now here at Airbnb where I feel like I’m really passionate about communities, I’m really passionate about people traveling and I feel like it’s a brand that’s really tried to open itself up to being a champion of those kinds of ideas, and so I think I’m excited now that I feel like I’ve finally perfected that balancing that passion about what a topic is and interest in the problem that’s solving too.

How do your friends and family from home feel about how far you’ve come and the work that you’re doing? Are they like, “it’s a website. Do people work on that?”

[laughter] Yeah, none of my family knew what Airbnb was, which blew my mind because I expected it from my parents a little bit, but even my siblings who are my age had actually never heard of it, which surprised me. Yeah, it’s interesting. I think I’m the only person in my family to have gone straight into college and I’m the only person to have a graduate degree at all. And I think compared to my parents, I’m far more career-oriented than they were. They got married when my mom was—they went to my mom’s senior prom and I think he proposed that night and they got married months afterwards or something like that. So they went headlong into—they’re from Ohio, so like in the Midwest, I think that was more a thing—and they went headlong into family building right off the bat and that was their focus. And they didn’t really finish school. My dad eventually went back and finished. So it’s just funny because I feel a little bit like the black sheep in the family because their priority isn’t career things. They just don’t make as big of a deal about things that I tend to be really excited about when it comes to my career. I think my dad is a little bit more vocal about my career accomplishments. He’s definitely very proud. I think my mom’s side is very conservative and religious and I think they’re still [laughter] freaking out about the gay thing.

“I feel a little bit like the black sheep in the family because their priority isn’t career things. They just don’t make as big of a deal about things that I tend to be really excited about when it comes to my career.”

Outside of family, where do you find your support networks?

Close friends. I think I have a best friend that, he and I, we got randomly assigned as roommates in college. And were totally different people. We were just like opposites, really. Like, he was kind of this loud, crass hippy kind of guy. He was Buddhist at the time and exploring philosophy and I come from this very conservative family, so I was much more straight laced American Eagle wearing kind of guy. And then we totally brought each other to the middle ground, and both were very smart and challenged each other in conversations in college, and pushed each other .We have such a good friendship. It’s not a competitive thing, but it’s competitive enough that we push each other. And I have a couple of friends who are like that, and I feel like that’s where I find the most support – is having like-minded friends who just– not in an ego-driven way but just in like a genuinely ambitious passionate about certain ideas and pursue it. I think I’m naturally attracted to those kinds of people as friends and I think it just becomes a cycle where I seek them out and then they just push that certain behavior in me, and it just keeps going.

Yeah. Do you have any of those people here?

Not yet. No, I do. I have one. I have a good friend Kelly who I met when I worked at IBM, who happened to move out here. And so I have one close friend like that here. Mostly I’m getting to a point where—and I still keep in close contact, so my best friend I still talk to every day, either via text or online throughout the day. So I keep close to those kinds of friends no matter what city I’m in. I think I’m also getting to a point where, just because I’ve kind of reached enough momentum that I know where I’m going, and I’ve found that Airbnb as a company in general has actually been a pretty good support network, more so than any place before. There’s the sitting down with me asking me about professional goals, asking about life goals that have nothing to do with the company, but are things like, “Do you want to write a book someday? Let’s talk about how we could make that happen.” That benefits them in some ways, but it’s clear that’s not the main reason they do that. But it does make me feel so much happier working there, knowing that there’s so many other positives that are going to happen here. So I feel like in many ways my job more than ever before has become more of a support network too.

That’s really cool actually. It’s a kind of counselling.

Yeah, and I feel like I’ve definitely had jobs where they’re like, “Where do you see yourself with the company? Let’s work on…” And that’s fine—

As long as you work here.

Yeah, exactly. There’s a genuine visioning here about like, “Let’s talk about your career and what you want to be someday.” Which is really great to have those kinds of partners working around you, helping you find ways to get better, which you do. in a genuine way.

What do you think about the state of tech in 2016? What is exciting to you, what is frustrating to you?

I’m terrified it’s a bubble [laughter]. I talk about this a lot with my friends that, especially if you graduated into the recession, where after years of getting the best GPA you could, and all of the internships that you could have got, and the most practical major, and giving up all these cool other extracurriculars you thought you were interested in, you walked out into a job market that just had nothing for you. And I spent probably at least eight months without a job, which isn’t even as bad as other people, but was terrifying, and was, as someone who really always tried to be ambitious about the things they were doing with their lives, that was a really dark period. And so it haunts you.

“I’m terrified it’s a bubble [laughter]. I talk about this a lot with my friends that, especially if you graduated into the recession, where after years of getting the best GPA you could, and all of the internships that you could have got, and the most practical major, and giving up all these cool other extracurriculars you thought you were interested in, you walked out into a job market that just had nothing for you. And I spent probably at least eight months without a job, which isn’t even as bad as other people, but was terrifying, and was, as someone who really always tried to be ambitious about the things they were doing with their lives, that was a really dark period. And so it haunts you.”

Even after things started to get better, even after I started to get a footing in the workplace, I think I still carry this terrible ghost around that as great as this is, it feels a little like the 1920s of like—especially working in tech, in Silicon Valley, where there’s such excess, you can’t help but even in the best of days, when you’re getting spoiled rotten with some kind of amazing outdoor activity, or some kind of perk, be thinking like, “Man, this is too good to be true. This might not be around forever.” Which is such a negative terrible opinion so I worry that tech has this little bit of naivete right now where it’s enjoying so much success that it’s not thinking—it’s not worried that this might not last forever, or how it might be doing things differently to think about scalability long term as an industry. So, those are the things that I worry about.

“In Silicon Valley, where there’s such excess, you can’t help but even in the best of days, when you’re getting spoiled rotten with some kind of amazing outdoor activity, or some kind of perk, be thinking like, “Man, this is too good to be true. This might not be around forever.” Which is such a negative terrible opinion so I worry that tech has this little bit of naivete right now where it’s enjoying so much success that it’s not thinking—it’s not worried that this might not last forever, or how it might be doing things differently to think about scalability long term as an industry.”

That said, it’s also a time where there is still money flowing, there are still VCs funding great ideas, and I think it’s exciting to see—feel like you’re in the midst of something that’s on a scale like the industrial revolution, and you’re in the heart of it, and you’re meeting the people that are likely to be remembered as being great figures at this particular period. So yeah, there’s also this kind of historical aspect of like, “This is cool, I feel like I’m in the middle of this as it’s happening.” I’m in meetings where I’m suggesting ideas that impact a product that will come to shape a certain aspect of this new economy. Yeah, so there are days where you can marvel too that you’re getting to participate.

“It’s also a time where there is still money flowing, there are still VCs funding great ideas, and I think it’s exciting to see—feel like you’re in the midst of something that’s on a scale like the industrial revolution, and you’re in the heart of it, and you’re meeting the people that are likely to be remembered as being great figures at this particular period.”

I also feel like I should talk about the shame. Coworkers of mine living in The Mission have told me they hide the company logos on their bags during their walks home. They’re proud of where they work and what they’re building, but they have to live a different life going home or going out in parts of San Francisco. I, personally, have had dates preach at me on how the tech scene is ‘ruining everything about San Francisco’ while I silently pick at my food. Not long ago, there was a sign posted in The Mission that read, “If you work for any of the following companies: Google, Airbnb, Facebook, Uber, Twitter… [the list went on]. Then GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD.”

This is a confusing sentiment to me.

“I also feel like I should talk about the shame. Coworkers of mine living in The Mission have told me they hide the company logos on their bags during their walks home. They’re proud of where they work and what they’re building, but they have to live a different life going home or going out in parts of San Francisco. I, personally, have had dates preach at me on how the tech scene is ‘ruining everything about San Francisco’ while I silently pick at my food.”

I come from the Rust Belt. I’ve seen what happens when an industry “gets the fuck out.” It ain’t pretty. Communities disband. Generations of people suffer from unemployment, poor education, depression. Stigmas of failure soak into you. And eventually, bulldozers tearing down whole neighborhoods you remember. I understand the need to grow San Francisco responsibly and with respect to the character of neighborhoods. But this disdain for tech, instead of a desire to use it (and its taxes) for good, is baffling to me.

What would you—within the context of designing to solve problems—like to see more of in this space, in terms of design?

I hear a lot of people talk about how they don’t want to see people make more music apps or more food apps or something like that, and they want to see people like solve real problems. I don’t disagree with it, I just don’t find that I’ve encountered as many people as they have apparently who are building those kinds of apps.

“I think there’s a naivety of people saying, “I want to save the world with design.” I think I’ve seen a lot of people make posters and t-shirts and say that they’re saving the world with design.”

I think there’s a naivety of people saying, “I want to save the world with design.” I think I’ve seen a lot of people make posters and t-shirts and say that they’re saving the world with design. Milton Glaser said something that always stuck with me. He said, “You have to be really smart to be a designer.” I feel like that doesn’t ever get evaluated, not in design schools and maybe not even enough in hiring processes for some jobs. No one’s concerned about a designer’s intellectual interest or their intellectual stamina for hard problems and I feel like as an industry, it would be great that if design and designers were forced to have more of those deeper thoughts. You’ll do a portfolio review or you’ll do a quick problem-solving session where you try and design for someone in an interview, but rarely are you asked a deep question or a hard problem or even a logic problem. I’m just throwing out examples because maybe those are all silly ways to evaluate true intelligence, but some equivalent that really just gets to the heart of, “Is this person good at thinking deeply about the problem they’re solving?” It’s not just designers that have that problem, but designers when they can combine solid thinking with all of the other amazing skill sets they have they really form a power more than others expect of them. So I wish we were doing a little more thinking I guess.

Yeah. I feel you. On that note, what would you like to see taught more to young designers that you see in the industry? It might be the same answer.

A little bit. It’s hard to teach thinking.

