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 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’m from Colorado. I grew up in Colorado Springs.

My mom is a doctor and a single mom. How do I describe my upbringing? Colorado Springs is famous for like “Focus on the Family” and super conservative Christians. But I wasn’t exposed to any of that, I just had my mom, her medical practice, and all her doctor friends. The problem with this question is that I got poisoned as a child, so I don’t remember anything from before probably thirteen. I have forgotten most of my life actually, I found out recently my husband and I had a wedding that I don’t remember. There are pictures and everything.

Holy shit.

So my whole childhood is basically gone. My mom remembers, you can ask her if you want [laugh]. The primary answer to that question is I don’t know, because it’s gone, all that stuff is just gone. I know I have two brothers and a sister, but I don’t have a lot of anecdotal things from childhood, or even more recently, because it’s just not in my brain anymore. My memory, if you can call it that, is stored entirely in a combination of other people and various kinds of recordings.

“I got poisoned as a child, so I don’t remember anything from before probably thirteen. I have forgotten most of my life actually, I found out recently my husband and I had a wedding that I don’t remember. There are pictures and everything.”

So, if you feel comfortable, what happened?

On my tenth birthday, my family­­ so my mom and my little brother, me and then I think two friends, I don’t know, some small group of people went to a hotel that had a pool to do ten-year-old birthday things.

And the hotel was negligent on their maintenance or something, I don’t remember. There was a lawsuit, I never read the findings, I was too young. So they were negligent and carbon monoxide and chlorine gas and some other gases leaked into the pool area, and my mom and my little brother and me and both my friends were poisoned. But my mom and I got the worst effects, we were poisoned the most. So, my mom and I went from being totally normal to having traumatic brain injuries, but by poison instead of war or football or whatever.

How did those injuries manifest in the early years, and how is it continuing to?

It has changed over the years. Gotten better and worse. I get attacks of uncontrollable shaking. My body is usually in pain. I get a ton of migraines, a fuck ton actually. My proprioception, which is like, the accurate sensation of where your body is in space, and the position you’re in is 80 percent gone which means my balance and walking have good and bad days. I am basically a grab bag of neurological issues: Alice in Wonderland Syndrome to Post-­traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s hard.

I seemed to improve slowly until I was in college, but then when my brain was under stress I got a bad relapse. So I guess my junior year in college I was all way back at the bottom. I couldn’t walk, I was having migraines everyday, I shook constantly. After that I was really bad for several years and I’ve been inching my way back out of that hole ever since.

What about your mom?

My mom, you would describe her as like a stroke victim. Even though that’s not what happened, that’s a thing people understand. She basically got a migraine for 8 years straight. She is doing much better now. Still dealing but better.

Wow. So you probably don’t remember but, as a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up­­?

My mom says I wanted to be a surgeon, which I am now like, “That is the most ridiculous thing I could have ever thought of.” But, of course that’s what I wanted to do. My mom was a doctor and her medical practice was very integrated into our lives so of course I wanted to do medicine. I think my initial “I’m going to college” was pre­-med, until I figured out about chemistry. I was like, “ugh, this is horrible.” Chemistry is the worst. Or at least that’s what I like to tell myself. That I had a choice, that I opted out instead of what really happened which is that I was forced out by my disability.

Did you have any idea at that time that you’d end up in Silicon Valley tech?

No. My BFA is in Theater, Film, and Television Production, so I thought I was going to go into Theater. But I got so sick at the end of school that all of my best laid plans were totally ruined. I was supposed to go work as an assistant stage manager in Tokyo. But I was too sick, there was no way I could take that job, or any job.

So walk me through the winding road that took you to VR.

So after college I was essentially on bed­rest for four years. I shouldn’t say bed­rest. I was home­bound for four years. Walking to the bathroom made me dizzy so I crawled kinda thing. So in that time, I started watching Art21, which is this contemporary art show made by PBS. It’s so fucking good. It’s a collection of artists talking about their work and their lives and their families and it changed my life.

I was laying there on the couch at 20 thinking that this painful bullshit was what the rest of my life was going to be like, and I decided, “Fuck it I’m gonna steal ideas from these people.” So I starting copying their work. Andrea Zittel and Ann Hamilton and Vija Celmins and Kara Walker. These women became my pantheon. Oh and Janine Antoni, Janine Antoni! She’s amazing! She’s from the Bahamas and she would place a tightrope right at the horizon and then she would walk across the tightrope on video and every time she took a step the line would just touch the horizon. So good. She also hand spun this huge rope with all these video tapes and clothes and just any material donated from her friends and family. Antoni made a rope so I made a rope. Zittel crocheted so I crocheted. Hamilton talked about social concepts in cloth so I talked about computational concepts in cloth.

I copied lots of work from Art21 because there was nothing else to do. It was just not what you want to happen right after you get out of college. Like, “I’m going to get an internship, and I’ll be out every night and­­—No. You’re going to lay in bed for four years and be bored.” That was basically the start of like, “I am an artist now.” The art was my entire life at that point, I guess it still is.

When I finally made my own work it was these brightly­-colored abstract crocheted sculptures the size of, ironically, the couch I’d been stuck on. I guess the first time I really showed anything was in 2009, with the Armory Show in New York.

“I was told my thesis work wasn’t art because I made a video game. It wasn’t even a game it was an interactive environment that addressed the contemporary way that we go about knowledge formation. They couldn’t see it. It was weird because I was interested in technology. The work that I was making before, the crochet, was about reenacting computational systems. But they had never seen that either, those works were talked about as “heroic women’s work”. It drove me crazy. The professors never could see crochet as data, as captured information in the shape of a linear thread. But I still graduated, so fuck them.”

*Just* the Armory? [laughter]

Yeah me and galleries have never been much of a thing. Then I used that work, and the credential of that show to apply to grad school. I went to the California College of the Arts over on Potrero Hill. That was the first time I was really out of the house everyday by myself in years. I was 24.

Some of it was great. I found a couple professors that were awesome.

It should come as no surprise that I did not fit in well at school. I had just spent 4 years alone with the exception of my boyfriend. I didn’t know how to human and I was learning to be disabled not just at home in a bubble of my own control but at the school, in classes, on the train etc. Once again I have very few anecdotes of grad school, what with my memory but I know it was both great and really stupid. I got really tough and focused because of school. I am a much better artist now, and I found one professor who I am friends with today who is brilliant and funny and really important to me. But because I wasn’t great at interacting with the other students, so they started calling me The Borg. They were like, “But it’s endearing because we like you,” and I’m like, “No, it’s socially separating and bullying.” But they never stopped.

I was told my thesis work wasn’t art because I made a video game. It wasn’t even a game it was an interactive environment that addressed the contemporary way that we go about knowledge formation. They couldn’t see it. It was weird because I was interested in technology. The work that I was making before, the crochet, was about reenacting computational systems. But they had never seen that either, those works were talked about as “heroic women’s work”. It drove me crazy. The professors never could see crochet as data, as captured information in the shape of a linear thread. But I still graduated, so fuck them.

So what happened after that? I got my first job. I was so proud of myself. I worked as an architectural assistant making drawings and writing their blog. I worked there until she couldn’t afford to pay me anymore. Then I started working for Axis dance company and they’re in Oakland and they’re physically integrated dance company and I worked there for almost two years, man, what I thought at the time was going to be a dream job turned out to be awful. Anyway I also wrote for KQED in there, writing about net art, the internet, and video games mostly, and I was doing a lot of both digital drawing and ink on paper which both turned into making gifs and prints and comic books. It was around that time, in 2013, I started making YouTube videos too. Again copying existing work I liked from Mike Rugnetta and PBS Idea Channel. Huh, twice now PBS has been foundational to my art.

The videos started as talking head style technology and cultural criticism pieces plastered with wild editing. It was a great way to restart with video. I had experience editing short films and features from college but the show, self-titled BlinkPopShift, also leaned hard on the writing and research skills I forged at grad school and KQED. It became a way to think across tech and culture and art and science the same way I had been exploring in my masters thesis, but now everyone, not just the limited pov’s of my professors, could see the result. Simultaneously I built a whole body of work exclusively on my phone, the Still Lives series, using a combination of photogrammetry and various gif making apps.

I became super immersed in Youtube so I went to Vidcon and met Mike Rugnetta and Vi Hart and Malia Moss who all turned out to amazing friends and collaborators. A few months later I got a call from Vi asking “Hey, do you think you could build a VR camera?” And I was like, “Yeah sure, I don’t see why not. That doesn’t seem that hard.” And I was right, I mean it took months of work and cameras melting and trial and error and math but I did it.

“A few months later I got a call from Vi asking “Hey, do you think you could build a VR camera?” And I was like, “Yeah sure, I don’t see why not. That doesn’t seem that hard.” And I was right, I mean it took months of work and cameras melting and trial and error and math but I did it.”

So you just… made a VR camera?

I mean, yeah. We, along with Andrea Hawksley, the three horsemen of eleVR, have been working on various projects in VR, AR, and mixed reality every since. Vi’d hired me to work at the then Communications Design Group, Alan Kay’s Research Lab at SAP. Working for an open lab is great because with no pressure to publish traditional papers, we can write up everything on our blog for anyone to read.

I have to say I was so happy when fully spherical, auto-stitching cameras came on the market and I didn’t have to actually build them by hand with a fucking hot glue gun anymore, which was fun but also so tedious. I focus on studying how immersion works and how aesthetic techniques communicate to viewers. Recently I’ve been building the foundation of spherical cinematography so I can use that knowledge when designing immersive web systems.

What excites you about that space?

Making hybrid reality projects where linkages are no longer limited to computers and screens. When I write or make art, I like to put stuff everywhere but computers in their current conception don’t allow for creative messes. Sure, you can barf icons all over your desktop, but that’s not a creative mess. It feels heavy and in need of “organization.” Good messes feed my creativity through serendipity and flexibility. But my physical messes don’t have search for when I know exactly which bit of red paper has to go on the collage next. That divide between the physical and the digital will close, ‘cause me and my vice grip say so.

But that also means taking seriously the considerations of what the body wants. Because like, we are not fingers with eyes and ear holes. The way we do knowledge creation has a lot to do with this flappy meat thing. We completely disregard its wants and needs and its ideas about the world for what, a touch screen? This is the most embodied form of computational media that we have? Pinch and zoom and swipe and tap? Gross. There’s so much touch you can’t get in the little rectangles we carry around everywhere, it drives me crazy.

“When I write or make art, I like to put stuff everywhere but computers in their current conception don’t allow for creative messes. Sure, you can barf icons all over your desktop, but that’s not a creative mess. It feels heavy and in need of “organization.” Good messes feed my creativity through serendipity and flexibility. But my physical messes don’t have search for when I know exactly which bit of red paper has to go on the collage next. That divide between the physical and the digital will close, ‘cause me and my vice grip say so.”

What is it like straddling two worlds—art and tech—that often feel at odds with each other?

At work, I don’t feel at odds because like they specifically set up the lab for that kind of cross disciplinary flexibility. I am the most traditionally “visual art” person there, which I find funny since in grad school I was the most “tech” person, but being a weird inbetweener is kinda our thing at the lab. But when I’m out of my bubble it’s really hard because my work, and probably my personality too, is hard to parse as either or, as art or tech, as artist or researcher. A good example is that I don’t go to VR meetups any more. Everyone was too newness focused. There was no bubbling curiosity, no juicy conversation. It was just, sorry to say it but, a bunch of white dudes being boring. Ugh, tech Industry problems.

What are the biggest motivators behind your work?

I make art for two people, which people do not like to hear, but it’s true. I make sculpture for Steve Sedlmayr, my husband, who is such a fucking treasure, we’re 12 years this summer, and I make video for Vi Hart, who is one of my best friends and my boss. That’s it. The sculptural work is for him and the video work is for her. When I can make either of them tilt their head or think “What is that?” or smile or laugh or say “Yes. More please,” that’s winning.

There is definitely a subtle pressure from social media to care about a bigger audience and I do have a small audience online. Some people watch the videos online, and some people read the stuff that I publish, and that’s great but I don’t crave their opinions. For me, seeing Vi watch a video and afterward be like, “Damn!” That’s my chocolate sundae.

“I am the most traditionally “visual art” person there, which I find funny since in grad school I was the most “tech” person, but being a weird inbetweener is kinda our thing at the lab. But when I’m out of my bubble it’s really hard because my work, and probably my personality too, is hard to parse as either or, as art or tech, as artist or researcher. A good example is that I don’t go to VR meetups any more. Everyone was too newness focused. There was no bubbling curiosity, no juicy conversation. It was just, sorry to say it but, a bunch of white dudes being boring.”

I think it’s like you’ve miraculously managed to achieve something that I’m just starting to achieve—the “art of giving no fucks.”

I think it’s absolutely pivotal—or giving exactly the right fucks. You’re going to give a fuck about someone’s opinion, but just give it to exactly the right ones. My husband, he is also an artist. He makes games now but he knows a lot about sculpture and is really interested in sculpture. Making a sculpture for him is so powerful and awesome and his feedback really pushes me. Don’t give no fucks, just give the right ones.

I love it. What are your thoughts on the state of tech in 2016, both the tech that you considered tech and the tech that a lot of people consider tech?

Tech is so confusing. What even is the technology industry? Are search engines and camera manufacturers and Crispr therapies and video games really in the same industry? I feel like we use “the tech industry” the same way people used to “big business.” What is that thing I hear over and over about Uber? “Uber is a taxi company, not a tech company.” Bakers with online delivery are still bakers. Podcasters with an app are still in the business of podcasting. Tech is just a lazy over simplification of the Bay Area’s $785.5 billion economy that makes it all the more frustrating for people like me to take my work out into the world. I’m not an academic and I don’t make a product… I make art to do research.

Condensing all these different companies into a thing we call the tech industry does gives us something to blame for the city’s problems. The industry is refusing to act as proactive stewards of the place where their employees live. It seems like a lot of money’s being made and not very many taxes are ending up in city coffers. There is clear evidence that private corporate bus lines do increase evictions near their bus stops. Rents are increasing along with poverty.

“Tech is so confusing. What even is the technology industry? Are search engines and camera manufacturers and Crispr therapies and video games really in the same industry? I feel like we use “the tech industry” the same way people used to “big business.” What is that thing I hear over and over about Uber? “Uber is a taxi company, not a tech company.” Bakers with online delivery are still bakers. Podcasters with an app are still in the business of podcasting. Tech is just a lazy over simplification of the Bay Area’s $785.5 billion economy that makes it all the more frustrating for people like me to take my work out into the world.”

Homelessness is intensifying as more people are flooding into the Bay Area chasing after those sweet, sweet jobs. Did you know 70% of the homeless population in San Francisco was housed in the last year? Along with all these changes fear mongering about the collapse of San Francisco’s weirdo based culture. Most people would say that I’m being naive, that corporations have no obligation to nurture the community in which they exist, but if you don’t do that—if you don’t support the community—then all you’re doing is going to Southeast Asia and cutting down the mangrove forests and planting palm trees so that you can get palm oil. There it looks like environmental destruction, here it looks like community destruction. We have to grow out of the self centered capitalism that disregards the larger systematic effects until disaster strikes. We have to take responsibility for that because we’re not heartless idiots who just stomp around the world with our big dumb America boots. I don’t want to be that kind of America.

Man. It is kind of wild to think that big tech is actually necessary for new innovation to survive long term.