These are great questions. I feel like my mentors would have really profound insights. I think I’m still kind of grasping at straws to try to solve them.

So I teach all the time to designers, and I try to find ways to make them care about what past designers have said. I feel like, especially places where I teach, like General Assembly, which is a very career focused, very tangible like, ”How does this relate to my job?” kind of questions you get from students. I worry sometimes that we’re losing like the academic side of things or we’re losing something like spiritual side of design education. Like the Eames have these amazing design perspectives. I’ve been relying on them pretty heavy actually in the last few classes more so than other design figures. Because they were so great at talking about other things that I think designers should be paying more attention to. About innovating on your designs, about having this attitude of serious play, an interest in how design plays a role in education, etc. Because so much of what we do in terms of communication are also education. I wish there was more attention paid to our old heroes and a greater appreciation amongst digital designers for some of those legacies because there’s still so many lessons to learn from them. It’s not just about what the latest shortcut in Sketch is or how to work best in agile development flows. There should be an appreciation for our longer history and the way that that context is still very relevant, how all those patterns still repeat even in the kinds of mediums we work today.

Yeah. This is a very nourishing conversation for me.

I have problems going to even—I’ve stopped actually, I’ve stopped going altogether to design talks. There’s so many of them, and I feel weird about it because even though Airbnb and lots of companies offer a design education budget where you can go pick a talk that you want to go listen to or a conference. I’m just fatigued with them. I don’t like the forced awkward social interactions of going to this place, like, “You have the same job as me. We must have reasons to talk,” or I don’t know. Hearing people talk about a topic and I’m like, “You don’t know any more about this than I do. We are all still figuring this out.” And I feel like the best things I’ve ever heard are things like UX book clubs, where you go deep dive on a topic. There are more branching connections. Maybe I really am a generalist. And then there’s a discussion about it where you’re learning from other people, but there’s a core topic to focus on. Whenever it’s these open-ended talks, I’m just either bored or just starting to get frustrated with them. But I think maybe that’s part of it. Again, it’s still so specialized. It’s a very specific aspect of design. And I would much rather someone start with, “How’s a banana like Napoleonic battle plan?” And then have some really interesting connection between those seemingly disparate things.

So, how is a banana like a Napoleonic battle plan? Jk. What are you working on right now, either for work or for yourself? What’s 2016 goals?

I actually have a lot more travel goals. Like life experience goals. The west coast is all new to me. So this weekend’s my first trip to Seattle, and I’m going to do a road trip with my friend. And I’ve never been in LA, and I went to Las Vegas once but I was sick the whole time, so I didn’t really go. And I want to see Portland. There’s a lot of travel that I’m going to do over here that’s kind of preoccupying me, but—

You’re going to love exploring the west coast.

It’s so much more scenic than the east coast. Like, I love the east coast but it’s also like home to me. I’ve seen it a thousand times with driving up and down it all the time, so this is all brand new and it’s really exciting.

The first time I ever drove up and down Highway One, I was just like, “Now that I know it exists I can’t not live here.” And I moved here like two months later. And California still feels a little out of grasp as far as permanence, but it’s very much like now that I know it’s here I can’t not be in it.

Yeah. I can totally see that happening to me. I just did like a little taste of it up in Marin County with The Redwoods and stuff like that and was blown away. Just totally way bigger, better than I thought it was even in pictures. So, yeah, I’m sure as I continue to explore I’m going to find myself conflicted. I don’t think I’ll go back to the east coast as easily as I always thought I would some day.

Well, that was my next question. Where do you see yourself in five or ten years? Do you think you’re going to go back?

This was the question that made me move here, actually. So I was talking with a friend. She does a podcast, actually, on LGBT people in tech.

Cool.

I should point you to it.

I would like to meet her.

She’s great. So she was doing this interview series—we went to graduate school together, so she was kind of doing friends first, and so she did me as her first test subject through this—and she asked that question, and at the time she asked it I was like, “That’s kind of a cliche question.” And then I thought more about it, and I told her, “I don’t know. I guess in five years I see myself hopefully—I can really answer more specifically—it’s hard to answer about what I’ll be working on.” Because at the time when I was asked this over the summer I was working on mobile ads, which is—I think that did not exist five years ago. And now I work for Airbnb on aspects of the sharing economy that didn’t exist five years ago. When you work in this industry you just know that,”I have no idea what I’m going to be working on in five years. Maybe it’ll be self-driving cars or something.” But I did have some ideas about where I saw myself going personally, and it was about finally meeting someone and settling down and all that sort of thing. And after I had that talk with her, I realized, “Shit, if I’m going to settle down in the next five years, then the next five years are kind of—not my last time to do anything single, but I should certainly think a little bit about what would be really hard to do after I settle down, and probably moving across the country is one of them.” And so I Iooked back at the shortlist of cities I wanted to live in, and I was like, “I should probably—” I really love New York and I’m really comfortable here and I actually didn’t see myself leaving any sometime soon, but maybe I should hold off on settling down because I should still stay open to it. Not but two weeks later, Airbnb’s recruiter called me up and was like, “Hey, are you interested in a job?” I was like, “I’m not.” But I feel like after that conversation I should keep doors open if something on the West Coast is calling. Sure enough, everything unfolded and six weeks later after that conversation with my friend, I was packing up and moving across the country.

Wow.

That’s a scary question to me now because [chuckles] my whole life turns on a dime when I try to answer that one. But yeah, I don’t think it’s changed much since the summer. My answer is more or less the same but now I’m over here. I think it’s been good keeping my mind open of if I would like to settle down a little bit in five years then I really need to keep prodding myself to not get lazy in terms of keep my mental plasticity fresh, and keep trying to solve new problems, and keep trying to stay open to new cultures, and embrace the West Coast and it’s hippie weird shit, and learn about it and get to know people who are into it. Because if I rest too easy and just surround myself with the same New Yorkers, I feel like I’m missing the point of these next few years where it’s easier to do all these open things as a single person.

I will say after almost seven years here, I feel right in the middle. I’m definitely East Coast in a lot of ways. I definitely have the New York hard ass-ness to me. I’m part redneck, so there are things about the south that I definitely appreciate. But I feel like I’m half west coast now, and it’s really—like you can either view that as you don’t fit in anywhere or it’s just kind of lovely to just kind of know what the best parts are and just soak them in. It’s fun being a hybrid that works her ass off but also sleeps a lot, and is easygoing but also super alpha. It’s fun to kind of glean the positives from all of the places that you’ve lived and just end up being a mutt.

Maybe you feel the same way I do, but when people ask where I’m from I find I change my answer depending on where I know they’re from. So if someone’s from like Indiana then I’ll say I’m from Ohio, which is really where I was born.

I was born in Indiana.

But if someone’s from the south then I’m more likely to say, “Oh, yeah, well, I went to high school in Florida,” which I did spend roughly half my life in Florida so it’s technically true. But other times ask, from San Francisco, “Where are you from”, and I say, “Oh, I just moved here from New York.” Being from all these different places, I find that I kind of like do this chameleon thing where I play to my strengths, basically, of all the best possible places I’ve lived.

Yeah. That makes sense to me completely. This is such an extreme example, but I had to photograph George W. this year, and in my mind I was like, “If he knows I’m from San Francisco this is going to go horribly.” So he was like, “Where are you from?” and I was like, “North Carolina,” with my old southern accent.

There you go. I would totally do that. I would be totally like, “Oh, I lived in Austin for a while. I loved Texas.”

Yeah, like, “How can I be as Southern as possible so that you will cooperate with me?”

[laughter]

Let’s see. I actually think I already asked you this, but let’s just dig in again. What advice would you have for folks just getting started in the industry? What do you wish you had known in the beginning?

I think I walked into it with a lot of—I actually had some really negative influences when I first started designing, I remember. People who made me feel really inferior because I didn’t know about design, and I didn’t have a formal background in design so I didn’t know all these design heroes, who I later got to meet and work with—talk about a rags to riches kind of thing—but a lot of people made me feel bad about that. A lot of people were very pretentious in the design world. I knew the tools; I knew how to use Photoshop, I knew how to do some of the stuff, I had an intuition about how to make some things, but I didn’t know a lot of the principles. So there was a lot I had to learn. I know a lot people who, unfortunately, didn’t encourage me, but just made me feel like there’s just too much for you to learn for you to try and get into this on your own.

“I actually had some really negative influences when I first started designing, I remember. People who made me feel really inferior because I didn’t know about design, and I didn’t have a formal background in design so I didn’t know all these design heroes, who I later got to meet and work with—talk about a rags to riches kind of thing—but a lot of people made me feel bad about that.”

So, I would say to someone who is interested in design to try it anyway, and go for it. In fact, I think there is an innocence before you actually learn all your principles about design, that is something you should just kind of enjoy while you have it. There’s just kind of a freedom of playing. I don’t know, maybe that’s not true. Maybe the principles actually free you to experiment better. But, sometimes I worry I play it too safe now that I know more of the rules, quote unquote. There’s just that nice moment where you’re starting to get interested in design that people should really hold onto and embrace.

“I think there is an innocence before you actually learn all your principles about design, that is something you should just kind of enjoy while you have it. There’s just kind of a freedom of playing.”

It takes a long time. I think people should know that, too. I’ve been doing design for about ten years now, and I think some people don’t realize how long it takes to get where you want to be. My step-brother, for example, did acting in college. And now he’s kind of reached this point—where I feel a lot of actors do—where he’s been doing it, trying to do it for a few years. And he’s kind of like, “Alright, this isn’t going to happen. I need to look at something else.” So, he’s looked at design a few times. Some of his friends have looked at design. But I think there’s this kind of assumption like, “Oh yeah, I’ll learn Photoshop. You’ll give me some tips, and then I’ll be like working at Conde Nast next year,” or something like that. I have to remind him that it took like five—no, how long ago was that? Maybe six or seven years ago, I couldn’t even get a Tampa ad agency to hire me as an entry-level designer. It took a long time of building up a career—of some dumb luck, of building up a portfolio—before I finally got into bigger positions that really started to let me influence bigger and bigger projects, and have a lot of fun with it, in the way that I like to have fun with it. So, I would encourage people who are getting started to be patient, to understand that just because you can easily access a copy of Sketch or Photoshop doesn’t mean that you’re going to be an overnight success. If there’s ever anyone in your life who’s telling you that you shouldn’t bother doing that, that you should just keep pushing through it. Because hopefully there’s– eventually some better influences around you who will help out. And if you don’t have any of them, then you should go to General Assembly and I will help you [laughter].