Oh yeah, I totally agree but also like big tech is completely dependent on Chinese money, right? Like a lot of VC money comes from China and that’s fine. I’m not saying it shouldn’t come from China but if that’s going to be true, then you also need to take into consideration the health of the system of products and money and labor is there too. The whole system should be healthy, not just any individual part of it. Why is making as much money as possible still a thing? Who in their right mind is motivated by I want to make as much money as humanly possible. Why? It’s boring. Come on. Look I was raised by a woman who taught me that holistic world views were the only path to true equality, whether that’s in a body or a society, and I hold that as a core value to this day.

“We have to grow out of the self centered capitalism that disregards the larger systematic effects until disaster strikes. We have to take responsibility for that because we’re not heartless idiots who just stomp around the world with our big dumb America boots. I don’t want to be that kind of America.”

Total side note, but maybe possibly related, I remember reading that you have received death threats for speaking your mind.

Oh yeah [chuckles] yeah, that was a problem. My team and I went to the first Oculus Connect, and there was an open panel, and it was being live streamed on the internet. And they were like, ”Anyone could come up and ask a question.” And there was 1% women at this conference and very few people of color and there were no female speakers and I was mad. So I went up and asked how they planned to prevent the clear race and gender biases of their conference and the industry as a whole from doing to VR what sexism and racism has done to video games.

And they answered it really poorly. It was so lame. But since I am female and it was live streamed that question turned into doxing, and death threats on 4chan and Reddit. We had to get our corporate security officer to intervene. It was scary. I hadn’t expected such an infantile response. I felt so naive. I’m still super naive, because I still assume that everyone wants everyone to be equal. Also, people who do death threats are so uncreative. I felt like they were just copy and pasting from Anita Sarkeesian‘s death threats.

I’m curious, are you able to give no fucks about that or­­…?

I don’t care.

That’s good.

Yeah but I have the ability not to care because of my privilege. 1. I’m white and cisgender and 2. I work for a place that can provide corporate security. Privilege means the death threats are less meaningful to me.

“The whole system should be healthy, not just any individual part of it. Why is making as much money as possible still a thing? Who in their right mind is motivated by I want to make as much money as humanly possible. Why? It’s boring. Come on.”

How do you think tech could be more accommodating right now to a more diverse set of people?

I mean hire them? I love Ta­-Nehisi Coates’s phrase “People who believe themselves to be white…” so I would say people who believe themselves to be white should maybe consider people who do not believe themselves to be white. People always complain the lack of diversity is a pipeline issue which is such blame shifting horse shit. If you think of people like crude oil who can only reach your factory via a standardized and maintained pipeline then maybe you shouldn’t be a company. Or hire people who you perceive to be less qualified. Because your perceptions of someone’s lower qualifications are based on your own biases. Go around saying that you’re biased. Be like, ”Hello. I’m white, and I have white people bias.” No one is going to think that you’re a horrible, evil person by acknowledging the fact that you’re biased. Everybody is biased, just acknowledge it, and then build systems to make sure that it doesn’t affect the population of your company. Super simple things. When you have a varied population of employees, go to them and be like, ”Hi. How are we not helping you to do your best work? Please tell me? We are trying to do better.” Be a person with feelings and failings for fuck sake.

What advice would you have for someone who wants to do meaningful work in tech, but doesn’t know where to start?

Pretend like you can accomplish the thing that you want, and write about it as though it were an inevitability. Write about how the meaningful tech that you want to make is the most important thing in your whole life. Read those writings into a camera. Publishing all of it online. Repeat. Thinking publicly and meaningfully about what it means to use a computer, what it means to use your phone, what it means to use stuff that you want to exist in the future will not only hone your ideas but attract interested bees. Write up design documents for your fake thing. Make drawing of it. Research. Don’t make a product. Go to the library. Because that’s what I do. I don’t make a product. I don’t make technology, really. I make art. I think deeply about the stuff I make and I write about it in clear ways people can connect with.

“People always complain the lack of diversity is a pipeline issue which is such blame shifting horse shit. If you think of people like crude oil who can only reach your factory via a standardized and maintained pipeline then maybe you shouldn’t be a company. Or hire people who you perceive to be less qualified. Because your perceptions of someone’s lower qualifications are based on your own biases. Go around saying that you’re biased. Be like, ‘Hello. I’m white, and I have white people bias.’ No one is going to think that you’re a horrible, evil person by acknowledging the fact that you’re biased. Everybody is biased, just acknowledge it, and then build systems to make sure that it doesn’t affect the population of your company. Super simple things. When you have a varied population of employees, go to them and be like, ‘Hi. How are we not helping you to do your best work? Please tell me? We are trying to do better.’ Be a person with feelings and failings for fuck sake.”

Sure. I’m from the St. Louis, Missouri area. Technically I’m from southern Illinois, but when I say Illinois, people think Chicago, which is like six hours north of Shiloh, Illinois, where I’m from. I lived there from kindergarten until I graduated from high school.

I was always a shy kid—soft spoken, quiet, very much a bookworm. I was also into video games from an early age thanks to my dad’s influence. I also really liked the internet because it was this new, shiny thing. In Belleville, most people are like-minded—so because the Internet has so many subcultures,  I felt like I could finally find my place. I eventually taught myself how to code, HTML and CSS to start, and how to create graphics. I made random websites based on stuff I was interested in; I think I made my first website in 6th grade. It was on Geocities [laughter]. I kept doing it throughout high school and it morphed into my passion.

After high school, I went to a small school called Maryville University in St. Louis, thinking like, “I’m going to be a web designer for a living, that’s a thing people do I guess?” But my school didn’t actually have much for web design. I told them I wanted to major in web design, but they’re like “uh, we don’t have that, what are you talking about?” They did have very small graphic design program, so I decided to major in that.

“The summer before my sophomore year, my dad got laid off so my parents couldn’t help me with school anymore. I had a decent scholarship based on my strong academics from high school, but my university was so expensive that I couldn’t afford the rest of the tuition. The school wouldn’t let me continue until I paid back what owed from my freshman year, so I left school and got two jobs: first at Build a Bear and the Apple Store, and then Apple and a waitressing job.”

The summer before my sophomore year, my dad got laid off so my parents couldn’t help me with school anymore. I had a decent scholarship based on my strong academics from high school, but my university was so expensive that I couldn’t afford the rest of the tuition. The school wouldn’t let me continue until I paid back what owed from my freshman year, so I left school and got two jobs: first at Build a Bear and the Apple Store, and then Apple and a waitressing job. I was thinking, “well, I’ll work on paying them back and just figure it out as I go.” After about 2 years of working while taking a few community college classes, I finally paid back the freshman year debt. But by then I was so disillusioned with Maryville University and the Midwest in general that I was like, “well, I’m moving to California now.” So I went online and searched for design programs in California.

I found a school in San Francisco and I got interested in their animation program. Suddenly I was like “well now I’m going to be an animator.” So I saved up, transferred Apple stores, and moved to San Francisco to attend the Art Institute of California (AI). Eventually I figured out that animation wasn’t a great fit for me. I love to watch animation, but I didn’t enjoy the process of making it and the school was extremely expensive. But by that point I was already kind of in love with San Francisco. I’d been here about a year, so I was like, well I may not be going to school there anymore, but I have to figure out how I can stay here. So I left AI, then I went on Craigslist and found a second job, working as an office assistant at a startup called Socialcast in SOMA. I  eventually let them know I was into design and that I could code, so they allowed me to take on some small projects for the company while I worked as an office assistant. When my boss went on maternity leave, I quit my job at Apple and went to Socialcast full time, which kind of started me on this tech path.

“Learning how to code was very tedious for me [chuckles]. I had to follow so many tutorials. I also feel like I’m always comparing myself to developers I meet here who are extremely talented. Sometimes I don’t even want to call myself a coder or developer compared to them. I’m a designer who can code. That’s an important distinction to me.”

What was the experience like for you, teaching yourself to design and code?

It partially goes on instinct. I’ve always be attracted to visual endeavors; I’ve been drawing, painting, and things like that since I was in junior high. So I feel like design is very similar to where it really helps if you some natural instinct for things like handling visuals and being empathetic to users, but there are also many things you have to be taught. As for coding, there’s more effort involved for me. I enjoy it, but I sometimes struggle with the logic behind it. Learning how to code was very tedious for me [chuckles]. I had to follow so many tutorials. I also feel like I’m always comparing myself to developers I meet here who are extremely talented. Sometimes I don’t even want to call myself a coder or developer compared to them. I’m a designer who can code. That’s an important distinction to me. Learning how to code was challenging, but learning how to design has been fun because it’s about reading people’s emotions, designing interactions and visuals, and things like that. And I am always learning. I’ve never had a full formal design education. It’s mostly been on the job experience. Since that’s something I’m aware of, I always try to keep reading and learning.

Tell me a little bit more about your work and things that you’re proud of—things that really excite you about your work.

One thing I’m a big advocate for in my work is thinking outside the typical mold that tech people in Silicon valley seem to be designing for. Even in the most subtle ways, so many people are designing for users who are in demographics that are similar to themselves or other people in their “bubble.” By default, they are designing for someone who looks like them. And most designers in San Francisco are white guys, with some white girls mixed in here and there. So I’m often the person chiming in with things like “Wait why do all of the avatars have that kind of hair? Not everyone has that texture. Why are all the hands holding the mobile devices in these photo white” And I know details like that are such a non-issue for some people, but because I notice it I like to challenge other designers on it when I can. Lately I’m reading up on things like how to design for those with disabilities, like design for people with hearing or visual disabilities. So that’s kind of the thing I really get excited about, just thinking about audiences that aren’t as focused on.

“One thing I’m a big advocate for in my work is thinking outside the typical mold that tech people in Silicon valley seem to be designing for. Even in the most subtle ways, so many people are designing for users who are in demographics that are similar to themselves or other people in their “bubble.” By default, they are designing for someone who looks like them.”

What were your first impressions of Silicon Valley?

I didn’t really have a strong impression of it before moving here. I think I saw a movie when I was in junior high, Pirates of Silicon Valley? I really never saw myself having anything to do with it—I didn’t correlate my nerdy hobbies like web design to be related to tech. And then when I got the job at Socialcast, it was still all so new to me. There were only like 10 to 15 people in the office at the time, and I didn’t even know what a startup was. I was coming in thinking like, “Ok, I need something that’s going to pay my bills—that’s all I care about.” But when I got hired they were starting a round of funding, so I was being thrown into this fast paced startup world. And at the same time, I was still working part time at the Apple Store. So it was very different, being an hourly retail employee going into a startup world. I had no idea of what to expect but what I learned very quickly is there’s a lot of really smart people working really hard on something, and everyone’s really passionate. So that was kind of cool because that’s the kind of work ethic that I personally admire. So I was like, “Okay, so much is happening here.” So I didn’t know what I was witnessing when I first moved here, and in retrospect I’m like, “Man, I should have met more people and networked and all that!” But also, I’m terrible at networking, but it was still cool though to be a part of it.

“I would definitely say a sense of isolation. It’s a little due to my own personal insecurities because I haven’t finished school, but on top of that, it’s hard when no one looks like you or can relate to struggles you may have.”

What have been some of the tougher parts about working in tech for you?

I would definitely say a sense of isolation. It’s a little due to my own personal insecurities because I haven’t finished school, but on top of that, it’s hard when no one looks like you or can relate to struggles you may have. It’s been a challenge for me lately, especially now that I’m getting older and really wanting to explore and embrace my ethnicity. I actually did a 23andme genealogy test like two years ago to learn about my heritage and ethnicity because there’s a lot of holes in my family tree and I just had this feeling of wanting to define who I am, ethnically. Lately I’m feeling much more aware of what it means to be a Black woman than I have been ever before. I’m finally confident in proudly declaring that I’m a Black woman, but I work in an industry where I feel like I can’t let that pride be known because I don’t want to make a lot of people uncomfortable. So it’s kind of like a weird double act where outside of work, I feel very “woke” or aware of social justice and civil rights issues affecting Black Americans and other minority groups, but then at work that side of me never comes out because I’m scared that it’s not appropriate. And then I feel so frustrated that I’m even having this internal struggle where I’m so concerned about making other people uncomfortable.

“Lately I’m feeling much more aware of what it means to be a Black woman than I have been ever before. I’m finally confident in proudly declaring that I’m a Black woman, but I work in an industry where I feel like I can’t let that pride be known because I don’t want to make a lot of people uncomfortable. So it’s kind of like a weird double act where outside of work, I feel very “woke” or aware of social justice and civil rights issues affecting Black Americans and other minority groups, but then at work that side of me never comes out because I’m scared that it’s not appropriate. And then I feel so frustrated that I’m even having this internal struggle where I’m so concerned about making other people uncomfortable.”

It doesn’t help that I have had these awkward conversations where people just don’t know or care that I identify as Black so they feel comfortable saying really ridiculous or ignorant things. Like once I was in Lyft and the driver talking about Ferguson because I mentioned I’m from St. Louis. It was right around the protests that happened after Mike Brown was shot and he was totally ragging on protesters, and just being very insulting and condescending to the community as a whole. I remember thinking “Wow, would he say all of that to me if I had visibly darker skin?” Would he be comfortable saying, “These people are rioting like animals”’ or whatever he said. I think the answer is no, he wouldn’t have.

And so that’s the worry I have—although someone may seem like a great person overall, they’ll have some beliefs may be really different than mine when it comes down to it and I don’t want to cause problems at work or networking as a result. I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable or exclude them from my life due to difference of opinion, but to me there are some ways of thinking that I can’t accept because they actively hurt people. So I end up compromising my beliefs and tolerating things that I know I shouldn’t. In the past, I would just nervously laugh along with jokes and smile when on the inside I don’t agree. Lately, in the last year or so, I’m trying harder to tactfully call people out, but it’s quite hard to do sometimes.

“I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable or exclude them from my life due to difference of opinion, but to me there are some ways of thinking that I can’t accept because they actively hurt people. So I end up compromising my beliefs and tolerating things that I know I shouldn’t. In the past, I would just nervously laugh along with jokes and smile when on the inside I don’t agree. Lately, in the last year or so, I’m trying harder to tactfully call people out, but it’s quite hard to do sometimes.”

One star for that driver.

Yeah, but, ugh, that’s one thing I’m so embarrassed about to this day! I didn’t even rate him badly. I just was like, “Oh, he was really nice before we talked about Ferguson, and he obviously has no idea what he was talking about.” I still gave him 5 stars. I basically give everyone a 5 star, but after that, it haunted me for weeks. I feel like Tiffany today would not have been so meek, but back then I was still so mousy about issues of race and politics. I just didn’t want to talk about it, because ignoring microaggressions is what has helped me thrive in college and in my career.

And I don’t want to sound like I think I some perfect person who gets it right each time. Honestly, in the past I used to think most race issues didn’t affect me. But because I have a younger brother, I see him in all of these young black and brown men being targeted by police brutality or the justice system. So that helped wake me up, because my family isn’t totally protected from the effects of institutional racism just because we have lighter skin. It could happen to me too. And at the same time, me finally realizing that social justice issues directly affect me or those I care about shouldn’t have been what made me finally pay attention to systematic inequalities. So now I occasionally feel guilty for judging people who are ignorant about civil rights issues because I was still quite naive seven years ago when I first moved here.

“Honestly, in the past I used to think most race issues didn’t affect me. But because I have a younger brother, I see him in all of these young black and brown men being targeted by police brutality or the justice system. So that helped wake me up, because my family isn’t totally protected from the effects of institutional racism just because we have lighter skin. It could happen to me too.”