“Maybe six or seven years ago, I couldn’t even get a Tampa ad agency to hire me as an entry-level designer. It took a long time of building up a career—of some dumb luck, of building up a portfolio—before I finally got into bigger positions that really started to let me influence bigger and bigger projects, and have a lot of fun with it, in the way that I like to have fun with it.”

I grew up in a multicultural working class community, consisting mostly of immigrant families, right outside of Boston, Massachusetts. It wasn’t the safest or nicest neighborhood, but for my parents it was a step up from the situation back home on the Cape Verde Islands.

“I love it when people tell me I can’t do something and then proving them wrong. I get a kick out of that.”


After the birth of my youngest brother, my mother made two key decisions that would significantly impact our lives and futures. First, she decided to move her family from a troubled neighborhood in Boston to a much safer community. And second; she sent us to a private Catholic school in said community. These events limited our exposure to drugs and gang violence, and got us access to quality education.

My high school was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to supports its innovative model where students would attend regular classes for four days. The fifth day was reserved for a full time job shared amongst five students. We learned valuable, real life skills and could put away the earnings towards our tuition. This is where I was exposed to technology for the first time. I worked with engineers and was quickly captivated by all its potential.

“One of my biggest insecurities is language. English is not my first language, and because of that, I don’t feel like I have the vocabulary to be as persuasive as I’d like to be. Immigrant parents combined with marginalized, low-quality education doesn’t really build a ton self-confidence.
”

Despite the proximity of universities like Harvard, MIT, and Tufts to my home, I never really thought about college until my cousin invited me to spend a weekend with her at Boston College. That experience was transformative for me because suddenly college felt like an obtainable goal. If my cousin could make it, so could I.

My college experience was, like it is for many people who look like me, very challenging. I had to balance lectures and exams with jobs, but that’s how I ended up working for Karmaloop. And at Karmaloop I got exposed to design, art, streetwear brands, marketing – brands like Supreme and Married to the Mob – all of which had strong foundations in graphic design. After I got my degree in neuroscience, I decided to do something for myself. I bought a one way ticket to San Francisco and left everything behind. In San Francisco I found design, technology, art, and myself.

For the first three years I worked as a user research lead for a startup that allowed me to travel all over the world. I got exposed to the long hours and high pressure of tech, but was able to tap deeply into my passion for design.

I worked in tech as interaction designer for a few years now. Those years gave me enough insights into the treatment of women. But one of my biggest issues with the whole diversity conversation is that is it’s often too much conversation. As a designer, I wanted to build and test something that could actually be shipped.

“I fondly remember Ben Horowitz telling me, ‘There’s offense, and there’s defense. And what you’re telling me right now is that you’re taking people of color, who are naturally creative. People of color invented hip-hop, jazz, blues, and rock ‘n’ roll, and you’re putting them in an arena where they’re positioned to win. I think it’s a great idea. Let’s go tell Kanye about it.'”

I quit my job in early 2015 and founded Front & Center. I wanted to expose creative young adults from underrepresented communities to non-engineering roles in tech. I researched and worked with design leaders from Facebook, Google, KPCB, Vice and many others to define a basic set of required skills for product designers that don’t pursue a traditional academic path. That research resulted in a design training program consisting of basic design, communication and presentation skills. Today, I mostly mentor through Front & Center, consult as a designer.



What has your experience been building Front & Center?

I’m very lucky because my partner has been an entrepreneur for years; he helped me out by coaching me on how to avoid typical first time founder mistakes. But even with his help, there is a lot of falling on my face. I saw a problem, but had no solution. So I started building what I thought was right, but while speaking with investors I figured out it’s very hard to find a model for something that usually fits within the non-profit mold. So I had to do a lot of catching up on how to run an actual business, so I wouldn’t look like a fool. And one of my biggest insecurities is language. English is not my first language, and because of that, I don’t feel like I have the vocabulary to be as persuasive as I’d like to be. Immigrant parents combined with marginalized, low-quality education doesn’t really build a ton self-confidence.


“You know when they say, ‘just fake it till you make it,’ right? Well–it’s super hard for me to fake anything because I have no reference points. Getting help from someone that’s gone through similar hurdles is practically impossible because there are very few people who look like me that do what I do. Finding people you can look up to and model your progress after is so important to individual development. Even today I struggle to find role models. There are very few successful black women who made it as designers.”

I’ve been able to expand my network with some amazing people. I fondly remember Ben Horowitz telling me, “There’s offense, and there’s defense. And what you’re telling me right now is that you’re taking people of color, who are naturally creative. People of color invented hip-hop, jazz, blues, and rock ‘n’ roll, and you’re putting them in an arena where they’re positioned to win. I think it’s a great idea. Let’s go tell Kanye about it.” Now these kinds of things happen in Silicon Valley, but all I could think of was “Oh my god, I get to meet Kanye West.” Moments like these don’t come often when you’re a founder. They definitely don’t come when you’re a founder from a marginalized community. But moments like these keep you going, wherever you’re from as a founder.

Tell me more about just the struggles you’ve overall had in your time of tech. What are the roadblocks you’ve had to overcome?

You know when they say, “just fake it till you make it”, right? Well – it’s super hard for me to fake anything because I have no reference points. Getting help from someone that’s gone through similar hurdles is practically impossible because there are very few people who look like me that do what I do. Finding people you can look up to and model your progress after is so important to individual development. Even today I struggle to find role models. There are very few successful black women who made it as designers. So you have to look beyond your appearance, One person that has inspired my way of thinking about the world is Elle Luna. She’s a person that lives her truth, and I’m thankful to have learned that it’s enough to be inspired. Having role models that look like you is great. But when there aren’t any out there, you need to learn to look up to individuals that don’t necessarily look like you.


I can’t stress enough how important role models are. And I want to be that role model for the community that I’m from. When I hear celebrities say, “I’m not a role model, I’m an artist, I can do whatever I want”, I say no: You’re one of the few that made it out. You can show others how to do that. Passing on information is so important to break the cycles of division and separation. I’m in a unique position to set the example for future generations.   


I’ve been thinking a lot about tech-debt in communities of color lately. Access to technology in communities like the one I’m from is incomparable to the access to technology that most people who become successful in Silicon Valley have. Most Black schools have pretty abysmal computer science labs. Students don’t have computers at home, let alone an internet connection. So next to figuring out what stock options mean, a lot of people who are trying to break into technology need to catch up on people who’ve been exposed to tech for much, much longer. I had the privilege to get my first personal computer when I was 14 years old. And I didn’t really know what code was until I was 19. But most of my peers in tech have had access to technology for all their lives, and role models that encouraged them to explore. For people who come from communities like mine, a career in tech is like a pipe dream. There is nobody around you who’s made it in tech, and no parents of family members who can tell you about the career opportunities. Sure, leadership skills come somewhat naturally, but communication can be a challenge when you haven’t been exposed to tech culture like so many of the people around me have.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about tech-debt in communities of color lately. Access to technology in communities like the one I’m from is incomparable to the access to technology that most people who become successful in Silicon Valley have. Most Black schools have pretty abysmal computer science labs. Students don’t have computers at home, let alone an internet connection. So next to figuring out what stock options mean, a lot of people who are trying to break into technology need to catch up on people who’ve been exposed to tech for much, much longer.”

How do you think your background in behavioral science helps you in your work? Both as a product designer and as an entrepreneur.

Having an academic background has mostly triggered a thirst to keep learning. I like watching things and studying their patterns, which is another side to this inclusion discussion that I find remarkable. When people stop learning and stop questioning the way the world works around them, things like bias, discrimination and racism come into play. I’ve been trying to fix that conversation by prototyping solutions that can actually be implemented, and found that in order to work in tech – an academic path is very beneficial but in most cases, not an absolute necessity. Especially in the field of design.

What would you say are your big motivators?

I love it when people tell me I can’t do something and then proving them wrong. I get a kick out of that. I decided to speak out more because I want kids to know how to deal with similar situations. I want them to say, “I want to be like Melanie when I grow up.” I didn’t have anyone I could be like growing up. So I collected all this advice; some of it I can use, some of it I can’t. Bits and pieces of people that have inspired me along the way, and I try to keep improving myself like that.

Okay, let’s just go macro real quick. How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016? What excites you, what frustrates you, and what would you like to see change?

I’m most excited about  companies that exist to do good and challenge the way we think about the world, so I’m really in love with Honor. I love what they’re doing, I love the problem that they’re solving. It’s really exciting because it’s a human problem and everyone benefits from it. The workforce, the families, even the way they run the company.


The things that frustrate me? There are still too many non-problems being solved. Things that are only accessible by a very controlled, homogenous audience. I’m worried about the accessibility of technology. Many processes continue to optimize and drive down prices, making things more affordable – but there very few processes that focus on making life more enjoyable.

What advice would you have for folks coming from similar backgrounds as yours who are hoping to get into tech?

You need that hustle. A strong will to succeed because you will hear “no” more often than people will tell you “yes.” Shit will get hard. But if it’d be easy, anybody would be doing it. We experience racism and other difficulties every single day. Use that sadness and anger to lift yourself up in the right direction. If people don’t believe you, build whatever you can and try to prove them wrong. With Front & Center I’ve tried to hack a system that I found didn’t make sense. So I decided to make a change. I measure my success by the opportunities I create for other people. I want people to join me in designing a more inclusive future.

“You need that hustle. A strong will to succeed because you will hear “no” more often than people will tell you ‘yes.’ Shit will get hard. But if it’d be easy, anybody would be doing it. We experience racism and other difficulties every single day. Use that sadness and anger to lift yourself up in the right direction. If people don’t believe you, build whatever you can and try to prove them wrong.”

I was born in Thailand in 1980 in a refugee camp near the border of Thailand and Cambodia. It was the aftermath of the Killing Fields where a million Cambodians died during the Khmer Rouge’s communist regime. My parents never talked much about that time, since it was so traumatic for them. And I don’t remember anything because I was so young. I do know that both of my parents lost their first spouses during that time.

“I was the poorest person in class, and one of the only Cambodians. At the time, I didn’t realize everyone else was actually pretty poor. But there was still a hierarchy even amongst the poorest of the poor. Like it was hard getting teased for wearing the wrong type of shoes or the same shirt several days in a row.”

My mom did tell me about how I had gotten pneumonia as a baby and almost died. She still has the X-rays. It was very, very hard for her, but she loves telling me that the early sickness boosted my immune system because I rarely got sick after that as a child. Too bad it didn’t last into my 30s. I get colds all the time now.

In 1984, we immigrated to the US as refugees as war. Our airfare was sponsored by a Mormon family, whom I don’t remember ever meeting, but it’s why we converted to Mormonism. We landed in Oakland and I’ve been in the Bay Area ever since.

You may not have super early memories but I’m curious to know what it was like arriving at the States for your family and what adjusting to life in Oakland was like?

My earliest memory is us living in cramped apartments around the Lake Merritt area with my grandmother and cousins. I went to a year-round school called Franklin Elementary, which was predominantly Asian. After the first grade, we moved to West Oakland, and I attended Hoover Elementary which was mostly African-American.

“It  felt completely normal to live together with eight or nine people in a tiny one bedroom apartment. It was really communal, and we survived on very little—24k a year of government assistance, which my mom miraculously made work somehow.”

In both settings, I felt like an outsider. I was the poorest person in class, and one of the only Cambodians. At the time, I didn’t realize everyone else was actually pretty poor. But there was still a hierarchy even amongst the poorest of the poor. Like it was hard getting teased for wearing the wrong type of shoes or the same shirt several days in a row.

My parents also didn’t speak English, so it was a constant struggle to switch between different cultures between home and school.

What did your family expect of you? What kind of pressure did they put on you to excel or be something when you grew up or that sort of thing?

My mom was particularly emphatic about education, and doing well in school. That was the top-most priority. She would always say, “You don’t need friends. They’ll just bring you down. Just focus on school.” I just assumed it was an Asian mom thing. But later, I learned she had an uncle who paid for her to attend school back in Cambodia. That experience must have made her acutely value education, because it’s not free in many countries.

“Food is interesting. People I meet love to say, “wow, you must have had delicious food growing up”, as if every meal was a dish from their favorite Thai restaurant. It’s always weird to be exoticized. What was normal for us was actually an extremely basic diet of rice with a small side of protein. McDonald’s and Chinese take-out was like the “fancy” treat for special occasions.”

With my dad, he was hands-off about education, but he cared a lot about appearances. He learned to be a barber in the refugee camps and was very meticulous about it. He cut my hair growing up until his hands failed him. He was also very particular with the shoes and clothes he bought for me, even when they came from The Goodwill. I have a fond memory of him saving up money so that he could get pants made by a tailor in Chinatown. It was really fun to see him pick fabrics. I definitely got my eye for design from him.

What aspects of growing up to you obviously felt normal at the time? Now that you’re in Silicon Valley you’re like, “Man. My upbringing was different than a lot of people’s here.”? What memories stick out to you?

I have a lot of siblings, six younger than me and one older half-sister. It  felt completely normal to live together with eight or nine people in a tiny one bedroom apartment. It was really communal, and we survived on very little—24k a year of government assistance, which my mom miraculously made work somehow.

Nowadays, I hear complaints about how small the apartments are in SF and how making 175k/year isn’t enough. I totally get that in this market, but everything is much more luxurious than what I grew up with.

Food is interesting. People I meet love to say, “wow, you must have had delicious food growing up”, as if every meal was a dish from their favorite Thai restaurant. It’s always weird to be exoticized. What was normal for us was actually an extremely basic diet of rice with a small side of protein. McDonald’s and Chinese take-out was like the “fancy” treat for special occasions.

I remember one of my first “American” meals. A woman from our church invited me to her brother’s family for dinner. Everything was so plentiful, and I remember this giant salad bowl, and I immediately asked. “Oh, there’s no rice?” That became a running joke every time I ate dinner there. I also remembering getting to high school and eating a bagel for the first time. I was like, “Whoa, delicious!”

It’s amazing to think back, because I’m such a foodie now and really enjoy the spectrum of food available in San Francisco. I hate bagels now, though.

Oh man. What were school years like for you? Did you have any technical inclinations or creative inclinations? When was that first developing for you?

In first grade, we had a computer lab, which I took to very naturally. Creatively, I was obsessed with origami and could make very intricate pieces. My mom thought it was an incredible waste of paper, so I would rip out endsheets in books and use that for folding.

In middle school, I took both art and computer classes. What was really cool, was that my art teacher was married to my computer teacher. Later when my art teacher, Ms. James, found out that I’d become a designer, she was thrilled.

Walk me through those later years of school and then eventually getting into college.

High school was awesome. Many people talk about their high school years as the most horrible time in their lives, and I actually had a really wonderful time. I went to Oakland Technical High School—which I had to work really hard to enroll in, because it wasn’t my assigned school.

I had a great education because I was equally exposed to the sciences, liberal arts, and creative arts. I was in a Magnet program called the Health & Biosciences Academy, as well as a humanities program called Paideia, which was taught using the Socratic method. Both of those programs really taught me to think critically and very deeply about the world.

“I started studying for the SAT’s when I was in the seventh grade because I was just like, ‘If I don’t go to college, then I’m never leaving the ghetto.’ I had this great fear of being in a cycle of poverty that I saw my peers get trapped in.”

At the same time, I was also really involved in the journalism program. I was co-Editor-in-Chief of the school newspaper, which is where a lot of my inspiration to become a designer came from. We were designing the newspaper by hand, actually cutting out printed columns and doing paste-ups for the printers. I also worked on our high school’s first video yearbook, which introduced me to Adobe products for the first time.

Was college something you thought that was possible for you financially? Or like as a kid, did you think it was basically possible?

I always believed it was possible. I had both incredible faith and anxiety around it. I started studying for the SAT’s when I was in the seventh grade because I was just like, “If I don’t go to college, then I’m never leaving the ghetto.” I had this great fear of being in a cycle of poverty that I saw my peers get trapped in.

I didn’t worry too much about the financial aspect of it, because I was pretty aware of loans, scholarships, and grants. If I had worried too much about the finances, I think I would have been paralyzed to act.

In the last couple of years of high school, my grades ended up being really shitty, so I didn’t apply to the Ivies or UC’s like most of my Paideia classmates. I had been too focused on everything else that interested me non-academically: helping to run the school newspaper, starting a gay-straight alliance, leading our high school’s Sierra Club program, learning radio journalism at Youth Radio, and performing in plays and dances. And, at the same time, I was trying to come to terms with being both gay and Mormon. It was a lot, and my grades got pretty shot. In the end, I knew I wanted to do design and applied to just one school, the California College of Arts and Crafts. It’s now just called California College of the Arts. I was relieved when I was accepted, and I remember telling my best friend, Ben, “My future’s going to be okay now.”

At that point, did you have any idea that you’d end up working in Silicon Valley. Was that on your radar?

I don’t think so actually. The dotcom boom was still nascent when I entered college, and I was very interested in motion graphics because of the work I did on my high school’s video yearbook. Of course, the dotcom boom reached its peak quickly after I started school. CCA was mostly print-based, but a professor named David Karam started a program called New Media, which I quickly enrolled in. It was a mix of motion graphics, information design, programming, and interaction design. I fell in love with the classes and knew I wanted to work on very technical, internet-related projects.

What was going to art school like after coming from a big high school in Oakland?

I’d been exposed to so many different cultures and types of people early on in life—Asians around Lake Merritt, African Americans in West Oakland, and wealthy white Mormons in the Oakland hills and beyond—that adapting to art school was relatively fluid. You just learned to weave in and out of different groups.

On the other hand, I felt a lot of otherness. I met so many kids that came from an enormous amount of wealth and privilege, who weren’t serious at all. They didn’t know what they wanted to do and had parents who funded their experiment with art school. The majority of students truly wanted to be artists or designers and they were very serious about it, but others were just there to play.

Walk me through your tech career. What happened from there?

In college, I got a really awesome internship at a company called Move Design. It was started by two former IDEO designers, Peter Spreenberg and Samuel Lising. My friends, Dain and Kim, were also working there, so we just did a range of fun, interactive projects. I learned ActionScript, Lingo, JavaScript, PHP, and Perl during that time. That’s what really got me super excited about the internet, programming, and interaction design.

When the boom went bust, I went to work for Youth Radio in Berkeley as a teacher and designer.

After that, I was hired as an intern by Conor Mangat at MetaDesign, which is one of the top branding agencies in the world. The San Francisco office had been started by a favorite professor of mine, Terry Irwin, along with Erik Spiekermann and Bill Hill. I was lucky to get that job because it was the nadir of the dotcom bust. The San Francisco office had just downsized from over 100 people to less than 10, so I’m very grateful to Conor for believing in me early on.

“I joined the Gmail team. When I started, there was only one other full-time designer on Gmail. The way we ended up splitting it, was that my colleague, Jason Cornwell, worked on desktop, and I worked on mobile. It was just really cool to have that much responsibility and impact. Mobile Gmail was supposed to be my 20% project, but that quickly became my 120% project.”