But I think most people, even the naive, now know that something is going with the race relations in this country. It’s good. I feel like it all of of this racial tension needs to come up to the surface so people can talk about it. While we may never be able to end racism, we can start acknowledging and addressing the systemic issues and begin to move forward. Because I think when Barack Obama got elected, people were like, “Well, racism is over!” I don’t think that’s been quite the case [chuckles]. It’s been a very weird thing to witness on the activism I’m seeing online and offline elsewhere versus what I’m witnessing in my real life.

Yeah, it’s so interesting. Have you found support networks here yet?

I have, and I haven’t. I follow lots of different social justice accounts on Tumblr and Twitter, where people can share their own personal stories or report on different situations happening across the globe. It’s nice to find a connection through other people’s experiences.

The one support group I have found that is local is online, a Bay Area “Women of Color in Tech” group. It’s nice to have a place where other women of color will listen to my concerns and validate my feelings. So I have found a support group in that sense, but I haven’t actually made any friends in the group.

I have friends in the Bay Area that are designers of course—other women designers and other women of color designers—mostly Asian women. And while I’m sure we could discuss the hardships of being a woman in tech, I don’t think I could approach them about issues concerning race or anti-blackness. I don’t know if they will feel comfortable talking about it, and honestly I also don’t know how much they would care. I don’t think I’d find any support in my professional network. So that’s something I do think is missing, that solidarity.

“The Bay Area is more diverse overall than my hometown, but seeing black and brown faces is so rare in tech. One of my friends from grade school had a work trip here recently, we met to catch up and talk about work and life in general. It was so nice just vibing with her. Because I hadn’t done that ever, really— talking about professional issues as a black woman with another black woman. She isn’t a designer—she works in economics. But it was still nice to have that moment.”

The Bay Area is more diverse overall than my hometown, but seeing black and brown faces is so rare in tech. One of my friends from grade school had a work trip here recently, we met to catch up and talk about work and life in general. It was so nice just vibing with her. Because I hadn’t done that ever, really— talking about professional issues as a black woman with another black woman. She isn’t a designer—she works in economics. But it was still nice to have that moment. I wish I could discuss social justice issues more and talk about these things openly, instead of me being complacent and pretending that race isn’t the issue. Unless I’m on Tumblr, and then I feel okay publicly acknowledging that it’s an issue [chuckles].

Yeah. You mentioned in your pre-interview that you hadn’t met another black woman designer in your six years here in tech?

Yeah. I feel like I’ve met maybe one or two in passing, but I’ve definitely never worked with or had a friendship with another black woman designer. Obviously I don’t want to be friends with someone just because we have a similar ethnic background—that’s shallow. But it does make me sad to knowing I have no black designer friends—male or female. That’s weird to me. I know there’s black women designers out there. There has to be. But where are they? If there are no black women designing the apps and sites that so many people use, then that voice isn’t being presented or considered in the design. Are things being designed with black women in mind? Or Latina or Hispanic women? I don’t know. I don’t think so.

Do you feel like you have role models that you can look up to?

I don’t have any black woman designers, but I do have other female designers as role models, for sure. Actually, one of my personal designer role models is one of my really good friends. She’s an amazing designer and an even better person. She’s also a woman of color too. I used to work with her at my last job. Once she left, I realized how wonderful it is to have a friend and mentor at work. Not only does she mentor me in design, but I’ve learned so much from her about workplace politics. I’ve witnessed people discriminate against her. I don’t know how much of it was race related, perhaps some of it was, but working with her I saw what it looks like when men are threatened by strong women. Confident and smart women taking taking leadership positions threatens some men, and I witnessed that happen. And it was unfortunate, but she handled it with such grace, elegance, and perseverance. I’m glad that I have someone that I can turn to not only for career and design advice, but also for help in navigating the realities of being a minority and a woman in the design world. She’s definitely someone I can go to when I feel like I’m lost.

You touched on this and you mentioned in your pre-interview that you’ve had some really unique experiences as a pale black person.

Sometimes I think that non-black people don’t really know what I am, which used to actually really surprise me. I never thought of myself as being racially ambiguous until I got to college. My school wasn’t diverse and I started getting the “what are you?” questions. Right now I have braids, I think maybe that helps. People are like “oh ok, well, she’s something…” but when I first moved here I used to straighten my hair. A common question I get is if I am part Japanese, which is amusing to me because I have 0% East Asian genetics. I just happen to love studying the language.

But from time to time, I’ll hear comments from people or they do things like casually quote a song and use the n-word, I’m just like “whoa, would you have been as comfortable saying that if I had darker skin?” I don’t think they would. Like you wouldn’t have said that if I had the same skin tone as my dad, who matches the visible spectrum of what non-black people perceive as being black. So I think sometimes people feel like more comfortable saying things that are not appropriate around me, but on the flip side I think that it’s kind of up to me to say something. But that’s also much pressure! I’m naturally not a combative or antagonistic person, but even when I’ve spoken up in the past, people are like “Oh, what are you mixed with?” So it’s always really awkward. But I’ve always felt like I have had to prove my blackness. So even today, I find myself being like “Stereotypes are gross but of course I can dance, of course I can cook soul food.”

As an adult, I have wondered how many other black people think about this stuff, but I don’t have a network of people talk about it with in the Bay Area. Growing up, I really never talked about race like this. The St. Louis area is very segregated. It’s like you’re black or you’re white—even non-black people of color seemed to “pick a side,” if you will. And I liked things that black people weren’t supposed to like, like computers, video games, and anime. I took advanced classes in junior high and high school where there were only a handful of black kids, in a school that was like 50% black. And then I had this super light skin, eyes, and hair that somehow made me a target for some black kid bullies, saying I stuff like I wasn’t even an Oreo (an insult saying someone is black on the outside, white on the inside), that I was just an other.

So, by the time I started college, I was perfectly happy being like “fine, they don’t think I’m black, whatever. I’m just my own thing.” Which was so weird, because my dad is Black, and my mom is technically mixed with White but identifies as Black. So at home, I was Black but at school I felt too intimidated to say I was Black. So that’s why I think I’ve had this epiphany in the last few years where I’m like, no I am Black too. The 23andme test was like the final bit of ammo I needed. I’m 68% African. I may be mixed with other things, but that is my proof. It’s what made feel like I can claim my blackness, even though I’m on the lighter side of the spectrum of American Blackness.

“I feel like I’ve met maybe one or two in passing, but I’ve definitely never worked with or had a friendship with another black woman designer. Obviously I don’t want to be friends with someone just because we have a similar ethnic background—that’s shallow. But it does make me sad to knowing I have no black designer friends—male or female. That’s weird to me. I know there’s black women designers out there. There has to be. But where are they? If there are no black women designing the apps and sites that so many people use, then that voice isn’t being presented or considered in the design. Are things being designed with black women in mind? Or Latina or Hispanic women? I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

I know my friends and even family aren’t aware of these internal identity struggles I have. So, I know sometimes I’m more sensitive about making people accept that I am a valid form of Blackness. Which sounds really weird because at the same time if you talked to me ten years ago I would be like, “No, I’m not black. Black people don’t accept me and so I don’t accept them.”

And I know I don’t face the same level of discrimination that comes with darker skin. I also know that light skin privilege exists. I feel like I’m in a very interesting place today and definitely this is like—I’ve never even talked about this with anybody like before. I feel so comfortable discussing this with you [chuckles], but now that you asked that question, all of the feelings that I had before about how I never really felt like I could proudly say that I’m a black person. But now, I do feel like that and sometimes I’m almost like beating that fact over people’s heads because I’m finally like comfortable saying that. But, that’s only around friends. When it comes to work, I don’t really like to talk about race because like I said, I’m always worried about the reaction I’ll get.

I’ve talked a lot with people about how like the way that they grew up and how it impacts like how they are in work environments and stuff like that. For some people, it manifests in now wanting to like minimize conflict and that sort of thing. So I’m curious how like you’re upbringing you think affects like how you deal with stuff in the workplace.

I would agree with that for sure. I think people from the Midwest tend to like be really nice up front, because that’s just how you’re supposed to be—neighborly and super accommodating. And so I definitely have that quality, but even in my own home growing up, I was always the very quiet one. But that said, I feel like as I’m getting older, finding my voice, and becoming more comfortable in myself, I definitely am getting better at speaking out when I don’t like something. But I do sometimes catch people off guard when I don’t like something because I usually am so easygoing. I naturally want people to get along and want there to be harmony and balance. But when I do have to confront someone over something I have to psyche myself into it. Like I said about the Lyft driver guy, like I could have passively given him a bad review, but I still felt bad doing that. I was thinking “Oh but he has a hard job too and maybe he had a bad day.”

I have a very similar temperament. I’m just now learning to stand up for myself too—not letting everything slide.

That’s my biggest thing. I’ve always struggled with microaggressions, even before I knew what they were called. They have happened to me my whole life and I have typically just let them slide. I felt like at some point, I’d eventually reach a breaking point over it so that’s why I felt I had to get better at not letting them go. But standing up for myself—even if it’s not confronting someone in the moment—that’s my personal goal is to be able to do that.

I honestly still can’t.

It’s hard. One of my current goals is to, especially with someone I care about, is to call them out on it if they say something that isn’t cool. For all scenarios, even when it’s not something that directly relates to me. Especially in work situations, where I’m like, “I’m cool with you and we’re friends, but you can’t say that kind of stuff about women or make jokes about someone’s body or sexuality or anything like that.” Being in the Bay Area, sometimes I feel like I’m working with a lot of immature man children. Like a designer I worked with compared an Asian interview subject, specifically her voice and laugh, to a yellowface character from a sketch tv show. This was during an interview round table session, in front of other senior people and the recruiter. No one said anything. Like, he was a senior team member and he was openly making jokes like that. I wish I had said something, you know? When I think back to stuff like that I always feel a kind of pang of regret, like “I should have said something.”

Based on all of your experiences, what would you look for in a future job?

That’s something I’m thinking about a lot now. I have separate buckets of criteria for what I’m looking for in future roles. Like is it a job where the product is  making a difference in people’s lives, helping somehow? Is it a job where I am being fulfilled personally? Is the team diverse? So far, the jobs I’ve had have been really good for personal growth and career growth, but they haven’t matched the other criteria as much. And for the second criteria bucket, for a future job I definitely would love to do something related to like my hobbies or interests. Like I have been studying Japanese for almost a decade now. So I would love to do something with Japanese in my career so it feels like it’s not just a hobby and something that I’m actually using everyday.

How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016? What really excites you? What frustrates you?

I think what’s really exciting is that the things we work on in tech are so normal for everyone, even those outside of the tech world now. Actually, I just got back from Bahrain last week. My friend is from there and I went for her wedding. In Bahrain, Instagram was everywhere. And it was so crazy think that this product that was originally created by a small team in the same city where I live is touching so many people’s lives across the world. Like storefronts had their Instagram names on the sign below the store’s name, like that’s how big it is there.

But what scares or frustrates me is like stuff like bullying, or how tech can give hatred such a prominent platform.

“Diversity and inclusion just isn’t a concern for most people in tech. For example, if you’re happy and comfortable with your design team being homogenous, then you’re probably not going to feel challenged to make it diverse unless somebody points out, ‘Hey, this is a problem.'”

Also, it seems that now people are getting so hung up on online relationships that they don’t know how to have offline relationships anymore. I just watched Master of None and all those things he’s talking about are things that I am witnessing friends go through. Like people don’t know how to have relationships. They’re so worried because there’s like 5,000 people they can date via an app. They don’t want to settle and things like that. So that kind of scares me… And I’m a technology optimist.

A lot of people are scared of the Big Brotherness Google a lot, but I’m the person who’s like, “Google, take my data. You help me get to meetings on time; you help me not get lost. You can have all my data.” But I’m always a little worried that the era of optimism and innocence with the Internet is gone. People are more nefarious and don’t have the best intentions with your data out there. So that’s another thing I think is really big for tech right now is security. Now that the internet is more mature, we’re starting to really see more standards now. From a product development standpoint, maybe you can’t move fast and break things—to quote Facebook—but now users are more aware about their data. So you have to spend more time making sure your product is safe and compliant. So I think it’s nice that we are self-regulating things, but I don’t want tech to get too regulated. The Internet has always been a special place with unlimited creativity. Overall, tech is very exciting right now. So that’s kind of the cool part, witnessing it all.

How do you think tech can be more accommodating to diverse perspectives in design?

That’s something that I think about a lot. I really think it goes down to getting people involved early. I’ve met people here who have a lot of privilege, but they don’t realize it. And it’s very much a buddy system in tech where one person gets into a company, and then they only refer their friends and others in the social bubble. And because they don’t have a diverse friend group, the company’s demographics become very uniformed. Many people seem threatened by the idea of forcing diversity, but I think it is good to have someone at an executive level who is tasked with increasing diversity and making workplaces inclusive to all kinds of people.

Diversity and inclusion just isn’t a concern for most people in tech. For example, if you’re happy and comfortable with your design team being homogenous, then you’re probably not going to feel challenged to make it diverse unless somebody points out, “Hey, this is a problem.” I do feel lucky that at my current job we do have some diversity in the sense that there we have people of color on the team, and it’s mostly women. But we’re just a small company, and no one’s looking to us as a design leader in the industry compared to places like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google. And from what I’ve seen, those teams aren’t diverse.

“Black Twitter, a lot of the young people on there, they’re hilarious and amazing and I love it, but how many of the young kids participating are going to think, “I want to get a job doing something related to this?” I don’t think many are because it’s not being presented as something that they can be apart of. These platforms need to reach out early because that’s their audience right there.”

InVision just had a documentary they did I think last year or a couple of months ago, and it was like the top designers disrupters in the industry. Not one person of color was in there, I think. Maybe there one woman on the list. Stuff like that. People aren’t doing it on purpose. I think most of the people in these companies just don’t have very diverse professional and personal groups, so they likely couldn’t seek out diverse voices even if they wanted to. But if no one’s calling it out, it’s not going to change.

We also need to go into primary and high schools and get kids involved earlier. And not just coding—I think that introducing design as career options for underrepresented groups is important too. Because the kids—Twitter, for example. Black Twitter, a lot of the young people on there, they’re hilarious and amazing and I love it, but how many of the young kids participating are going to think, “I want to get a job doing something related to this?” I don’t think many are because it’s not being presented as something that they can be apart of. These platforms need to reach out early because that’s their audience right there. If you have a diverse user base, but the people creating the product aren’t, then you’re going to have some problems eventually. Tumblr had a problem, actually, awhile ago where they censored some popular tag, flagging it as not safe for work or something? I don’t remember, but it impacted a huge chunk of Tumblr’s user base. A lot of marginalized groups that feel like they can find their place or community on Tumblr, but suddenly they’re being treated different by the app developers. So now they don’t trust the app, and it’s perceived value for the user goes down. If only there had been one person, one voice on the team that could have been like, “Hey, this isn’t such a good idea.” That could have been avoided.

That’s why you need diverse teams. My hope is that as the internet generation grows up, we start seeing more diversity. I hope that tech becomes less of a “bro club.”

“I would love to stay in San Francisco for the next five years but realistically, I can’t. And I know I am speaking of a place of total privilege, as a tech worker in San Francisco. I can’t imagine how hard it was if I was still working retail or if I was working as an artist. I worry that life in San Francisco is not sustainable, so I really don’t know where I’ll be in five years.”

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years?