My work at MetaDesign was mostly visual design for brands and websites, but eventually, I wanted to branch out into UX. I was really inspired by Hugh Dubberly, a former design manager at Apple who’s ridiculously smart and knowledgeable about design history and theory. He eventually became my mentor and hired me at his studio, Dubberly Design Office. I was super happy working there and stayed for 5 years.

One day a sourcer from Google emailed me out of the blue. I remembered when I was at MetaDesign, a recruiter from Apple had contacted me. I blew it off and later regretted it. So this time around, I decided to follow up on the email, even though I was very happy at Dubberly.

I had a few phone conversations with Google, then went down for a day of interviews. I was so impressed with everyone I talked to, and the opportunity for learning was so huge, that I decided join. It was an amazing experience, though when I first joined, I felt like I didn’t really belong there.

“It’s a big psychological shift to be a founder. Our employees depend on us to feed their families and themselves. They depend on us for helping them grow professionally and personally. I take it much more seriously because of that responsibility. It’s not a hobby. It’s a real business where the success or failure of the company has huge impacts on everyone.”

Expand on that.

I just felt like everyone was so much smarter or so much more accomplished. During orientation, they were like, “Oh, here’s some amazing people that work here.” They profile all these ridiculously-accomplished people. I’m like, “Uhh. What? Why am I even here?” Eventually you get over that a little bit, partly because you talk to other people who say, “Oh yeah, I felt the same way.” Later on, I read about impostor syndrome which describes this phenomenon.

What did you work on while at Google?

I joined the Gmail team. When I started, there was only one other full-time designer on Gmail. The way we ended up splitting it, was that my colleague, Jason Cornwell, worked on desktop, and I worked on mobile. It was just really cool to have that much responsibility and impact. Mobile Gmail was supposed to be my 20% project, but that quickly became my 120% project. Now the Gmail team is huge and it’s really awesome.

So crazy. What has it been like transitioning from a tech employee to tech-founder?

It’s definitely very different. There’s a lot more responsibility because of who is dependent on you. At Google, I was an individual contributor, and even though I had a lot of impact, no one was dependent on me for their own livelihood. It’s a big psychological shift to be a founder. Our employees depend on us to feed their families and themselves. They depend on us for helping them grow professionally and personally. I take it much more seriously because of that responsibility. It’s not a hobby. It’s a real business where the success or failure of the company has huge impacts on everyone.

What are some of the struggles and roadblocks that you’ve had to overcome both as employee and entrepreneur?

My biggest struggle is social anxiety, which progressively got worse as I got older. There were times when I would have panic attacks in public streets or just walking into a room. It was a huge barrier to becoming a leader. That probably held me back a little bit, actually probably a lot, at Google. I overcame it when I stumbled on a research program at Stanford that was comparing methodologies for treating social anxiety. I was accepted into the study, and went through 12 weeks of treatment and cognitive behavioral therapy. It worked, and it’s much less of a problem now, even though it’s always there.

“My biggest struggle is social anxiety, which progressively got worse as I got older. There were times when I would have panic attacks in public streets or just walking into a room. It was a huge barrier to becoming a leader.”

Awhile back, I read about how Nightmare on Elm Street was inspired by Cambodian trauma survivors who died in their sleep from nightmares. And I later read about how trauma, especially amongst survivors of genocide like Cambodians, can be passed down biologically to their children. It really helped explain why depression, stress, and anxiety is so prominent in my family, so it’s something I continuously watch out for in myself and my family.

What has working in tech been like knowing that you don’t have any financial network or safety net?

It’s hard and it’s fragile. I talk to a lot of other entrepreneurs who have families they can fall back on if they fail. And if their families aren’t wealthy by income, they own property and have accumulated value, so they still have another plan B. Many other entrepreneurs also have fewer financial obligations, meaning they don’t have to support their siblings, parents, or extended family. I get that everyone struggles. But clearly, some struggle more than others. A lot of people take for granted the network and privilege they have, and they don’t realize how incredibly lucky they are. For me, it’s always precarious. I’m on a founder’s salary, which is less than half of what I was making at Google, and I still need to support family members as well as myself. It’s very tough when you don’t have much of a plan B, but it makes me more driven to make the business succeed.

“I talk to a lot of other entrepreneurs who have families they can fall back on if they fail. And if their families aren’t wealthy by income, they own property and have accumulated value, so they still have another plan B. Many other entrepreneurs also have fewer financial obligations, meaning they don’t have to support their siblings, parents, or extended family. I get that everyone struggles. But clearly, some struggle more than others. A lot of people take for granted the network and privilege they have, and they don’t realize how incredibly lucky they are.”

Yeah. I feel you. Do you ever feel isolation in the industry? For me personally, when I worked in tech, I felt a sense of otherness and isolation a lot. Not from being a white chick, there are plenty of white chicks—but socioeconomically. I came from a small town, went to public state school, moved here with no money, also did not have a financial support network. I just never met anyone that I could really relate to. I’m curious if you ended up feeling those senses of isolation during your career? Just based on being different?

Yes absolutely.

At Google, I remember sitting at work and overhearing a conversation where someone said, “Oh yeah, I have a couple of houses and my partner has a house too, but it’s just too hard to manage.” She was literally complaining about having multiple houses, and I was just like, “Wow, what world is this?” It was definitely not a world I came from.

When you come from poverty and you’re also gay, Cambodian, Mormon, and a refugee of war, there’s always an inherent isolation. Of not fitting in anywhere. Of not knowing anyone else like you. Until my 20s, I was even stateless, and couldn’t get a passport from any country. So I felt a very deep sense of isolation. You have to cherish your own uniqueness, but you also have to learn how to adapt in order to survive. It’s exhausting.

Let’s get more into identity. What is your experience been as a gay man on top of everything else? I’m especially curious about being gay in the context of being Mormon.

That was really tough for me, because I was very religious in high school and earlier. I was a Boy Scout, I went to Mormon summer camps in Utah, and I planned to go on a mission. I tried very hard to be the perfect Mormon boy. And it took me a really, really long time to reconcile that. When you have this belief system that doesn’t include you, you have to figure out how you fit in or not. Eventually, I realized I didn’t fit in, and I became a much healthier person afterwards because I didn’t hate myself. In San Francisco, we still have some diversity left, so I don’t really feel too separate in terms of the gay facet of my identity. I feel lucky about that.

“When you come from poverty and you’re also gay, Cambodian, Mormon, and a refugee of war, there’s always an inherent isolation. Of not fitting in anywhere. Of not knowing anyone else like you. Until my 20s, I was even stateless, and couldn’t get a passport from any country. So I felt a very deep sense of isolation. You have to cherish your own uniqueness, but you also have to learn how to adapt in order to survive. It’s exhausting.”

On the flip side, I don’t know how active you are socially in the gay community, but what is it like being a techie in the gay community? Total other side of the coin.

Ah, this is an interesting topic. What’s sad is the mainstreaming of gay culture. I talked about this recently with my partner, Harold. When I was growing up, being gay was synonymous with being rebellious and iconoclastic. You were expected to be different. It was still taboo, but it afforded you a great amount of freedom and space to express yourself.

The world has made a lot of progress in acceptance of gay people, but a side effect is that assimilation has happened. Gay folks are in the mainstream, but they fit into what is acceptable. In media, they’re usually normalized into caricatures of what’s expected: wealthy white men who fun, attractive, and inoffensive. Yet there’s a full spectrum of people who still aren’t represented—there’s poor gay people, there’s gay people of color, there’s lesbians, there’s trans, there’s gender non-conformists, there’s gay people who are angry, and there’s people who have sex with the same gender but aren’t “gay.” So I’m saddened by the mainstreaming of gay culture, because I wish we had a greater representation of difference and all of the in-between states.

Most sad of all, is how mainstream San Francisco has become. One of my best friends, Sean, moved to the East Bay recently, and he was like, “Yeah, I wondered where all the people with the weird haircuts went. They’re all here in the East Bay!”

My next question, which we’re already touching on—what’s it like being both a techie and local?

In some ways, it’s really fun because I feel like I’m getting to do what I love in the place I grew up in. But, San Francisco has changed a lot. Oakland is changing even more. Many things have been lost because of how much tech has transformed the area. I miss that.

I’m in a rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco, and I can’t actually afford to move back to Oakland. It’s just really crazy because I spent all this time trying to escape Oakland, and then I can’t actually afford to go back. It’s very ironic. I touched on it a little bit when my friend made the comment about haircuts in the East Bay—San Francisco just isn’t as diverse as it once was. It’s very homogenous, and that’s increasingly getting harder for me to accept. It’s heartbreaking.

“I’m in a rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco, and I can’t actually afford to move back to Oakland. It’s just really crazy because I spent all this time trying to escape Oakland, and then I can’t actually afford to go back. It’s very ironic.”

I used to think I’d live in San Francisco for the rest of my life because it’s just so open, diverse, and you can live how you want to live. But when toast is $5 dollars, it’s kinda crazy. I actually love the $5 toast, but when that’s the norm, and there is not much deviation, it’s obscene.

Can you expand on what’s been lost?

My partner is much more conscious about social justice, diversity, and oppression. He’s definitely made me more attuned to those issues. For example, the queer arts in San Francisco is dying because it’s getting pushed out by rising rent prices, evictions, and a lack of studio spaces.

My techie side says, “Oh, well. It just means, as an artist, you have to adapt, and try to figure out who the audience is and cater to your audience”. The other side of me is like, “Wow. That’s a really shitty thing to say. These are people that have a particular point of view and a particular statement they want to make, and you’re telling them they need to suppress that?”

The fact is, their way of expression is being taken away from them. I have to constantly ask myself, “Am I part of the problem or am I not?” It’s very, very complicated and I’m not sure what the answer is.

How do your friends and family from growing up feel about how you turned out?

I think they’re all super excited for me. My mom still doesn’t really know what I do. She doesn’t have an understanding of technology but my siblings do. And I feel good in that I can set an example. I wish I could write an autobiography that was like, “I grew up poor, then bootstrapped myself, and did it all by myself,” but the reality is that I had a lot of help and people who believed in me. I had mentors, I had family that watched out for me, I had amazing teachers. I feel like it was definitely like a group effort, and so, I hope I continue being a good example for others. More importantly, I strive to help others in the same way others have supported me.

What would you say are your biggest motivators? What drives you?

Well, I had this experience growing up where I had to do a lot of translation and filling out of forms for my mother who didn’t speak English. That made me aware of things that may be invisible to others, like the design of forms, for example. So there’s a notion of service design that I get really interested in. How do you help others accomplish what they need to get done to survive or excel? Answering that question is a huge motivation for me. It’s partly why I started Mixmax with my friends, Olof and Brad. I wanted to make something that would actually help people do their own work better in order to succeed.

My life with my family and partner is also a major motivator for me. I’m driven to help support them. I believe when you succeed in your personal life, you also succeed in your professional life. It’s not about “balancing” work and life, but about creating flexibility in each so that both areas can succeed.

Let’s go macro for a second. How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016? What excites you, what frustrates you?

I’m extremely excited about software for professionals. It’s so cool to see how people use existing pro tools for their work. The current tools are really, really awful. It’s just amazing to me how much we focus on consumer products, but there’s this world of professional software that needs great design. So it’s very exciting to think about those possibilities.

What’s frustrating? Everyone is so entitled. It’s definitely a bubble in the Bay Area where people feel like they deserve the world, because they happen to be an in-demand tech person living here. Super, super frustrating. It’s refreshing to talk to people outside Silicon Valley, who are also hungry to learn and grow, but have a lot less entitlement.

“Always ask yourself, ‘How can I exceed expectations?’ Set explicit goals and push yourself to achieve more than what was previously asked of you.”

Lastly, what advice would you give to folks from similar backgrounds to you who are really interested in tech but just not quite sure how to get into it and succeed?

Gosh, let’s see. Well, one tip is to don’t be afraid to approach the people you admire and recruit them as mentors. You might be hesitant to reach out to people, because you think they’ll flat out reject you. For the most part, I have found that many people are willing to help and are awesome about it.

Another tip: always ask yourself, “How can I exceed expectations?” Set explicit goals and push yourself to achieve more than what was previously asked of you. I learned this from Google and from my time at Dubberly. Hugh phrased it as “pulling a rabbit out of a hat.” Overachievement increases the chances for success and learning.

My last advice is to foster a wide variety of interests that make you happy. Tech might not be what fulfills you in the end, so consider other things that could also make you happy, and at the same time, viable as a living. Even within tech, there are many hats to wear, many subjects to explore, and many products to design. It’s super open.

Early years. So I was born in the Dominican Republic. Me, my mom, and my sister—well my mom and my dad were never married at any point, so technically I’m a bastard child if that’s how you would like to call it.

It’s the same in Norway. Most of my family isn’t married in Norway and that’s normal. They all just make babies together.

[chuckles] Then my mom took me and my sister to New York at a very early age, at like five years. This is hard because I hardly ever talk about my mom because we’ve had a very rough history.

My mom was a single mother. She came to a new country, didn’t know the language at all, took on some small jobs here and there as a housekeeper—when I was very young—in New York. I was like five or six. I don’t even remember any of this really. It’s all stories that I’ve been told.

“It was a hard time for me when I was really young. We were poor and we all slept in one bed in New York City.”

During that time, she also got into the system. She applied for and received welfare, and then once I got a little older, I started seeing how my mom started to change. This is a touchy subject because I don’t really talk too much about this because it is kind of a dark period of mine—but my mom kind of got really unmotivated, stopped working, starting taking out a lot of student loans and doing college classes, even though it seemed like she wasn’t really into the profession and was just using it as a means of getting free money and really not spending too much time at home.

It was a hard time for me when I was really young. We were poor and we all slept in one bed in New York City. It was in the Upper East Side, and at that time that area wasn’t the Upper East Side that it is today I guess. It was higher up in the hundreds, so it was almost borderline East Harlem. So I was your typical poor kid in public school system growing up in New York

My dad, who I’ve been in contact with here and there, was actually—he’s a very smart businessman. His business started expanding and getting very big. At one point he came back to me right before I started junior high school, and saw how I was developing and wasn’t very happy. I would say I was a little bit of a rebel. I was staying out all the time. I was kind of like the independent, young New Yorker that most New York kids are really [chuckles]. Super independent, living our own lifestyles, doing whatever we wanted. He wasn’t very happy so he asked me if I wanted to come back with him.

At that time that was a really hard decision. I didn’t want to leave my mom. I knew that she was having trouble and I wanted to help her out, but I couldn’t really. It’s just hard for a young New York kid. I was maybe 14 or 15, I don’t remember exactly how old I was at the time when I moved to the Dominican Republic with my dad and went to junior high school and high school there. It’s funny because I look back at it and it’s probably the best decision I ever made. My dad was doing very well. I was able to live a different lifestyle that I’ve never lived before. It was much better than what I had in New York, surprisingly. It was also like the Dominican Republic In general, is a very family oriented country. A lot of the families stay together and they’re very close, so I got to meet my family, and be very close to them at all times. People that I’m so happy that I’ve gotten much closer with by moving back home. Since it was just me, my mom, and my sister.

So I’m going to take a step back, cause there’s actually a lot of stuff that I left out. [laughter]

Let’s go back. Let’s dig in.

Let’s go back a little. [chuckles] This is going to be a little weird. So when I was in New York, my mom (for a short while) worked for a couple of people that I hold very dearly to my life, and have helped me get to where I am right now. This couple hired my mom to be a housekeeper for them, and then they met me and my sister and took us under their wing. Almost as their own, but we never actually lived with them. But they were mentors to my sister and I when we were very young. The reason I never steered too far to the point of no return, was because of them. They were able to help guide and provide for us, which was something that we didn’t have when we were young so we’ve always held them as really close family members.

When my dad came to ask me to move back to the Dominican Republic is was a hard decision. It was one of those decisions where you’re like, “I’m going to leave this new family I have here, this small family that I just started making my own.” Then there was my mom who was having a lot of problems, so it was a really hard decision. I just took it and just went with it, but then again, I look back and I have no regrets.

In the Dominican Republic, it’s totally different. The lifestyle there is much more laid back. It’s not as hectic, and there isn’t so much childhood pressure that you would get in New York City. There were things that interested me that I could actually focus on.

I was a very creative person from a very young age and I was able to take the time and develop certain skills that I probably couldn’t have developed if I stayed in New York. Really, it was funny that a country like the Dominican Republic, where design isn’t as important, would help nurture me. I don’t know if important is the right word, but it is something that’s not always the forefront of a small country. I think countries like the Dominican Republic and smaller countries are very focused on creating businesses and things like that, and design is not really part of that equation —at least not yet.  

“Really, a lot the stuff that I learned was on my own. I just sat there. I played around with things. I spent a lot of days sitting in my room designing a little bit, (or at least what I thought was designing). I don’t know. If I look back on it, it’s probably crap now [chuckles], but it’s still good stuff.”

At that time, I saw an opportunity to help out with small marketing projects. I made some promotional flyers for nightclubs and stuff like that because they were like marketers basically and marketers needed creativity. Without creativity they can’t do their marketing. That’s where I got my start. I was 15, 16 years old and finally getting my hands on a computer with Photoshop and learning things like CorelDRAW, Photoshop Illustrator, Swift, Flash and all kinds of programs. Once I got my hands on those tools I started to expand from paper and just started playing around with new things.

In between that, the distractions were really around and I thought to myself should I be doing this? I think my dad did the right thing by never really talking to me about what direction I should go in because if that were the case, I probably wouldn’t have stuck with design. I think it was just a part of everyone’s mind that design just doesn’t equal success or an opportunity to be successful, but I was able to continue with that. Really, a lot the stuff that I learned was on my own. I just sat there. I played around with things. I spent a lot of days sitting in my room designing a little bit, (or at least what I thought was designing). I don’t know. If I look back on it, it’s probably crap now [chuckles], but it’s still good stuff.

Honestly, I think what really boosted me was in part what my dad did for me. He asked me to create branding for a new company that he was starting as a pharmacy chain—expanding the pharmacies that he already had—and I was able to create the branding for them. That’s where I saw the opportunity of getting into a professional field of design. So once I did that branding—I Googled what branding was and I was studying stuff like IBM and all these guys, just looking at what they were doing with the bold colors and textures and stuff like that. If you look at that pharmacy logo it’s very much inspired by that era [chuckles]. From there, it actually went off really well. I was able to learn a few things, how to work with print shops to get the logo right and do small things like that. That opportunity was huge for me. I think that really changed my direction of where I wanted to be headed.

“Anything I was able to get my hands on, I learned it by myself, and probably in the best way possible by grinding through it and doing extra class projects that weren’t mandatory.”

At the same time, the internet was really intriguing for me. It was really slow, [chuckles] it was painful in the Dominican Republic. We didn’t really have good internet there for a very long time until recently. I was super interested in web design, but I knew that my interest in particular was graphic design. That’s kind of what it was classified as. Just graphic design. At that time a lot of the schools that I was looking into when I was younger—during high school and after high school—they were all just advertising graphic design. I didn’t really know there was a web space or a product space. I think my abilities to see something and kind of shift to it what I thought was important—something that I knew was going to be big or huge at the time—is what also helped me a little bit. Taking matters into my own hands and learning things that I want to learn and doing things that I want to do, as stubborn as that sounds, is something that just helped. I never really spoke to my parents about my professional career, what I wanted my professional career to be, and that’s also helped, and they just let me do it. I went to school and did whatever I could do to get by.