Oh gosh. Well as much as I love San Francisco, it’s really different now compared to when I moved here. I moved from Lower Haight to live in the Outer Sunset by the by the beach in 2014. I love living by the beach, but we truly only moved there because it was the cheapest place to find a bigger apartment at the time. But now getting downtown for work is such a hassle. I would love the ability to live closer to downtown, but I am not comfortable with how high rents are here. I would love to stay in San Francisco for the next five years but realistically, I can’t. And I know I am speaking of a place of total privilege, as a tech worker in San Francisco. I can’t imagine how hard it was if I was still working retail or if I was working as an artist. I worry that life in San Francisco is not sustainable, so I really don’t know where I’ll be in five years. I hope I’m still working as a designer, but likely it’ll be in a different area. I’ve heard that L.A. has a “Silicon Beach,” and I know there is a “Silicon Prairie” somewhere in the Midwest, although I see myself on a coast. I just hope that wherever I am in five years, I am making user experiences that are helpful to someone.

“You really have to be very self-driven because there are times where it seems that no one’s going to help you. You really do have to be self-driven, which I know can be hard, especially when you’re young. But when you’re competing with very privileged people for highly desired jobs, you can’t afford to wait around—you have to create opportunities by showing others your talents and interests.”

My last question for you would be, what advice would you have to people from similar backgrounds who are hoping to get into tech?

You really have to be very self-driven because there are times where it seems that no one’s going to help you. You really do have to be self-driven, which I know can be hard, especially when you’re young. But when you’re competing with very privileged people for highly desired jobs, you can’t afford to wait around—you have to create opportunities by showing others your talents and interests. When I got that job at my first startup, if I had waited for someone to ask me, “Well what do you want want to do besides admin work?” I don’t think that day would have come. Instead, I was like, “I know how to code. You guys need someone to make these internal pages. Do you want me to do?”

Another piece of advice is, as a person of color, people may look down on you sometimes or have lowered expectations. It hurts, but you have to say, “You know what, I don’t care about you. I’m going to give it 110% and prove you wrong.”

And finally, if you’re feeling alone, go online for support! Learn very early how to efficiently use Google. Search engines are your best friend. You can learn the basics by getting on free sites like Codecademy for code or UXPin for design. There are also tons of design and code communities out there, from Twitter to StackExchange to Quora to Reddit. It can be lonely and frustrating to work in tech, and it can be a lot of hard work, but overall it’s such an interesting and exciting place to be.

“It can be lonely and frustrating to work in tech, and it can be a lot of hard work, but overall it’s such an interesting and exciting place to be.”

]]> /tiffany-taylor/feed/ 0 /arman-nobari/ /arman-nobari/#respond Tue, 29 Mar 2016 05:19:46 +0000 http://techies.wpengine.com/?p=107 Tell me a bit about your early years and where you come from.

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 /natasha-vianna/ /natasha-vianna/#respond Tue, 29 Mar 2016 03:38:29 +0000 http://techies.wpengine.com/?p=201 Okay, so why don’t we get started. Tell me a little bit about your early years and where you come from.

I was born and raised in Boston. My parents are immigrants from South America, and I am the first generation American in my family. I grew up in acity called Somerville, a really nice area outside of Boston that’s been getting more attention lately. Mostly, it’s experiencing gentrification, partially led by Harvard, but ia nice diverse city made up of immigrant and working class families.

When my parents left Brasil for the U.S., they left behind interesting lives and successful careers there. A lot of people assume that every immigrant who came to the US was looking for a better life or to chase the “American Dream,” but my parents didn’t have much of a choice. My older brother needed open-heart surgery and the only hospital successfully operating on children was in Boston. So my parents came to the US so he could get the life-saving surgery and care that he needed.

“When my parents left Brasil for the U.S., they left behind interesting lives and successful careers there. A lot of people assume that every immigrant who came to the US was looking for a better life or to chase the “American Dream,” but my parents didn’t have much of a choice. My older brother needed open-heart surgery and the only hospital successfully operating on children was in Boston.”

Not knowing English or knowing anyone here, they realized pretty quickly that it was really hard work. With few options, they started their own house cleaning business. They made flyers that read, “We put your house to shining.” I was too young to really understand but when I found a copy of the flyer when I was about 13 or 14, I thought it was amazing. I showed my mom and we laughed for a moment, but we then talked about how hard it was for her to be a domestic worker.

After my parents divorced and my mother switched careers, I saw her blossom into this really awesome woman. She started her experiences and background to make positive changes around her. She became an advocate for immigrant women, survivors of abuse, domestic workers and became a bit of an organizer.  As a kid, I didn’t fully appreciate what she did. I just assumed, “Oh, this is my mom. This is what all kids do. They go to these rallies, right?”

In your pre-interview that by the time you were 18, you already dealt with depression and experienced homelessness, you survived domestic violence, and you’ve given birth to a child.

A lot happened in my young life and I think when young people share their tough experiences, society’s first instinct is to blame their parents. My parents loved me, cared for me, and worked hard to do a lot for me. The issues I faced were complex and layered and the reality is that they were struggling too.

Sometime in my journey through middle school, I became depressed. I wasn’t sleeping, I was anxious, and I was having a hard time finding myself. My doctor was hesitant to label it “depression” and convinced my mom to take me out of my current environment to see if a change of scenery for an extended period of time would help me. She did. I spent 2 ½ months in Brasil with her and my brother learning more about my culture, visiting family, riding horses, and being away from what felt like a negative and toxic environment. But the trip had to end and I eventually had to come back home.

I think my parents were convinced that my peers were driving me into a downward spiral so they decided at the last minute to enroll me into a private catholic school in the next town over. Horrified, I spent days crying in my room. The new school was supposed to be a new chance for me to be around people who were smart and driven. The problem was that dozens of other parents felt that way too and sent their kids to this school thinking it would resolve all of their core issues. It ended up feeling like a space, a breeding ground, for young people with complex issues who were turning to drugs for relief.

“Since it was a Catholic school, we definitely did not receive information about making healthy choices around relationships, dating and sex. We weren’t provided with information on how to keep ourselves safe or recognize signs of abuse. We, the girls, were just expected to keep our legs closed.”

And since it was a Catholic school, we definitely did not receive information about making healthy choices around relationships, dating and sex. We weren’t provided with information on how to keep ourselves safe or recognize signs of abuse. We, the girls, were just expected to keep our legs closed. And the message at home wasn’t much different. I was the only girl among my siblings and often felt the burden of supporting my mother to help provide for the family. I did a lot of cleaning and cooking and my mom reminded me that as a kid, she was already the head of the house, hand-washing everyone’s laundry, cooking dinner every day and responsible as the head caregiver for her own 4 siblings. Her expectation for me was not to be an adult, but I was expected to be responsible.

“Having a lot of responsibility and never really getting the help I needed to cope with my issues made me a vulnerable target.”

By the age of 14, I was in school full-time, involved in a ton of extracurricular activities, babysitting and working as a hostess in a local restaurant so that I could help pay bills. Every month, I would help my mom sort through the bills and make phone calls to service providers to dispute charges or request help. My mom knew how to do this, but she explained to me that she felt her english was so bad that people would never take her as serious as they would take me. That even though she was a woman in her 40s, her broken english meant a child with no accent would have more respect in the US. And she didn’t get this idea from nowhere, it came from years of people telling her that they couldn’t understand her or that she should leave the country if she can’t learn english properly.

Having a lot of responsibility and never really getting the help I needed to cope with my issues made me a vulnerable target. During a very troubling time in my life, I met  someone a little older than me who maneuvered his way into my life by offering what a young vulnerable girl needed at the time: support. And this isn’t an uncommon tactic. People can sometimes sense when someone is going through something or feeling very vulnerable, but there are certain kinds of people that feel that and use it to prey on them.

“During my junior year of high school, I found out that I was pregnant.”

During my junior year of high school, I found out that I was pregnant. I thought, “Oh my God! This can’t be happening to me. I go to a Catholic school! My parents will hate me.”

To of add a layer to that, I knew that my mother was also a young mom and then my grandmother was a young mom, that my aunt was a young mom, and it continues across several generations. And since they are Latinas, I like to talk about the reality of teen pregnancy in our culture. In our communities, young motherhood isn’t framed as a negative outcome. At the same time, young motherhood isn’t the expectation. But in a culture where women are denied access to quality education and/or prevented from pursuing careers, the next step in life for young women is marriage and/or motherhood. And that was the story for a lot of the women in my family. There was no reason to wait until 30. If you didn’t intend on going to college or establishing a career, what are you supposed to do for over 10 years between your high school graduation and the “ideal” age of motherhood. But what happened, at least this is how I see it, my parents assumed that because I was born in the US, that I would adopt American cultural norms and beliefs.

But I got pregnant at 17 and the first adult I told was my school nurse. In theory, you would think the school nurse would understand, what is essentially, your health condition and provide you with unbiased advice. You assume that as a medical professional, they will help you. Being in a Catholic school made my pregnancy a little more complex. What I heard was, “You already made a mistake so you can’t make another one.” Of course, this was the discussion around my reproductive choice and instead of providing me with all of my options and going through what the best choice was for me might be, I didn’t have a choice. Despite that, I walked away thinking about the reality that I could still get an abortion and no one would know. I could just do it, tell no one, and start all over. But I think my nurse knew that, so she told all of my teachers about my pregnancy. So here I am: pregnant, junior year in a Catholic school and I had nuns and teachers pulling me aside to tell me what decision I should make and shouldn’t make. “Oh, one sin can be forgiven but not two.”  

“But I got pregnant at 17 and the first adult I told was my school nurse. In theory, you would think the school nurse would understand, what is essentially, your health condition and provide you with unbiased advice. You assume that as a medical professional, they will help you. Being in a Catholic school made my pregnancy a little more complex. What I heard was, ‘You already made a mistake so you can’t make another one.'”

I was young and really relied on the acceptance of the people around me. And I really believed that if everybody knew that I was pregnant, then noticed my belly wasn’t growing, that they’d know what I did. I thought they would judge me and I thought I would end up regretting the decision. I was stuck in a position where I couldn’t make the best choice for myself. And maybe the choice would have still been the same in the end, but at that time my judgment was so clouded. So, I decided to continue with my pregnancy.

I told my mom first and she couldn’t believe that her daughter was pregnant. And I don’t blame her. There’s an assumption and a false stereotype about what kind of girls get pregnant. And I didn’t “fit into” that stereotype as a responsible daughter, honor roll student, and class representative. My parents were upset and I can understand why. They worked really hard in a new country and fought so hard to shed themselves from the stereotypes that Latinos face in the United States. Then they discover their teenage daughter is pregnant. It felt like the ultimate stereotype and they didn’t support me. They kicked me out that day and I had to pack my things and move in with my boyfriend.

Oh my gosh.

That period was really hard for me, because I was leaving a home where I felt safe and in with someone who I barely knew. I was isolated from the only support system I ever had.

“My parents were upset and I can understand why. They worked really hard in a new country and fought so hard to shed themselves from the stereotypes that Latinos face in the United States. Then they discover their teenage daughter is pregnant. It felt like the ultimate stereotype and they didn’t support me. They kicked me out that day.”

To make things more complicated, he was a marine getting ready to leave for training. Before my first trimester ended, he was already gone and for the next 6 months, I was completely alone. And since I was no longer living with my parents, I finished my junior year of high school and enrolled as a senior in a new public high school.

In September of 2005, I started my last year of high school as the new pregnant girl. To top off the experience, my new guidance counselor learned of my pregnancy and decided to remove me from my honors classes and put me in slower-paced classes. When I asked her to put me back into honors, she told me that I probably wouldn’t even graduate and that I should just try to get by in the lower classes – as if she was doing me a favor. But my pregnancy wasn’t impacting my ability to function in class, and I wanted to learn and I wanted to feel challenged. I wanted to continue on the path that I was on, and I couldn’t do that if people were making decisions for me without involving me. Luckily someone else in the school knew about the situation and really wanted to be an advocate for me, and so she stood up for me and said, “Put her back in honors. If it gets to the point where it’s not going well then that’s a whole different story, but put her back in honors.” And they did.

The assumption is that our peers are the ones who will pick on teen moms or give us the hardest time, but they were actually the most supportive to me. My classmates were amazing. They brought me snacks, they carried my books, and they let me cut the lunch line. They asked me questions about what my experience was like, they offered to babysit, and they spent time with me so I wouldn’t feel so alone. In school, it was teachers who were judgmental and mean.

“Older women are celebrated, supported, and the people around them will help in any way they can. That doesn’t happen for teenage girls. When we are in pain or afraid, we don’t get help. We’re told our pregnancies are punishments and this is the consequence.”

These small gestures helped so much. I was too proud to ask for any assistance, because I didn’t want to be the stereotype of what a teen mom was. I wanted to prove people wrong because I often heard, “You became a teen mom because you wanted free stuff, you wanted handouts.” That fear of judgment actually put me in worse situations because– when I should have asked for help and when I should have gone to people to tell them what was going on, I didn’t want to, because I was afraid they were going to say, “I told you so.” or “You’re just like all teen moms.” People really don’t know what it’s like for a teenage girl to be pregnant, unless you were one yourself. Older women are celebrated, supported, and the people around them will help in any way they can. That doesn’t happen for teenage girls. When we are in pain or afraid, we don’t get help. We’re told our pregnancies are punishments and this is the consequence.

My daughter’s father returned four days before I went into labor. During my daughter’s delivery, there was a moment when I started panicking. Her birth was recorded so I can still watch the moment when I went from grunting to crying to staring at the ceiling. See, throughout my entire pregnancy people said things like, “This child’s going to ruin your life. You’re life is over. You’re not going to be able to do any of the things you ever wanted to do. This is the worst thing that could happen to you.” So as I was giving birth to her, I started panicking, because I realized I was giving life to the person who would end mine. And how do I love someone who is meant to ruin my life?

Because of that experience and internalized belief, I had a very negative journey through the first few years of motherhood. I was diagnosed with depression and prescribed anti-depressants. To make matters worse, I was in a horrible relationship and was constantly told that teen moms like me are never taken serious and that no one wanted to love a woman with stretch marks and a baby. There was no one cheering me on, no one who believed in me, and I felt entirely alone.

At the same time, I was constantly facing barriers in school. The school was only required to offer me tutoring in 4 of my 7 classes during maternity leave. It was the minimum required to help me simply pass the school year. But I didn’t want to just pass, I wanted to do well in every class and graduate with a good GPA, like I would have before my pregnancy. So my psychology teacher volunteered to come to my house every week and tutored me in all 7 courses. She brought my exams and quizzes and held my daughter so I could take them. She held my textbooks while I breastfed and was always proud of my progress. Returning to school was tough, the other teachers weren’t as fond of me or my “situation.” They would refuse to meet with my after school for help and embarrass me in class. One teacher told me in math class that there was no way I could catch up, so I proved her wrong by acing the class.

“I even had to fight for things like the right to pump breast milk twice a day. The school didn’t want to let me because they thought I was trying to find excuse to get out of class. Right. Because what every 18-year-old girl wants is to like skip her lunch break so she can be sit in the nurse’s office pumping milk and nibbling on crackers.”

But I even had to fight for things like the right to pump breast milk twice a day. The school didn’t want to let me because they thought I was trying to find excuse to get out of class. Right. Because what every 18-year-old girl wants is to like skip her lunch break so she can be sit in the nurse’s office pumping milk and nibbling on crackers. That is so much fun.

I dealt with a lot of people who constantly tried to limit my choices and my future. Then closer to the end of that semester, I went back to my guidance counselor’s office to ask if she could help me look over college applications. Most of my friends had already applied and had already found out where they were going, and I was late but wanted to do make it happen. Her response without even making eye contact with me was, “Well, let’s see if you even graduate high school first.”

God.

I walked away from that and thought, “Oh, she’s probably right. I probably won’t be able to do this, and I should probably take things one step at a time.” So I didn’t apply for college. Now, the good news is I did graduate high school on time and I did walk the stage with my class. I did get to stay in my honors classes throughout the whole year, and I did well in all of them, despite being a teen mom. I think, actually, I did better in school because I was a teen mom and because I had something else motivating me to do even better.  But people outside of me and my daughter’s life didn’t see that.  

So, you graduated, you didn’t go straight to college—what were those next few years like for you?

When I was in high school I really, really wanted to go to med school. I wanted to become a psychiatrist. Having been a young person who coped with depression, I knew what people like me needed and I understood the differences in cultural understanding of depression. For example—parts of my family are really religious and there have been times people said things like, “You’re not depressed, you’re just dealing with something. Pray to God. You’ll be fine.”

“No one in my family filled out a college application. I had no idea of what that process was like, I had no idea of what you were supposed to do, when you were supposed to do it, what was normal, what wasn’t.”

I knew at a young age that this was not right.  I just couldn’t articulate or figure it out, but I wanted to become a psychiatrist so that I could serve and help young people, like me. Now, the idea of going to med school was really overwhelming because again, my parents were immigrants and they weren’t citizens, and they weren’t in the best financial places, and no one in my family had ever gone to college. So I knew that first, they wouldn’t able to co-sign loans for me and I felt overwhelmed at the thought of the expense. And even if I chose another career, I didn’t know how to navigate the process.

No one in my family filled out a college application. I had no idea of what that process was like, I had no idea of what you were supposed to do, when you were supposed to do it, what was normal, what wasn’t. The idea of a young mom with no support becoming a psychiatrist felt way too overwhelming. It felt unattainable. So what I did was, after I graduated, that summer I looked at local state and community colleges that would accept late applications.I might not be able to become a psychiatrist right away but I can start the process  by becoming a nurse. It seemed a little more attainable and promised a guaranteed job.  So I applied for college, started in the fall, finished off my prerequisites, and prepared for a career in nursing.

“I entered college with a new identity. I didn’t tell anyone that I was a mom, including my professors. I just so badly wanted to be treated the same as everyone else.

I entered college with a new identity. I didn’t tell anyone that I was a mom, including my professors. I just so badly wanted to be treated the same as everyone else.  The problem was that I was still facing unresolved issues and an internalized belief that I was not valuable. So I didn’t ever explain anything to my professors and by my second year of school, I dropped out. I didn’t have reliable childcare, I was still coping with depression, and I was working a full-time job and living on my own.  I decided that if I was going to accomplish anything, I needed to take care of myself. That I was going to focus on being a good mom and practice self-care.

Wow. How did you end up in tech?

That’s a great question. It’s quite a little bit of a journey from that point to getting into tech. I don’t have a traditional tech background, as I think a lot of people do out here. After I took this break from school I started focusing on myself. I started to deconstruct and redefine what it meant to be a young woman and single mother in today’s society. I started talking to other young moms—which was life-changing—because it really helps when you don’t feel as isolated.

I started realizing that thousands and thousands and thousands of young women across the country are dealing with the same exact thing. 100,000 teens give birth every year—more than 80% were unplanned—and so many of them drop out of school, or feel pressured to leave or didn’t receive the support that they need to stay. Yet, many some of them share that it’s not actually pregnancy and parenthood that makes their lives hard, as we often hear, but it’s actually the way people treat us. It’s the way that our educators treat us. It’s the way a lot gate-keepers treat us. It’s the ways in which people invalidate who we are as just women and humans in society. The minute we become young parents we’re labeled as irresponsible, and told we’re awful people, and that we should just be isolated and not exposed to the general public because we’d cause an “epidemic.”

So I began looking at ways to counter-message the false reality that young mothers are not productive members of our society by leveraging the power of new tech, like social media. My first time trying out this theory was with the Children’s Hospital in Boston, where I developed a comprehensive strategy for using new tech to eliminate the feeling of isolation among over 500 young parents in Boston. That opportunity led to a hire at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital where I expanded the program to make an impact on reducing health disparities and improving health outcomes in the lives of young mothers of color in Boston. Then I was hired by  the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy where I worked on a $5M dollar grant from the CDC to reduce the teen pregnancy rate in two cities by 10% in five years. In a few months, I helped develop a social marketing campaign for two cities. We reached our 5-year targets before year 3.  

“Initially, I thought, ‘There is no way I want to work in tech. I can’t give into that culture or space because, well, it’s tech.”  I thought, ‘I can’t do that. I can’t be for racial justice and reproductive justice and work in tech. That doesn’t make sense.'”

While all of this was happening, I also started a grassroots campaign called #NoTeenShame to change a terrifying message that organizations like the Candies’ Foundation and multi-millionaire CEOs like Neil Cole share with teenage girls about sexuality and choice and I partnered with six other young moms from different parts of the country for its launch and within a week, it went viral and we were being featured in everything from Ms. Magazine to Business Insider.  It was exciting for people to see seven young moms of color across the country were starting a campaign against this multimillionaire CEO. It went viral to the point where he caught wind of it and wrote a response on The Huffington Post about it. It was not the response we were hoping, but it was a win for us none the less. Once that happened, we started getting contacted by just about every organization in the United States that was working with young people to get our insight on how to do the work better and more effectively. We got really busy really fast and people just started reaching up to us and asking, “Well, how can we replicate the models that you guys have used in your respective organizations to help young people? What should we be doing differently?” The series of all those events led to me developing strategic frameworks for using new technology for social impact and finally presenting at a tech conference here in San Francisco last year.

For a long time I envisioned tech as the enemy—I’m a reproductive justice activist. I’m a racial justice activist.

When I wased in San Francisco, I met someone on the executive team at a startup called Honor (where I work now) who was interested in the work that I did,how I accomplished it and how creative I was in using very little resources to accomplish a massive goal. And so we started talking, and I met other people on the executive team. Initially, I thought, “There is no way I want to work in tech. I can’t give into that culture or space because, well, it’s tech”  And so coming into this space, I thought, “I can’t do that. I can’t be for racial justice and reproductive justice and work in tech. That doesn’t make sense.” I had this assumption that social justice didn’t fit into tech, but I think that’s because I based my opinions on the negative stories I heard on the east coast. But once I met the people that were leading the company, I realized that so much of what I assumed about the people in Silicon Valley were wrong. But also that someone like me can still be in tech and be a valuable asset to the work. And as weird as this sounds, I do think I found that special startup that actually developed a really good frame from the very beginning of how they do work. So, I waited a while and I thought about it, went back to Boston, and decided to pursue the opportunity. I thought to myself, “Oh my god. I was 27 years old. I have a daughter. I’m a single mom, and the only family that I have in the US are just four people who live in Boston. And now I’m accepting the  opportunity to move to San Francisco to work in tech.” And that was hard to wrap my head around.

It was actually my mom who said, “Natasha, you can do this. You’ve overcome way harder things in your life.” When she was 27, she was on her way  to the US for a completely different life. And so she said, “I did it, and I’m not saying that we’re the same. But you can move across the country to pursue this. You can do this.” She also reminded me that I had to think about my daughter who’s really interested in science and has been going to all these science clubs. I now have an opportunity to actually be in this field, to actually be in tech, and provide her with an inside view of what this world is really like. She can watch me go through this process and this journey, and she’s going to see how hard it is. She’s going to see the good and the bad, but she’s going to see it. And she’s going to appreciate it. So, it was a combination of those things that made me decide to say yes to the new field and the big move.

So, what was Silicon Valley like for you when you first got here?

There’s been positives and negatives. One of the things that I actually had to overcome when I came here is how fast everything moves. It’s really fast-paced. Everybody told me it was like this, but it was ten times faster than what I’d prepared myself for. And initially, it was really hard, but I also had a really supportive group of people here where they were willing to help me adjust.

“I love that when I’m having lunch and sitting at a table with people who are amazing engineers, or accomplished healthcare professionals, and talented organizers. And we all sit at a lunch table enjoying each other’s company and discussing the very different experiences we’ve had—and how those diverse experiences shaped such an incredible company.”

The other difficult transition is coming from a space where I talked about racial and reproductive justice 24/7 without filtering myself. Prior to this role, I went to networking events where we introduced ourselves by identifying which pronouns we prefer, the issues we’re working on and how we identify. It’s much different here where I’m often asked to introduce myself by position, educational background and accomplishments. And even when I went to events centered on inclusion, I didn’t feel included. How are so many companies  hosting an event on improving inclusion in the tech sector, hosting in spaces that are difficult to access, and not offering things like child-care?

What has been most exciting of activating for you in your work here?

What’s been most exciting is the people that I get to work with. I love that when I’m having lunch and sitting at a table with people who are amazing engineers, or accomplished healthcare professionals, and talented organizers. And we all sit at a lunch table enjoying each other’s company and discussing the very different experiences we’ve had—and how those diverse experiences shaped such an incredible company.

Despite growing up 5 minutes from Harvard and 10 minutes from MIT, I felt so disconnected from people in tech. They seemed so unreachable and different. And I didn’t always see them as the people I wanted to aspire to become. The Harvard grads were the ones moving into our community, pushing families out of homes, so 5 or 6 students could move in, bumping up rent from $1000 to $3000, a profitable idea for landlords. So I witnessed how the growth and expansion of schools like Harvard led to the immersion of grad students into my community, which meant the immigrant and working class families had to leave.

“Despite growing up 5 minutes from Harvard and 10 minutes from MIT, I felt so disconnected from people in tech. They seemed so unreachable and different. And I didn’t always see them as the people I wanted to aspire to become.”

That played a role in how I perceived tech, even though I was using platforms like Facebook. It didn’t occur to me that someone not too distant from me created this. To the teenage me, it was just something that was created by someone somewhere. It took years before I learned that it was created 5 minutes from my house.

It was cool, but it frustrated me because I felt like there were so many issues impacting young people in Somerville and Cambridge and no one seemed to care. And it was frustrating to see people come from all over the world to study here, learn from the community, then leave forever. Now that I’m on the inside, I see how difficult it is to create tools that are genuinely helpful to people—especially if it’s for people of low-income. And it’s frustrating.  

I’m curious to know how that experience, seeing that tech ecosystem in Boston affects the way that you feel about the state of tech here right now?

Boston’s tech scene is very different than it is on the west coast. It’s thriving, but in a very different way. So although I was involved there, it didn’t help much when dealing with imposter syndrome. I think we often frame and consider imposter syndrome as a one time occurrence that we overcome. But what I learned is that it’s a life-long issue that you’re constantly battling. See, when my Boston friends learned the news of my move to San Francisco to work for an Andreessen-Horowitz backed startup, they were amazed. To them, I was doing what so many wished they could do and I was supposed to feel like “I did it!” And I did, but there’s still the reality that you’re constantly needing to be ahead of everyone else and doing incredibly well. I love the field and where I work, but there’s internal self-created pressure to make sure I’m outdoing myself.

“When everyone around you has very similar background, you can sometimes still feel like an outsider. I didn’t have the typical college experience, I didn’t have those amazing internship opportunities, and I didn’t have parents who could introduce me to really cool people or get me jobs or even read over my essay to see if they were grammatically correct. Growing up, I had to do and figure out all of those things on my own.”

But when everyone around you has very similar background, you can sometimes still feel like an outsider. I didn’t have the typical college experience, I didn’t have those amazing internship opportunities, and I didn’t have parents who could introduce me to really cool people or get me jobs or even read over my essay to see if they were grammatically correct. Growing up, I had to do and figure out all of those things on my own. So part of the culture shock is being lost in the conversations centered around privilege.

The other thing too that I notice out here that never happened to me before is we meet people and they’re constantly extracting from you. “What are your thoughts on this?” and “What are your thoughts on that?” And I’m hesitant to share information because also as a woman of color and having done really great work over the past decade I’ve constantly experienced situations where people with power will take a little bit of information from me and then turn it into something that they get credit for. And so, there’s this constant erasure that happens to young woman of color, so I’m hesitant to engage based on this historical experience. Especially if they’re not being transparent with me.

“I’m hesitant to share information because also as a woman of color and having done really great work over the past decade I’ve constantly experienced situations where people with power will take a little bit of information from me and then turn it into something that they get credit for. And so, there’s this constant erasure that happens to young woman of color, so I’m hesitant to engage based on this historical experience.”

The other piece is that I have internalized stigma as a teen mom and it pops up from time to time. I tend to find myself avoiding conversations that might turn into a discussion about me being a single parent that turns into facing a series of invasive questions. Because it happens. Too often. And it’s not intentional, but their unconscious bias just starts surfacing, and they ask, “Well, how old’s your kid? How old are you? Oh my God, that mean’s you were in like…” You literally see them every time look up, do the math, and they’re like, “Oh my god, you were 17! What was that like? What did your parents say?” And it just turns into this whole dialogue that I don’t want to be a part of. Interested in my story? Go read about it or watch Gilmore Girls. I don’t want my struggles to be the center of discussion, especially in a society where we were made to believe that teen parenthood is a bad thing.

How has everything we’ve talked about, both your experiences in tech so far, and your upbringing, and all of your cumulative experiences, how does that effect what is priority to you here? What is priority in a job, what is priority in what you’re trying to get out of Silicon Valley?

So it’s actually really interesting, because I feel like a lot of people out here are really focused on long-term planning. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s necessary, but I feel like my goals are very different than a lot of people in my position. And that has a lot to do with the reality of how much progress I’ve already made in the past decade. I’ve met and exceeding so many of my own expectations for this period of time and I wanted to spend time acknowledging that and perfecting and improving everything I do now. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to push myself to grow more. I’m focused on ensuring what I do on a daily basis is amazing and meaningful—I’m focused on leaving behind a legacy that my daughter would be proud to share with her grandchildren.

I think a lot about how my mother’s move to the US changed the entire future of our family. So I can’t help but wonder what amazing choices I can make that will continue to do that. If I have the power to shape an incredible future generation, I will do that. And I want to be present today, enjoying my life and my daughter’s life—not waiting for happiness in the form of monetary success.

I’m curious to know how much you’re balancing what you’re working on now and the activism that you’ve been involved with so long, and what it’s like being a part of both of those worlds, especially in the context of San Francisco.

After accepting a position in tech, I thought that I could still be an activist and a writer. But I realized that it was going to take a lot of my mental capacity and energy to adapt to startup culture and do my work really well. Although my personal work is always with me, I knew that I moved across the country for this amazing opportunity and I wanted to dedicate as much a possible to meeting my expectations. Prior to my move to San Francisco, I was presenting at different conferences and organizations across the countries and being asked to do a lot of consultant and advisory work. I had to start declining a lot of those opportunities. And I had to adjust to the realization that nobody in this sector knows me, which is different than Boston.

“Prior to my move to San Francisco, I was presenting at different conferences and organizations across the countries and being asked to do a lot of consultant and advisory work. I had to start declining a lot of those opportunities. And I had to adjust to the realization that nobody in this sector knows me, which is different than Boston.”

Outside of work, my only priority is being a really amazing mom. That can be challenging when you’re working in an environment where working moms aren’t the majority. The ways in which you use and prioritize your time is different and participating in after-hours anything is often a challenge, even though they’re usually necessary and important. Childcare is an obstacle when you’re a single mom in a state where you have no family and feel like you’re already spending too much time away from your kid.

How’s your daughter liking San Francisco?