I’m curious, I grew up in a very small town in North Carolina, and I don’t even think I heard the word “creative” until I was maybe sixteen. Where did you first get bit with the creative bug? Where were you when you were introduced to design as a concept?

It was in Manhattan actually. When I was really young, I took art classes in public school in P.S. 75 in New York. At that time, all my teachers really loved that I was super creative. They would push for me to continue being that way, and I remember right before I graduated junior high school, one of my teachers was pushing me to try and go to La Guardia high school, which is a design art school in New York city. So, I kind of had the knowledge that, “Hey, there is a design art field out there.” And really it just stuck with me. This is what I want to do, I’m really happy, and people enjoy my work. So at a very early age, I think living in New York just opened me up to that idea. And then after moving back there for college, I got to concentrate and just focus on it because there were very little distractions for me.

So walk me through the path from designing logos in your hometown to being in the middle of Silicon Valley.

So that was a little interesting. There’s going to be a little bashing in here. So when I was looking for colleges in New York—since I was technically a citizen at that time—I was able to look at U.S. colleges and I told my dad that I wanted to go to college and I’ll pay for it if I have to do it. But I want to do it in the U.S. because it’s design, right? In the Dominican Republic none of the universities taught design or had a big design field. There was one that partnered with Parsons but then still, I’d have to go to Parsons to be able to do a Dominican Republic kind of thing? So I decided to just bite the bullet and go. One school that accepted me and gave me somewhat of a scholarship was New York Institute of Technology. They’re a technology school in New York and had a graphic design program. And I was like, I’ll give it a shot and see how it goes.

“It was 2008, there was the peak of the recession. And it was so hard to find work, I think I probably interviewed like 20, 30 times with a range of people.”

Once I started there, it was kind of immediate to me that they didn’t seem to really specialize in the graphic design field—it was very much a traditional design kind of curriculum. But at the same time, I was starting to get into web design, and just the web in general. So there’s a few things that I did in college that leaned towards web design. I was already really proficient with different programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Design. Anything I was able to get my hands on, I learned it by myself, and probably in the best way possible by grinding through it and doing extra class projects that weren’t mandatory. I’d even say that I was way ahead of the school curriculum, because they were trying to teach us those tools that I already excelled in. So during that time, I guess I just decided to learn HTML/CSS for one, which is probably the best thing I did in college—opening up code books and starting to learn it. In fact, that helped land me my first job and I’ll get to that later. Learning HTML/CSS during school was challenging because it’s not a school that was—it was very traditional, we were just drawing type on paper and learning lettering, whatever traditional graphic designers learn. But I love tech. I love anything that has to do with tech. I was into computers a lot so I got enough to afford a nice system that I just started to work on. And then I began to learn how to code, little by little, starting by building basic webpages and learning a little bit of Flash—something that I’m actually really happy that I dropped after a while because eventually it didn’t end up being that big, luckily. At that time people were like, “Flash this, Flash that, do Flash!” And I’m like, “ehh, no, no. I’ll learn how to build a webpage first and see how that goes.” And luckily I did that because soon after, Flash just died down really quickly.

Yep.

So I went through four years of college, four years of drawing and design and all that. It’s stuff that I enjoy doing, but I knew that in order for me to do what I like to do, which is like building things, and just being a part of a team, and doing stuff like that, web was like the place to be. I did some freelancing graphic design, and I wasn’t too happy with it. I freelanced for Scholastic Books for a while, and at that point, I just felt like it wasn’t challenging enough. It was a lot of small effortless jobs, doing a lot of designs that had already been done. There was not much room there to innovate and really excite me. But, when I looked at the web, it was the opposite. There was a lot there that wasn’t boring and I feel like at that time, I was reading articles about places like Facebook, and Google for instance, that were really interesting into how they built things, and how things were so new and fresh and exciting. So, once I graduated, I started looking at web agencies, like Huge Inc., and places—and small startups here and there, in Comcast. You know, things that were a little bit more in a digital range, to see if I could get my foot in the door and started learning more. Luckily, one of the startups, which was Livestream, allowed me to come in at the time. Mind you, at this time, it was really, really difficult to find work. It was 2008, there was the peak of the recession, [laughter] whatever the recession was. And it was so hard to find work, I think I probably interviewed like 20, 30 times with a range of people. When I interviewed at Livestream, they were just looking for a junior web designer, and one of the requirements was to hopefully know how to code. I actually had some prior knowledge of coding but I wasn’t great. And then I was like, “Yeah, I’ll take it.” It’s my first job and the only one that really gave me a concrete offer and I was just like, “I’ll do it.” [laughter] And that was my door into product design, and then that was my path. It was awesome at that point.

Were you still in New York at this point, or in Silicon Valley?

No, no, no, this is in New York. So, I went back to New York for college and I stayed there. Livestream is still located in New York and hired me after I graduated from college. Like, three or four months after college. Three or four months of excruciating job searching [laughter]. Yeah. It was also kind of difficult because my degree was for graphic design, so to prove that I can do web I had to build my own portfolio online. This isn’t something I would recommend anyone doing anymore because this is a new age, but I did some redesigns of websites that I thought needed the redesign and small things like that, but nowadays it’s not a great thing to do [laughter] so I would never recommend it. But at the time, anything was good to show and it was still kind of early, so why not.

What were those first years of work like for you?

Hard. I think I learned more in one year at Livestream than four years in college. It was extremely difficult. I had to really build my coding skills a lot, to the point where I was like a beginner and now I’m more than like—I’m pretty good [laughter]. And it was because of the fast paced work at Livestream. We had clients that required strict deadlines at the time, and I was doing a lot of custom development for some clients, so I had to build these Facebook apps. At that time, Facebook had page apps so I was doing a lot of that stuff, so designing them and then building them, and sometimes I had to build three or four apps a day.

Wow.

It got insane, yeah. It was really a lot of work. And then throughout that time I got to learn a lot about iconography and building UI and all that stuff. I was able to design one of their first iPhone apps and one of their first iPad apps at the time. That was all extremely exciting for me because the iPhone and similar gadgets were on the rise. I’d say I’d learned so much during that time. I was at LiveStream for four years, and those years were all difficult.

That’s a whole lifetime in startup years.

Yeah, I guess I got a little, I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know. It was interesting. It was a lot of exciting work. I was learning a lot, so it kept me very busy and entertained. I guess I didn’t see myself needing to go anywhere.

I started at a very, very low salary. This is like a common story for a lot of people I bet. Especially women and minorities in general. Towards the tail end I started noticing a few patterns—I had to go through tough salary negotiations where I could get a livable wage. Even then I didn’t really feel like they wanted to take care of me, so eventually I just left.

“I’m happiest when I’m given the biggest challenges. It’s just like, ‘Look. We have something that we don’t know how to do. Can you help us out?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, let’s build a house [laughter]. Why not?’ I’m that person. You give me some crazy task and I’ll probably give it a try and see where I get to. It may not be perfect. I’ll probably warn you and be like, ‘Look. If it fucks up, I’m sorry [laughter].’ But I’ll give it a try. I’m not really scared of challenges and that’s helped my career out a lot I think.'”

It was really difficult at that time. A company came up to me—well actually a recruiter came up to me with an opportunity to kind of lead design at a small company, and I took it. This was just another step of a lot of learning. The company was called NewsCred. They’re still around and also in New York. I interviewed with them, and met their CEO and immediately we clicked. I was able to help lead their product design for their company. It was new to me, because I’d never led a team. Not anywhere remotely to that so again I had to quickly learn how to build a product from scratch, basically on my own from a design perspective, to actually being the UI engineer as well because we were really short staffed. So there was nobody to do the front end work.

So in like a year we built a product, a huge product for marketers that was like huge for them. And it was a huge win for me career wise, and that’s where I got, I guess that’s where, I still don’t know how Facebook found me, but that’s eventually how I came to Facebook a year later [chuckles]. Yeah, so it’s kind of a long road. There’s a lot of things in between.

I can relate. When I worked in start ups of like you’re just taxed with doing things you’ve never done before and you do whatever it takes to learn to learn them and do them. I’m just curious—when you encountered that atmosphere on day one of your first job, did you automatically feel like, ”Okay yeah, cool. I’m going to learn that shit and I’m just going to do it,” or were you just terrified? Did you have to go through any sort of personal process to convince yourself that you could do this stuff or did you just resolve to go do it?

No. I can do it, I’ve got to go learn it. I think that’s me. I think the last one’s me.

I’m happiest when I’m given the biggest challenges. It’s just like, “Look. We have something that we don’t know how to do. Can you help us out?” And I’m like, “Yeah, let’s build a house [laughter]. Why not?” I’m that person. You give me some crazy task and I’ll probably give it a try and see where I get to. It may not be perfect. I’ll probably warn you and be like, “Look. If it fucks up, I’m sorry [laughter].” But I’ll give it a try. I’m not really scared of challenges and that’s helped my career out a lot I think.

I think being a little brave and a little naive has helped a lot. Even with NewsCred, they knew that I never led a team before, but then they gave me a big task and knew that I could run with it and build something. In the few months that I started there, they had an idea of what they wanted. I was able to provide some kind of vision and just keep going with that and that kind of momentum it sticks to you early on in the production process. Once you’re able to at least come up with a defined vision and idea, it’s just like, “Yeah, that’ll stick. Let’s try and execute.”

“I think if you get scared about doing any minimal task, then it’s going to be harder for you down the road, because problems usually just get bigger.”

I feel like I’m the perfect person to be on product because it’s like I have enough experience now and enough know-how—I’ve made so many mistakes throughout the years—just kind of a better idea of where things should head in general. I was able to use that knowledge that I’ve built up from Livestream, all the mistakes that I’ve made and just like—let’s start over, let’s try something new and see how that process works. Maybe I’ve just been really lucky.

Anyway, it’s—yeah, I think that’s what works for me. I think it’s just—the bigger the challenge, the more excited I am and that’s a good thing for product designers.  I think if you get scared about doing any minimal task, then it’s going to be harder for you down the road, because problems usually just get bigger.

Totally. What is the most exciting thing to you about working in Silicon Valley right now, like building tools that are used by a billion people around the world? What do you love about your work?

I build tools for advertisers, so I’m on the advertising side of Facebook. And these are tools specialized for agency advertisers. This field excites me a ton. I think what we call business design is something that’s usually overlooked by a lot of designers. I think a lot of designers, like the more higher-visibility work and the nicer mobile apps and stuff like that. But I get more interested in complex challenges and complex problems. And being in business design at Facebook actually makes me super happy, because it’s a field that’s still kind of relatively new again, and this is something that I learned at NewsCred as well. NewsCred was also kind of like a B-to-B, it wasn’t like a B-to-C. And doing that I actually learned that, “Hey, this is actually a pretty cool field.” You can do some great things. What we’re trying to do at Facebook is humanize our products, and make those products easier for everyday use for advertisers. It’s a great challenge. Working for Facebook, at this scale—even at the scale of advertisers that we’re working for—is pretty insane. There’s a lot of pressure, but at the same time there is a lot of, how do you say that—gratitude?—for the work I’m doing. Is that right? I don’t know if that’s the right word.

Value.

Yeah, it’s super fulfilling. Honestly, Facebook is an awesome place to work at, just in general. I feel super grateful working here. It’s kind of like you’ve made it, in a way, especially for somebody like me that’s just been all over the place—just jumping left and right, crawling my way up. Then you’ve reached the top, and you’re just like, “Woah. This is a different world here. It works differently.” I’ve been extremely lucky. Just the path that I’ve taken and coming here to Silicon Valley—it’s great. I’m working with like-minded individuals—super smart individuals—and get to work with great designers that I look up to everyday—people that inspire me everyday. We just build off of this huge momentum and keep working on these great products all the time.

I love how the work that you’re doing ties back to the original work that interested you in the first place—designing for businesses as a kid.

Yeah, it’s great. I’m at a perfect place now. I’m an illustrator as well, so at times I miss doing consumer work in a way. I do miss that side of it a little bit but at the same time I’m super happy where I’m at. I come to work smiling every day. I’m one of the happiest people that comes in. Just knowing where I’m at now and just working with the people I work with, I’m super happy where I’m at.

“I feel super grateful working here. It’s kind of like you’ve made it, in a way, especially for somebody like me that’s just been all over the place—just jumping left and right, crawling my way up. Then you’ve reached the top, and you’re just like, ‘Woah. This is a different world here. It works differently.'”

What were your first impressions of Silicon Valley when you got here?

I was scared. I had no idea what to expect. One, I was one of those kids that just like loves small companies; loves small families. I used to bring the culture as much as possible to every small company. I’m the one that organized the karaoke events; the beer Fridays. I loved having that culture and building those things and working with people that just like to have fun while they’re working. So I was actually really scared. I read a lot of articles at the time that were like, “Oh, big company culture. Cubicles,” this and that. And then I was reading a lot about Facebook who tried to break down those barriers a little bit.

So that interested me a little bit. I was like, “OK, this is open, weird culture.” Still, what’s the top-down level? I’ve always had to deal with some kind of hierarchy that made my work a lot harder and at times—I was still scared. There’s so many people, and so many hurdles. Will I still have the control that I enjoy in my work, and would I still be able to influence and provide any kind of impact to the work that I’m doing? How many people am I working with? Am I just going to be editing buttons, and text inputs, and stuff for weeks? That would put me to sleep.

I came and interviewed, and even after the interview I was a little skeptical. I knew that the place was awesome. I was like, “Wow. This place is cool. This is like Disneyland for adults. It’s crazy.” Then I thought “How many other opportunities will there be for me to work at Facebook?” Why not give it a try? It was a company that I’ve always looked up to, and the design, and product work that they’ve been doing. Their mission is something that I have always—who can’t agree with their mission? It’s amazing, right? So I ended up biting the bullet and doing it. I don’t think it was a bad decision at all. I think it was actually a great decision. It’s worked out really well so far.

Awesome. What do you think are your biggest motivators or influences?

The more I talk to designers here, I always feel like they have specific examples of what these things are. I am going to be one of the few people that will tell you that it’s hard to say what it is. The challenge of the problems motivate me more than just specific people or influencers. I don’t have any influencers that are really big. I’ve always tried not to get too influenced by people, because then I feel like my work will depict that exact thing. It can be very easy to fall into that, but it is a good question, and I’ve never really thought of it that way. The people that influence me all the time are my coworkers. My immediate coworkers. The people who along with myself, solve these problems together. Also, just the problems, themselves, and who we’re solving these problems for.

How do you think your background and life experiences impact the way that you approach your work?

The way my life has been, it’s kind of been all over the place. It shows that I’m not afraid to try new things. And that is exactly how it impacts my work. I’ve always been able to try and challenge my limits and try something new and push outside of my comfort zone, right? And that’s really defined a lot of my work. I’ve been able to do a lot of things with that like at Newscred and be able to build a new product that looked nothing like anything out there for the field because I can keep pushing and looking away from competition and trying that. I think that’s how my life has really benefitted my work, it’s just like don’t be afraid. Try it, do it and see what happens.

Yeah, for sure.

Even with Facebook I’ve been able to do that. Which sounds weird but, yeah, I can.

How do your family and friends from home feel about how far you’ve come and all the work that you’ve done?

You know, they don’t say much. [laughter] I think though, honestly—I know they’re very proud of me. My dad is super successful. My whole family is a huge success I think, and I’m really proud of them and they’re excellent people—amazing people. And having their support all the time has been—it keeps me going, makes me super happy. And my wife now too, she’s super supportive, she’s one of the best people—the best person I can be with right now and makes me super happy. We’ve been together for like eight years so she’s been through a lot of this stuff that I’ve been going through. And I guess back home, my family, they’re just very super happy, like always positive people. That’s kind of how I am and when I go home I’m just part of the family, I’m not any different really. And I love it that way, that’s how I want it to be.

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years, do you think you’ll still be here?

Oh shit, that’s a good question.  You know, to be honest with you, I’ve always had a dream of finally owning what I’m building at one point. I’ve built so many great things for so many different companies and people and users, and I still want to build for users and people all the time. But I do want to eventually maybe do my own thing, like have my own creative business or boutique or whatever. And I’m really still kind of open to that idea, I’m hoping it just lands on my lap somehow, which it probably won’t, so I don’t know. We’ll see.

Well, I mean the cool thing about your work experience—having just done so much different stuff—you’re the kind of person who’s perfectly equipped to start your own thing later, you know?

Thank you for that. That’s a nice thing, I’ve never heard somebody say that.

Having done it myself, I’m so glad I worked in tech doing a million different things. And now I’m a photographer, but all of that stuff I did before is such a huge reason I’m successful. It’s so good to learn all those random things. It doesn’t make sense immediately, but it does later.

How’s that been for you? This is kind of like your own thing, right? I mean it’s super impressive.

Just a side project—that’s gotten really big.

I love your work by the way.

Thanks. Yeah, I mean it’s the best decision I ever made. You know, I still get to tangentially pop in and out of tech, and be involved however I want, but I work for myself, and I have complete control over who I work with, and I make way more money, and everything is better.

Yeah, that’s so cool. Yeah, it’s one of things like, you know, people have never had their doors open for them. It’s like I feel like I can do it, right, I’ll just work through it and find something great and do whatever I can. That’s a nice thing to have I think. I feel like my career, even though it’s been like painful a lot of times, is like, “Hey, I got here mainly on my own, just as much as possible, just working hard, and doing what I love.” So the creative field’s great. I love the field, it’s awesome. [chuckles]

Okay, last question, this is important. What advice would you give to folks from similar backgrounds to you, who want to get into tech?

Yeah, it’s an easy and hard question, because I feel like the advice I would give them would be very similar to what I did, right? But at the same time, I feel like the field itself has transformed to a lot of the young designers have learned things that at one point, I was the one learning it on my own, and these guys are learning it from school or on their own as well. I feel like the hacker mentality of building things and doing things that are unknown, is so much more natural these days than it was eight or nine years ago. It’s interesting because my advice to them—to the young adults coming out of college [chuckles] with a lot of knowledge in the tech industry and products and being surrounded by products is just take it all in and try and build things at all times. Build the smallest things to the biggest things. Just try and build stuff really. We’re all builders and even if it’s just a coffee table or any small thing, it’s important. It’s something that you’ll learn from. I would even say start small. If you want to start big, go ahead [chuckles]. There’s no real wrong path as long as you’re building and working. It’s funny because like five years ago, I would’ve been able to give you a better answer, but now days, I’m like, “These guys are doing pretty good.” I’ve seen a lot of these young university students graduating, and I’m super impressed by their work.

What about any thoughts for the Dominican Republic, your homeland?

For the Dominican Republic, I want them to take design more seriously because a lot of it is still thought to be extremely superficial, but design can do a lot of things to better a country in general—there’s a lot of possibility there. It’s not just graphic design anymore. In order to do that there needs to be work done around access to the internet. I know the internet is still extremely expensive and inaccessible for most of the country, but there’s so many things that you can do online right now that can help grow and nurture existing and new businesses while opening doors for engineering and design.

I hope it gets to the point where we can just have a lot of people like me just move there and work. One day, hopefully that’s the case.

“Just take it all in and try and build things at all times. Build the smallest things to the biggest things. Just try and build stuff really. We’re all builders and even if it’s just a coffee table or any small thing, it’s important. It’s something that you’ll learn from. I would even say start small. If you want to start big, go ahead [chuckles]. There’s no real wrong path as long as you’re building and working.”