She loves it but hates the hills. I hate it more than she does honestly but she likes it here a lot. Ha!

She’s really thoughtful and friendly so she made a new best friend within her first week in school. It’s been super easy for her in that way. And like I mentioned earlier, she’s now really interested in Science. Back in Boston, she participated in many different science clubs and programs. It helped expand what her understanding of science was and she became really excited about the opportunity for me to work in tech. And I’m glad she felt good about the choice because I hope she can face an obstacle one day and remember that, “My mom went through this too.” And we have deep conversations about girls in STEM and what it’s like to be a girl in a lot of the science programs. It was interesting to me that she wasn’t interested in the field because of the cool “perks” but because she sees this space as the space where she can do amazing things. Her mission is to promote eco-friendly lifestyles and find a cure for Alzheimer’s. After my grandmother passed from Alzheimer’s, she felt deeply connected and spent a year asking me countless questions. She knows we’ve created tech to do some amazing things and hopes she can do something amazing too. And I’m going to nurture her interest in science until she does exactly what she wants to do.

“I think a lot about tech’s impact on marginalized people, and not just how they use the service but how they actually can be included in the development of new tech.”

How do your friends and family from home feel about how far you’ve come and all you’ve accomplished?

They’re really happy for me. Actually, I had one friend who she really said, “Natasha I think you did everything you could here. You literally accomplished everything and there wasn’t a better next step than this.” My mom is really proud.

How you feel about the state of tech in 2016? What excites you, what frustrates you, what would you like to see change?

I think a lot about tech’s impact on marginalized people, and not just how they use the service but how they actually can be included in the development of new tech. This is where my previous experience overlaps with what tech is missing—the ability to always center the needs of the people they’re targeting. When we’re talking about young people, I’d love to see them getting the support and resources they need to turn their innovative ideas into reality.

“As a mother in tech, I also faced the reality that so many of the programs meant to nurture girls’ interest in STEM are not easily accessible. The programs are often replicating the very same systems that worked for people already in tech. I’ve found myself feeling like the burden falls on parents to fix the pipeline issue and get girls into STEM.”

As a mother in tech, I also faced the reality that so many of the programs meant to nurture girls’ interest in STEM are not easily accessible. The programs are often replicating the very same systems that worked for people already in tech. I’ve found myself feeling like the burden falls on parents to fix the pipeline issue and get girls into STEM.

One example is my daughter had science club on Saturday mornings, and it was at a college campus, which has its pros and its cons. The pro is that it’s great to send girls to a college to see what that environment is like. The con is that it’s often inaccessible for a lot of parents and families and it requires a lot of commuting. And then the classes are so short that parents, can’t just drop off their kids at the program and then go home or doing something else and then come back. They must sit there waiting. So parents are asked to spend a few hours every weekend getting their kids to this program, waiting for them, and then commuting back home. And that could be a barrier to some. The other barrier, of course, is a lot of these programs are really expensive, so if you’re creating programs that are supposed to improve diversity but they’re really expensive, only the people who make enough money to afford it it will be able to get their children into it. There’s usually a financial aid or scholarship application, but it puts the burden on parents who are now of low income to prove to the program that their children deserve a chance. Now you have moms and dads or grandparents, being asked to fill out applications that ask invasive questions about their finances.

“They’re asking parents who are already dealing with a lot to prove and to open up about these issues with people they don’t even know, so that their kid can have an opportunity that they deserve. What if parents don’t even speak English or what if they’re undocumented and don’t have tax documents proving they are of low income?”

They’re asking parents who are already dealing with a lot to prove and to open up about these issues with people they don’t even know, so that their kid can have an opportunity that they deserve. What if parents don’t even speak English or what if they’re undocumented and don’t have tax documents proving they are of low income?

This is probably related to gender diversity, but you wrote in your pre-interview that you think men should lean out.

Before I joined tech, the concept of “leaning in” surfaced onto my radar. Initially, it felt like this was being proposed as a new idea, something that’s rarely been done before. It frustrated me. I’ve spent most of my life leaning in for survival. And leaning in is simply what marginalized women across the nation have been doing for their basic human rights for decades.

“Before I joined tech, the concept of “leaning in” surfaced onto my radar. Initially, it felt like this was being proposed as a new idea, something that’s rarely been done before. It frustrated me. I’ve spent most of my life leaning in for survival. And leaning in is simply what marginalized women across the nation have been doing for their basic human rights for decades.”

And when I look at the core issue, it’s equity in the workforce. Women aren’t paid fairly, but women didn’t create the unfair ways in which women are compensated. And women of color make significantly less than white women, and face higher rates of discrimination at work. Women leaning in can help change the ways in which women are perceived and treated, but men leaning out create genuine opportunities for women to rise. Leaning out as a man can mean giving up your spot on an all male panel to offer a woman on your team the opportunity, or giving press ops to women, being vocal about the important roles women hold in the company, and of course, paying them a fair and equitable salary. Because the burden of making the workforce fair and equitable shouldn’t be ours to carry.

“Leaning out as a man can mean giving up your spot on an all male panel to offer a woman on your team the opportunity, or giving press ops to women, being vocal about the important roles women hold in the company, and of course, paying them a fair and equitable salary. Because the burden of making the workforce fair and equitable shouldn’t be ours to carry.”

What advice would you have for those of similar backgrounds hoping to get into tech?

We’re all facing different obstacles or adversities, and there are periods in our lives where we may feel like we can’t do what we want. And when we live in a negative environment, you’re not just internally facing challenges, but you’re getting that external negative validation. Whether you are a teen mom or a young person facing any of the many obstacles that make our lives unnecessarily harder than it needs to be, stay focused on your own dreams. Find a mentor or two who are smart and kind, and only trust them for advice and guidance.

And constantly work on yourself and making you the best version you can be. We like to believe that at some point in our lives we reach our full potential, but what if it’s a life long journey where we’re constantly learning and constantly changing and improving? Don’t feel like you have to be the final version of you at this very moment, just be willing to learn. Stay true to who you are and accept that you are a work in progress.

“Don’t feel like you have to be the final version of you at this very moment, just be willing to learn. Stay true to who you are and accept that you are a work in progress.”

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 the Philippines. I’m ¾ Filipina and ¼ Austrian. I understand Tagalog and I speak elementary German. I have lived in the Philippines, Germany, and all over the United States (Connecticut, Nebraska, Missouri, California, New York, Boston). My family relocated a lot because of work, so from an early age I was comfortable with the idea of constant change and impermanence.

I was a hard worker and rather ambitious for as long as I can remember. For example, in the third grade, there were these boxes with cards in various colors for different topics like math, language, science, etc. Every day you were supposed to do three. I remember feeling rather competitive and ambitious (with myself, not against other classmates) and I would want to finish the whole box as fast as I could. So what I would do is, I would steal a large quantity of cards, take them home, and then I would work on them the whole day. Sometimes it’d be 9:00 PM and my mom would be like, “Why are you still working?”. I would lie and tell her that it was homework and I recall she was so perplexed – how can a third grader have so much homework? My teachers were also perplexed at how I managed to finish boxes and boxes of cards during school hours, but for me, it was just fun.

How did you first discover tech and get into tech?

I first learned about tech at Stanford. When I started at Stanford, I was certain I would become an investment banker and work for Goldman Sachs. My grand life ambition at the time was to one day become the CEO of Goldman Sachs and I had to start now!

One day, my best friend was telling me how she discovered the tech industry and how she wanted to “do start-ups”. I asked her what that meant and she said, “Well, in tech you have a really scrappy attitude. So, let’s say you don’t have a table. What do you do? Well, you don’t buy a table. You don’t have time for that. You grab a box, then you rip down the door, you put the door on top of the box, and ta-da! You have a table. That’s how scrappy you have to be when you do start-ups.”

“If I’m going to be CEO one day it might as well be now.”

Her “how to make a table” story made such an impression on me. It was the seed of ever considering doing a start-up because I could see myself thriving in an environment with other people who shared that scrappy attitude.

I continued to pursue my investment banking dream. I became the president of the investment club, did internships at top banks every single summer and even during the year, and eventually got an offer from J.P. Morgan in New York for their Leveraged Finance division. But the truth was, by the time I experienced the “New York banker lifestyle” that I always dreamed of, I was deeply unfulfilled. I remember asking my boss, “If I put in the best work possible and have the skill-set of an Associate a year from now, will you promote me?” And he said, “No, it doesn’t matter how good you are, you still have to do 3 years and then go to business school for 2 years and only then can you become an Associate.” This didn’t sit well with me and long story short (after relinquishing my “banker identity” that I had held on to for so long) I decided I was going to start a company.

I realized that if I wanted infinite skill-set growth and no system to hold me back, that I could make this work if I created a profitable company by the time I graduated from college. I had one year. If I’m going to be CEO one day it might as well be now.

Looking back at this rejection of the J.P. Morgan offer and starting the journey on the scrappy startup path, I now see that this was the beginning of my ability to reject a traditional hierarchical system that I used to follow so strictly. Back then, I based my personal worth on my company name and job title, and back then, it needed to be Goldman Sachs and CEO. Rejecting that value system, however, has helped me realize that my value lies in deciding what I want to do and then making it happen. I no longer had to knock on someone’s door, play by the rules, form myself into “this perfect person” with a prestigious job and title. Now, I could simply decide what I wanted to happen and then make it happen.

A week after I turned down my “dream job”, I started teaching myself static front-end web development (HTML/CSS). I made a website all about how to get top investment banking internships (because that was the only topic I could write about in great detail that would be valuable to many at the time). My first business taught students all about how to prepare for finance interviews, how to write great resumes, how to get top internships. I wrote all the content, wrote all the HTML/CSS web pages, hooked up PayPal to sell my resume review and interview prep service, then I put it online and made it a real thing.

“I no longer had to knock on someone’s door, play by the rules, form myself into “this perfect person” with a prestigious job and title. Now, I could simply decide what I wanted to happen and then make it happen.”

So, that was my first tech-enabled small business. I saw the full stack, from the web development to actually providing a service to my customers. Its growth motivated me to do something bigger and something not about finance. But I could see it now. I could see how if I made this my craft, I could make something really impactful.

Four months later, I started my first “real” tech company. The first idea that got me really excited was basically Airbnb for tourism. I wanted to build a site that sold fun and unique tour experiences like “Espresso Bar Hopping in SF’s Mission District”. I was a single founder with grit and an idea. There was an upcoming Entrepreneurship class and I decided that my goal was to take the class and make revenues by the end of the class so that I could work on this full time after graduation.

Over the course of the quarter I led a team of students. Since I was the only technical person on the team, I designed and wrote another basic website and integrated with PayPal. My team and I created real tours on campus, one was a design workshop at the D School, another was a tour of the Solar Car team’s workspace, for example. We sold our first tours and we were in business. If I recall correctly, my teacher said we were probably the first team ever to make revenues during the class in the history of the class. Shortly after, I recruited a technical co-founder and we decided to really build this as a business with the joint goal that we had to grow our revenues enough so that we could support ourselves full time after graduation.

One of the things we did was apply to Y Combinator. My co-founder was obsessed with being a “YC Company” but I didn’t really see what the hype was. I remember in our interview with Paul Graham he said, “You’re talented but I hate your idea. Change it, apply again, and we’ll accept you.” And both of us were like…hell no. We’re not changing our idea because you told us to! We’re founders!

Eventually though, as we did the math on our revenues, we realized, “Shit. We’re not going to make enough money if we don’t do something to accelerate our revenue growth ASAP.” Graduation was coming up. So, we started frantically calling tour operators, because we reasoned that if they knew how to sell tours well that we could learn a thing or two from them. This was a stressful time because I had to learn how to cold-call. I remember waking up at eight in the morning – which was an ungodly time to be awake as a student – calling these people, stuttering, and then getting hung up on. It sucked!

And then one person hung up on my co-founder, and he was fed up with it. And my co-founder said, ”You know what? I’m going to call him back. And I’m going to say, ”Don’t hung up on me, talk to me.” Ballsy, but that’s why I admired him. So he called again and the tour operator said, “You know what kid? I like you. You really want to help me? Build software for me.” We realized many of these tour operators were running their businesses on spreadsheets and whiteboards and quickly changed our pitch to cold-calling them and saying, “Hey we’re two Stanford kids who can make software for you—how much will you pay us?”

This became our new line of business. This time around, people were much more interested and some of them had such a “hair on fire need” that they wanted to meet us at 7am the very next day. We got our first customers that way and quickly made enough revenues to cover our cost of living within the first three months of running the business. I graduated, was able to move to San Francisco, pay rent. This was in 2011 and I was paying $600/mo to share a studio but you know what, I had my own company and we were killin’ it!

“I worked for a start-up for a few months, was a personal trainer for a few weeks, had many side gigs, I did a bunch of random, random things. I was searching.”

Eventually, running this business was no longer fulfilling. I realized that at the end of the day, all my efforts went towards making tourism software and helping tour operators save time and money. The day to day work was far from glamorous. Suddenly, I couldn’t see myself working on this “for the rest of my life” like I could when I first started, because we had rapidly pivoted our business into “whatever would pay us a bunch of money” without giving a care about whether this was actually the direction we wanted to take our lives. I was about 22 years old so it was great to learn this lesson early on in life. I decided I was going to leave the company and that in the future, I would very carefully choose who my customers are. Because if I’m going to spend all my time catering to their needs, I want to make a more meaningful impact at a deeply personal level.

And that was basically the end of that company (for me). A whole year went by. I worked for a start-up for a few months, was a personal trainer for a few weeks, had many side gigs, I did a bunch of random, random things. I was searching. One of the random life-changing things I did was attend Railsbridge, a free 2-day ruby on rails seminar for women. After this seminar I realized I was pretty good at Rails and wanted to really learn how to code so that I could build and test other start-up ideas rapidly.

This is how Spitfire started. It was my chosen “coding project”. I wanted to build a site called “Spitfire” that was a place where badass women could go to be with other badass women and become stronger, smarter, and inspired. There was something exciting about the identity of “a spitfire” that I captured in early versions of the site that kept me learning Ruby, Rails, Javascript, and that kept me developing the idea.

Soon, I was immersed into learning to code. Every time I would learn something new, I would add/modify Spitfire, then show it to people and ask for their thoughts. Months later, I had a mobile web strength training app that people were actually using. Since the mobile web app was so popular, I decided to make it a real native iOS app and started learning Objective-C/iOS.

“Every time VCs or investors would say things like, ‘I can’t see this being a large market,’ or otherwise express disbelief it would definitely annoy me, but not discourage me, because in my gut all of those interactions with customers that I had were just proving their opinions wrong.”

Eventually, the iOS app had about 100 people using the beta, and that’s around the time when I realized that this can be a real brand. A real business. I recruited my co-founder Nidhi Kulkarni, an extremely talented engineer from MIT who was also a D1 NCAA lightweight rower in college. I met her at a party and we connected as both women in tech and female athletes.

Soon, we had an app that was ready for submission to the App Store. This was a really exciting time because we didn’t think anything would happen. We thought it’d be a big achievement if we got 1000 of our friends to use it. But something crazy happened. Apple ended up featuring it on the front page that first week we launched, and we were stunned. We were stunned that this thing we created was viewed as good enough by Apple to be featured on the home page.

We couldn’t get any work done that day. We just kept looking at our dashboard and seeing downloads go up and up. That’s when we realized that there was something here that was much bigger than what we previously thought. This app is no longer for hardcore athletes like us. It’s a product that resonates with the everyday woman who aspires to train and develop her inner athlete. And that’s huge.

“If we don’t actually make women stronger, if our work doesn’t help instill true confidence from within, then we are failing. You have to be really careful in the health and fitness industry because if you don’t think deeply about your language, your photography, your diet recommendations, you can actually hurt and hamper people at scale and cause people to have low self esteem and eating disorders.”

We have come a long way since then. Over the last few years we raised funding from TechStars, launched a successful 179% funded Kickstarter, got featured in major news publications like Washington Post and ABC/CBS news, have recently reached our milestone of 100k users and are making our first revenues through our premium subscription offering.

Of course, those are just the successes. I’m not quite ready to discuss the hardships we have gone through at length just yet but one of the toughest years we had was 2015 when my co-founder’s mother passed away. She was with her family in New Jersey for a good chunk of that year. Our progress slowed to a crawl and I actually got pretty depressed while she was gone. So we definitely have had ups and downs.

What do you think are the biggest motivators behind your work?

I am the most motivated about building Spitfire into an eternal resource that truly helps women build their mental and physical strength and that grows into a brand that truly represents the female athlete within. If we don’t actually make women stronger, if our work doesn’t help instill true confidence from within, then we are failing. You have to be really careful in the health and fitness industry because if you don’t think deeply about your language, your photography, your diet recommendations, you can actually hurt and hamper people at scale and cause people to have low self esteem and eating disorders.

I want to help women internalize that they are strong, powerful, independent. I care a lot about that transformation and it’s both physical and mental. I view Spitfire as a vehicle to take that transformation and allow a lot of people to experience that for themselves in their own way.

“I want to help women internalize that they are strong, powerful, independent.”

We definitely have already seen the transformative effect of Spitfire on various women’s lives, but I still feel like we have a lot of work to do and a long journey ahead. This mental and physical transformation into one’s most confident and independent self is one of the most exciting things that Spitfire can offer. That’s the part of spitfire that I’m really excited about.

How did you learn not to get discouraged when people disagreed with your idea behind Spitfire?

From very early on, when I would talk to various women about Spitfire, they would just get so excited. Their eyes would light up and they would say things like, “I need that in my life! That’s for me.”

So, every time VCs or investors would say things like, “I can’t see this being a large market” or otherwise express disbelief it would definitely annoy me, but not discourage me, because in my gut all of those interactions with customers that I had were just proving their opinions wrong.

“At first, I was kind of like, ‘Oh no, he’s disagreeing! He’s a big prestigious VC and he’s disagreeing!’ And then eventually I would just conclude, ‘Wow, this guy is an idiot.’ But I would still be nice. And smile. And then eventually I just decided, ‘You know what? I’m tired of hearing this shit. I’m going to argue back and tell them that they’re wrong.’ And the first time I told a VC that he was straight out wrong, it felt so good. He was surprised. We couldn’t come to an agreement, but I felt badass as fuck for standing my ground.”

Back when I was just getting started, whenever random people said things like, “Oh, no one’s going to actually use this.” I couldn’t help but think, “Wait a second. Every single interaction and every single data point with a customer tells me otherwise.” Eventually all of those interactions and data points solidified my intuition. At first, I was kind of like, “Oh no, he’s disagreeing! He’s a big prestigious VC and he’s disagreeing!” And then eventually I would just conclude, “Wow, this guy is an idiot.” But I would still be nice. And smile. And then eventually I just decided, “You know what? I’m tired of hearing this shit. I’m going to argue back and tell them that they’re wrong.” And the first time I told a VC that he was straight out wrong, it felt so good. He was surprised. We couldn’t come to an agreement, but I felt badass as fuck for standing my ground.

How do feel like you fit into Silicon Valley culture?

I fit in well with other engineers. I enjoy meeting with the types of engineers who care about what they’re working on, who have side projects and who tinker with new technologies because they’re excited about it. Who are always building things. Trying to get better. I really get along with those types of engineers. Brogrammers—not so much.

“When it comes to venture capital, funding, large tech companies, and the ‘grow fast and become a rocket ship’ mindset, I disassociate with that and view myself as an outsider to those types of belief systems.”

I also fit in very well with the women in tech community. I see or hang out with other women and tech and have this sense of calm, I feel like, “these are my people!”

However, when it comes to venture capital, funding, large tech companies, and the “grow fast and become a rocket ship” mindset, I disassociate with that and view myself as an outsider to those types of belief systems.

It feels like there are people who work inside “big tech company” paradise, and then I view me and my co-founder as wolves on the outside, in the snow, hunting for food every day. We’re just in a very different mental and physical place.

I feel proud to say, “I learned to code and built a great product with my co-founder.” But I don’t feel like, “I’m in tech and being in this industry resonates with me.” Because it doesn’t. So that’s kind of a sensitive topic.

My identity doesn’t really lie with tech, it lies more with the strength community and especially women’s empowerment, badassery, strength training community.

I’m curious how you found strength training in the first place.

I was an avid runner in college, I ran multiple marathons and half marathons. After several knee injuries, I decided to learn how to squat. From there, I learned I really liked the weight room and how it felt to lift and build muscle. Running helped me develop the ability to endure tough times, but weight training helped me develop the ability to take on tough times with strength and power.

“It feels like there are people who work inside ‘big tech company’ paradise, and then I view me and my co-founder as wolves on the outside, in the snow, hunting for food every day. We’re just in a very different mental and physical place.”

I got into Olympic style weightlifting because a trainer at my local gym saw my potential encouraged me to compete in the sport. I didn’t even know the sport existed! “There’s a competition in two weeks, I’ll train you for free.” I learned the snatch and the clean and jerk that day and competed two weeks later. I was already able to clean and jerk my body weight and snatch 85% of my bodyweight in two weeks, so I realized I had potential to be pretty good at this sport.

I fell in love with weightlifting because I wanted to train feeling badass at every single training day. Why train to critique one’s body in a mirror when you can train to feel so good about what you just lifted and how you lifted it?

Where do you see yourself in the future?

I see Spitfire as a healthy and growing (but still young) child. I think we’re going to have a small team. We are not going to be one of those “grow as fast as possible” companies, but one that has a very clear sense of what it stands for and that forges ahead on its own and at it’s own pace. It doesn’t try to rush, or it doesn’t try to push itself when it doesn’t need to. It blossoms on it’s own so I see myself still at the helm of that, and guiding it, and working with a bigger but still tight knit team.

I believe Spitfire is going to be a brand that’s in people’s lives on a daily basis and that’s as well known but more badass and more iconic than Nike. Our presence in people’s lives is going to be positively influential and nourishing. The content that we’re going to produce, the things that we’re going to promote, it’s going to have a clear, distinct, unique identity that is really hard to copy, and I feel like people are going to try and copy it, or copy aspects of it, and they’re just not going to nail it, or they’re not going to do it right. People are going to know when it’s by Spitfire and when it’s by someone trying to be like Spitfire.

Investors will ask stuff like, “How are you going to beat Nike?” It’s funny because Nike, they’re trying to appeal to as many people as possible. But we’re speaking to one very specific thing – that inner voice in every woman that makes her feel like, “I’m a badass and I can do anything I put my mind to.”

“We are not going to be one of those ‘grow as fast as possible’ companies, but one that has a very clear sense of what it stands for and that forges ahead on its own and at it’s own pace.”

People at Nike don’t wake up every morning and think about how they’re going to achieve that. They’re in the business of clothes, shoes, and wearables. But we are going to get better and better at speaking so soulfully to women’s deep inner selves, we’re going to be a distinct persona in people’s heads and women are going to want to have a daily dose of spitfire in their lives. That is where I want to get.

Personally, I also want to be a really competitive national Olympic weightlifter. I see myself doing weight-lifting for a long time. There are some internationally competitive women in weightlifting who are in their forties right now and they’re doing amazing – and I want to be just like them. They are so happy. They are so fulfilled and kicking ass! I want to lift heavy shit. It’s funny, when weight lifting gets hard I ask myself, “Why, why do I do this?!” Well, one day I decided I was tired of being weak. And unlike many, I decided I was going to do something about it. And that’s why I’m here now.

What advice would for others wanting to build a product of their own?

When people ask me how to learn how to code, they often ask questions like – What programming language should I learn? Or what book should I read? Instead of suddenly picking a programming language I usually ask, is there something cool that you personally want to see in the world that you would love to make?

Then I say, “Okay, take that, and make it really, really, really crystal clear, and then scope it down to the most basic thing you can think of, and then learn how to code that.”

Because when you learn how to code the other way—by learning a language—you just end up reading a bunch of stuff that you don’t know how to apply. But when you have a very specific vision for what you want to build, you end up deciding what you need to know to build the thing, and you just break down the pieces.

“One day I decided I was tired of being weak. And unlike many, I decided I was going to do something about it. And that’s why I’m here now.”

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.”

I was formed in a culture clash. I’m first generation Eurasian—Czech, Filipina, Taiwanese—and was raised in a small hippie town founded by an Indian guru in Iowa. Fitting in was never a possibility; I spent my childhood hoping to be noticed for something else other than being different.

What was family life like? What did your family expect of you career-wise?

When I was thirteen my father took a trip to the east coast and brought me back a Harvard t-shirt. As the eldest of four, I bore the brunt of his immigrant dreams. Thankfully he was more of a “follow your passion” type guy than one who pushed for law or medicine.

My biological mother hails from a rural village in the Philippines and was the first in her family to finish high school and go to college. When she obtained a PhD and position at MIT, she cemented a place in the provincial hall of fame. I don’t know much else about who she is unfortunately. She died in a car accident when I was young, but even her ghost is hard to live up to.

“Fitting in was never a possibility; I spent my childhood hoping to be noticed for something else other than being different.”

My father is a kooky but brilliant underachiever, a renaissance man who possesses that rare blend of a critical mind and creative talents which he channels into architecture, art, philosophy, and poetry, and deftly speaks at least five languages. He has an anti-authority streak, refusing to work for anyone else and only at his own whim.

His lack of material success is an endless source of frustration for him, and seems to only be redeemable by his children’s. He taught us to read as toddlers and multiplication in kindergarten, and hoped that this would set us on a trajectory for life. My (half) siblings are in their twenties and are wonderful people with musical abilities, artistic talents, keen minds, and sensitive hearts. So maybe he was right.

I can’t imagine my potential career ever entered my stepmother’s mind; she didn’t care for me much as I was a reminder of the woman before her. As for my father, what I did or was didn’t seem to matter to him as long as I made him look good.

What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

When I was a child I had no sense of future; I just wanted to read and climb trees. As a teenager I lived to travel and got any and all odd jobs to make it happen. The world was a wondrous place of beautiful landscapes and art with fascinating history, and full of unique people. When my grandmother described the life of an ambassador, I set my heart on it, and actually chose Tufts for their International Relations program. Politics lost its allure quickly though, and I ended up majoring in Anthropology.

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

For the first decade and change of my career, I helped foster communities around tech products, namely Yelp and Airbnb. I’d have to credit my childhood experience as part of a meditation community in Iowa as being the most enlightening case study on how to create a movement. I experienced first hand what motivates and inspires people to give their time, resources, and hearts to a cause; How hierarchy and different power structures influences people’s drive and sense of ownership; The ways that norms are reinforced and what happens when people act out; What to do when the message gets out of hand. Life lessons for me.

How did you first get interested in tech?

I’m compelled by how tech allows people to live more enriching, fulfilling lives. The idea of “tech” didn’t initially interest me. I used Napster, ICQ, and ebay in college, but never gave much thought to actually working in the sector. In fact, had you asked me then I was totally ignorant of the fact that from the ashes dot com bust interesting companies were emerging. But I’ve never been someone who’s motivated by contributing to cutting-edge technical developments. I often wish I had a more visionary bent.

“We landed in SF with a cell phone, $300 bucks, and a backpack full of sarongs. Every day for the first two weeks we set up shop selling sarongs on Haight Street and trolling Craigslist for opps. I went through a series of odd jobs: pyramid schemes selling office supplies, handling boa constrictors, trimming weed, data entry.”

How’d you end up in SF and in tech?

In 2004 after college I sold all my worldly possessions and moved to Bali, Indonesia. It was first put on the map by my midwife “auntie” who opens birthing centers in developing countries. After a few months traipsing around the island and bumming around on the beach with my then-boyfriend, we ran out of money. I had no interest in going back to Boston, so when he suggested we go to SF because of the great house scene (we both fancied ourselves aspiring DJs) I agreed despite having never been to the city. I knew one person from my hometown living there and she offered up her couch to us as a temporary crash pad.

So we landed in SF with a cell phone, $300 bucks, and a backpack full of sarongs.

Every day for the first two weeks we set up shop selling sarongs on Haight Street and trolling Craigslist for opps. I went through a series of odd jobs: pyramid schemes selling office supplies, handling boa constrictors, trimming weed, data entry. Until I landed a temp job at a commercial property insurance company. I was so happy to have regular income, it took me a year to realize that the agency had been taking an unfair cut.

I ended up in tech by sweet serendipity. First, I randomly saw Yelp paraphernalia on the bus and later found out that I shared a route with the graphic designer. Then I got a Daily Candy newsletter sponsored by Yelp. Being new to the city, I was curious about places to go and badly needed friends. So when I visited the site and saw several hundred people yapping about things to see and eat, I got hooked. I discovered some great places through the site and shared my reviews in return. The marketing director, Nish Nadaraja, took notice and invited me to one of the first Yelp events ever, at a place restaurant called Oola on Folsom.

“For weeks after, I emailed any and all contacts at Yelp in hopes of getting a job. They were like, ‘Can you code? No? Sorry, we’ve got nothing for you.’ But a few months after, they posted for an Office / HR Manager and I jumped on it.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, so I put on my best tweed blazer and flared jeans (gah!) and dragged my then-boyfriend along to the party. I had prepared myself for an awkward experience, but when I saw Jane Kwett, a face I recognized from the site at the door I was put at ease. Entering the party and plied with a cocktail, I was thrilled to meet all the characters I’d be interacting with online in 3D. Everyone was welcoming, clever, and slightly nerdy, and I immediately felt like I wanted to be part of their tribe.

That night, I met the CEO Jeremy and much of the eight person team. For weeks after, I emailed any and all contacts at Yelp in hopes of getting a job. They were like, “Can you code? No? Sorry, we’ve got nothing for you.” But a few months after, they posted for an Office / HR Manager and I jumped on it.

What were your first impressions of Silicon Valley?

The early 2000s stereotypes were true: the scene I was privy to was mostly enginerds in hoodies who wore a rotating collection of startup t-shirts. When I started working at Yelp, we were sharing office space with a few other companies that were birthed from MRL Ventures, the incubator started by Max Levchin (Paypal co-founder). I didn’t know anyone else working at startups in the city. Most people I met in technology were at the old giants—eBay, Salesforce, Cisco—in the South Bay and a handful were at Google and a rising star called Facebook.

Walk me through your experience working in tech.

In 2004 at 22 years old, I started off as an admin at Yelp when the company was nine people. After a year or so, when the company set its sights on expansion, I joined the marketing department. We had a market-by-market strategy which involved a person on the ground leading the efforts. So off I went to Boston to launch our third city.

Essentially it was my job to introduce new people to the product and made sure they continued to participate. Tactically, this combined a heady mix of online engagement, offline events, local PR, content, and partnerships. Internally we were referred to as the “Mayors” of the city as we were always out and about. After Boston was up and running I found and trained a successor and moved onto the next market. After tackling a few cities, four years of a 24/7 lifestyle, and experiencing the company explode to over a thousand employees, I was in desperate need of a break. It was whiplash inducing, but awesome.

During a cross-country road trip with my now husband then boyfriend, I read about a site called Airbnb where you could stay at people’s homes instead of a hotel. I loved the concept. When I returned to SF and read that they were part of YC Combinator I figured they might be a company worth working for and figuratively banged down their door until I got an interview. This was 2010.

I was slightly disappointed to hear they’d recently moved out of the cofounders home as I looked forward to an intimate team again. But working at a place without a shower probably meant better hours. The position they were hiring for was content and as a weekly newsletter was part of our Yelp responsibility, I figured it was something I could tackle. I was also stoked about the introverted nature of the job as I felt socially tapped out. Fourteen interviews later I was offered the position – at a salary I’d been making years prior. Yelp had not yet gone public, so in hindsight this was probably not the wisest decision. But I negotiated a larger equity stake and began clicking away.

At 28, I was one of the oldest people at the company. What the team lacked in experience, they made up for in passion, creativity, and scrappy. Everyone was running a million miles an hour—sometimes in different directions—but there was certainly no lack of motivation. It was intoxicating.

What was it like building communities from the ground up? Did you have free reign to just build and learn as you went?

Marketing starts out a series of experiments of different channels—test and measure, tweak and repeat. As the bulk of my experience has been at early stage startups, there’s little dev and data time to devote to our cause. So initially you’ve gotta run on your assumptions. Nowadays, there’s a plethora of bolt-on products that can track anything under the sun. We weren’t so lucky in my day.

Fortunately at Yelp, Nish at developed a tried-and-true strategy that we were able to adjust to our local markets, so there was little on the strategy level for us to hash out. We had very clear output metrics and were rewarded with recognition accordingly. So I knew what I needed to do to excel.

Airbnb was green field. From the marketing side, they’d dabbled in the basic channels—social, content via blog, and video—as reflected by the team’s talents. But everything was a bit haphazard and as the founders had never managed marketing, we were left mostly to our own devices. Shortly after I joined they brought in a consultant named Julie Supan, formerly VP of Marketing from YouTube, who’d been recommended by investors.

Julie gave us much needed structure and our first tangible goal—to articulate the vision and mission of the company. As the content lead, I spent countless hours with her and cofounders in hopes of distilling the company’s raison d’être, and working in tandem with product, produced the Home and About pages seen by hundreds of millions of people around the globe.

After a few months, Brian and Joe got pumped about doing more community-oriented efforts and switched me to the task. They were excited about bringing people together offline with the hopes of activating host growth in target markets. How to do this, and to some extent where to activate, was up to me. The traveling began.

“I never saw myself paving any path. I’ve always felt more like a pinball ricocheting.”

At first we mostly operated from hunches. I had few tools to work with, aside from pulling the emails of hosts in certain geographies. Everything was tracked manually: the number of attendees, behavior changes post-event, referrals they brought in. We tested different promotions aiming to get a broader, new audience. Though all we could see were the number of properties in each city and the hits to the blog. As they kept increasing at a faster rate, we assumed we were doing something correctly. We optimized the sequence of different types of events: launch parties, host training sessions, and in-home host celebrations, as markets matured.

It wasn’t until my second year in, after I had grown the team to dozens of Community Managers in key cities, that the data dudes had the bandwidth to definitively prove our hypotheses: yes, users who attended events became more successful hosts and repeat travelers with higher lifetime values. It was not for naught.

Where do you think you got the knack for paving your own path in your career?

It’s interesting you phrase it like that. I never saw myself paving any path. I’ve always felt more like a pinball ricocheting. My decisions have seemed like a series of decisions optimizing for local maximums, more like a moth smelling its way than an arrow flying straight and true. But I’ve been fortunate that my compass has always taken me to good places and that’s reinforcing.

I attribute this to two things: only work for companies with a product I’m crazy about and want to use—case in point, I’m typing this from an Airbnb and I haven’t worked at there in years. And comfort with extreme risk. I can’t tell you how many times people have tried to dissuade me for working where I have, “Let a stranger sleep in your bed? That’s nuts.” or “Do they have any money? You’re going to be out of a job in months.” And the number of raises I’ve forgone for equity?! What can I say? I’m a stubborn believer.

What do you look for in a job now vs when you started?

In the past, my sole criterion was all about the product – did I use it, did I love it? Nowadays, it’s not just about product but also about timing. So much changes when a company scales and matures: employee culture, potential impact, compensation, career development and potential, time commitment. In the past I’ve liked the early stages when there’s freedom to be unconventional and potential to lay a strong foundation for growth. But there’s tradeoffs too, lack of stability and work/life balance, lower pay due to low revenue and/or funding, to name a few. I’m finally starting to understand why people I respect have worked at ebay and other corporate giants haha.

Overall, what have been the most exciting things about your work? What about your work really activates you? What are you proudest of?

It has been immensely gratifying to help shape a nascent product into something that tens millions of people interact with regularly. The sheer scale of potential impact of technology is astounding and addicting. I get most excited when hearing the stories of how people have improved their livelihoods, relationships, and decisions using products I’ve worked on: Business owners on Yelp attracting passion clientele that lets them thrive; Hosts at Airbnb being able to send their kids to better school or using the extra income to pursue a new career. It doesn’t have to be in profound ways either. Little incremental increases still count for me.

Everything I’m most proud of has a name: they are the people who comprised my team at Airbnb and are the founders of my portfolio companies now. We are made better by the people who give us reign and feedback, and that goes in both directions. I’ve never been a leader by force; if I had a superpower I think it would be that I recognize drive in others and the (potential) skills they possess, and will fight for the resources to make them successful. I hope my people feel the same way.

What has your experience been like transitioning into investing?

After Yelp and Airbnb went well, people began coming to me for advice about marketing.  I joined a few companies as an advisor—namely Skillshare and Threadflip—and helped craft their growth strategies. It was a great way to see these companies from the inside, providing valuable diligence. I then joined 500 Startup’s mentor network, offering guidance to their portfolio companies. This gave me increased insight into new sectors and teams, as well as keep a pulse on industry trends.

When I didn’t have ample bandwidth to go around, I asked how else I might be of help and was told that investing in these companies would be the next best thing. While of course I understood that this involved a high level of risk, I allowed myself to start investing because I felt like I received more from the startup ecosystem than I deserved and I wanted to give back.

“I read various approaches to portfolio theory, and thought it would be wise to invest in things I knew best – female-friendly consumer tech products.”

A few deals into it, finding that I enjoyed myself and that I was inclined to do more, I thought it would be best to get more educated on the matter. I didn’t know many early operators who were investing at that point. So I signed up for an angel investor crash course with Pipeline Angels. Hungry for deeper info, I flew to New York for another seminar with 37 Angels. Confident around a basic term sheet and having expanded my deal flow to the east cost, things ramped up.

“VCs tend to invest in what they know—problems they can relate to.” Tell me your thoughts on this, and what you’ve observed during your time in the and whether this is true to you as an investor.

It’s much easier to assess the value of a product if it’s solving a problem you can understand. Otherwise, you’re relying on the opinions of other people to determine its merits. Also, if it’s a sector you’re familiar with there’s likely better deal flow from your network. You’ll see Institutional VCs often determine their investment theses based on the experience of the partners.

I read various approaches to portfolio theory, and thought it would be wise to invest in things I knew best – female-friendly consumer tech products. Initially I took the “fund founders not (necessarily) products” adage to heart and invested in a few niche products started by people I believed were smart and competent. But as my capital amounts increased I became more discerning about the track record of the founder and the potential market size. From an ethos standpoint, I would love to invest in clean tech and education, but as these are sectors I know little about there’s an increased risk and decrease in my value-add to founders. The key advantage for me to potentially work as an institutional would be to gain knowledge from partners of these sectors. It may still happen.

“I can’t tell you the number of times founders have told me that community ROI can’t be calculated. Ask any technical person what they think of marketers and they’ll likely say that they’re “creative” or “feeler” types with no methods or data to back up their initiatives. I think this has largely been perpetuated by startups hiring smart but inexperienced people to run marketing because early on they can’t afford seasoned talent. This pattern, in addition to data and dev time being protected fiercely, can make it difficult to track returns. But that’s easily solved by the right tools.”

In general, how has your experience been as a woman in tech?

I know everyone anticipates horror stories and I hate to disappoint, but I don’t feel like my path in tech was made significantly more difficult by being a woman. I think this was partially because I was in a field—marketing—that’s high percentage female. I can’t recall any instances when I felt like the target of sexism. However, there has been the conscious awareness that I mustn’t play into the stereotypes of “bad” female behavior i.e. emotional irrationality and outbursts which factors into my communication style and has influenced my feeling comfortable speaking out in opposition. As I’ve rose in the ranks I’ve also been keenly mindful as to not come off too strongly or alpha for fear of being seen as a bitch or unlikeable.

While I also pride myself on being somewhat stylish, I know my friendliness is often mistaken as flirtatiousness so in the past five years or so I’ve been more conservative in my apparel choices—nothing revealing or body conforming. But the reasons for doing so are not just to discourage male attention, but to remove all question of why I may be getting ahead other than my own merit. I’m sure most men never have to consider this. Truthfully, I suspect I’ve largely been shielded from some of the more overtly inappropriate behavior from men because I’ve been in a serious relationship for most of my career.

What have been your biggest struggles?

I can’t tell you the number of times founders have told me that community ROI can’t be calculated. Ask any technical person what they think of marketers and they’ll likely say that they’re “creative” or “feeler” types with no methods or data to back up their initiatives. I think this has largely been perpetuated by startups hiring smart but inexperienced people to run marketing because early on they can’t afford seasoned talent. This pattern, in addition to data and dev time being protected fiercely, can make it difficult to track returns. But that’s easily solved by the right tools.

Like many marketing and community folks, I’ve had to contend with this much of my career. It’s hard enough trying to grow and engage users without having to constantly prove why you should exist. Oh, I should note that these stereotypes have shifted a bit as performance marketers have rebranded themselves as “growth hackers”. If there are any brand / community folks out there, I’ll cut to the chase: you’ll never get a lower CPA from any channel other than paid, so don’t try; instead focus on increasing LTV.

Angel investing is tricky and largely a failing proposition. You’ve heard about the power law rules of the game, right? Where one of your bets can potentially make up for all the others that have flamed out. Well, that means you’re competing for the hot deals with all the other early stage investors. Now that everyone’s an angel, getting into the deal is the hard part. So your network is everything.

Problem is, people have to know you’re doing a certain thing in order to share that type of info with you. And when I’m learning the ropes, I always shy away from the spotlight. There’s an inherent conflict, which I’ve now mostly overcome. But I’m sure I missed out on a lot in the meantime.

Have you had mentors or people who’ve looked up to for inspiration along the way?

I am grateful at Yelp to have had a number of bosses all strong in their own dimensions: Geoff Donaker Yelp COO with his business acumen and analytical bent, Nish Nadaraja for his creativity and engaging pen, Michelle Broderick for her direct but encouraging management style and sharp wit. Much of the time when I was an operator, I was so heads down building that I did little in the way of networking or professional development. It’s a shame in hindsight as I had access to an amazing group of investors and advisors and I regret not taking advantage.

The story has played out differently with angel investing though. For many months I was afraid to tell anyone I had started, afraid of smarter people scrutinizing my picks and judging me accordingly. But after I’d grown more comfortable and started asking people in my network for their thoughts on deals I found that most were more than happy to candidly share. Kanyi Maqubela, Josh Felser, and Niko Bonatsos have all been encouraging and insightful and I am ever grateful.

I’m a huge fan of Cyan Banister. I respect that she struck out on her own as an angel, not waiting for an institutional to invest under, and absolutely kicked ass. So stoked to hear Founders Fund brought her on as partner—couldn’t be more well deserved. From afar, I’m a great admirer of Aileen Lee and have watched or read every panel, interview, or talk she’s ever done. She’s sharp, irreverent, and downright cool. And of course a great picker. It would be a dream to work with her one day.

What are your biggest motivators?

I want my brain to be stretched. I’d like to grow in so many ways: creatively, business-savvy, analytically – and I hope to be able to help people in some way during this process.

Where have you found support networks?

Connecting with people that have shared plights and joys has been illuminating and validating. David Spinks gets full credit for bringing together community people through his organization and event series CMX, and I’ve met so many wonderful people that way. I’ve also gleaned valuable info and support from women in 37 Angels. The group consists of investors of various ages and backgrounds, and I’ve enjoyed their difference in perspectives. The startup scene can be a myopic echo chamber.

What would you like to see change?

The “change the world” mantra of tech is a double edged sword. On one hand, it’s a boon to the industry, attracting people from all corners of the earth to try and create a company for the goodness of humanity, and to leave a meaningful legacy behind. On the other hand, it creates this immense pressure to dream bigger and solve bigger problems. I’ve seen people spiral into incredible existential crises because they don’t (yet) have an idea that will change the world on a massive scale and it makes them really unhappy. We need to allow ourselves to work on things that move us, however seemingly insignificant. Everything starts out small.

There also needs to be more people of color, women, those from developing countries, and people from various socio-economic backgrounds in VC, so that the types of problems that are being funded are speaking to the needs of a broader swath of the world.

“I’ve seen people spiral into incredible existential crises because they don’t (yet) have an idea that will change the world on a massive scale and it makes them really unhappy. We need to allow ourselves to work on things that move us, however seemingly insignificant. Everything starts out small.”

And not to open a whole can of worms, but we need to close the gender pay gap.

So what are you working on right now, either for work or for yourself?

As Kim Hunter from Women Catalysts so nicely summed up, I believe that life is not a ladder, it’s a jungle gym. We don’t have to take a straight path to the top. We can be many things at different times.

Earlier this year I started a tiny tiny microfund that invests in restaurants, something I’ve been doing occasionally over the last few years. Many will laugh as it’s often thought of as a losing proposition. But this isn’t about 100x returns for me; I’ve got reasonable IRR in mind. My motivation stems from conversations with restauranteurs and chefs; I realized they lacked a supportive ecosystem. In an affluent city such as San Francisco with such a food-obsessed populace, this didn’t seem right. I hope to create a stronger bridge between the tech and food communities.

I’ve spent years focused on my career, ignoring the other aspects of life. This phase is about reaching new professional frontiers, but also being intentional about my family life, health, spirituality, and creative side.

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

My family doesn’t really have any idea what I’ve done. They just know I have a decent amount of Google search results. As for my friends, I hope they’ve deemed me having accomplished enough to warrant their respect and esteemed company—hah!

What do you think about the state of tech in 2016?

Big question here. I could talk about the funding environment tightening up, how there’s no stone unturned in consumer, yadda yadda yadda. But you’ve heard it all before, I’m sure. So I’ll give you my take: I’m encouraged to see resources pouring into healthcare, clean tech, and education. But the overwhelming feeling is one of immense possibility, mostly inspired by my husband (who’s a programmer). I’m eager to see what the future holds with AI and VR/AR. In the next decade, we’re going to see massive shifts in production and human behavior with these technologies in ways we can’t possibly predict. As cliche as it sounds, I actually do feel blessed to be alive at this time in history.

What advice would you give to folks from similar backgrounds who are in tech or hoping to get into it?

Learn a hard skill. Move to a tech hub. Hunt down companies who hope to make a dent in the world in a way you can get behind. Bang down their door. Work hard for them, for free if you have to. Develop a network of peers and mentors. Stay up on the industry happs. Help people and be kind. You’ll be amazed at what comes back in return.

“Help people and be kind. You’ll be amazed at what comes back in return.”