Elevating Design Through Education
Design and education have been the cornerstones of my career. I spent the past 8 years of my life building products and design teams at MailChimp, and the 9 years before that teaching design at colleges in the US and Europe.
At a glance, these two career passages appear separate and unrelated. But I’ve found that I gain mastery of a subject once I’m able to teach it to others. To me, teaching is a necessary part of the learning process.
Recently I left MailChimp, a company I love dearly, to take a little break and to catch my breath. I spent time with my family and reflected on the past 17 years. I had a hunch that if I took a break to refocus, the next steps on my career path would become clear. Clarity came in the form of my friend Clark Valberg, the co-founder and CEO of InVision.
Clark has a unique perspective on the influence of design in our industry. He’s built a company that’s producing the tools that are changing the way we do product design, and in my judgement, he’s doing it faster and better than the incumbents.
Over the past couple of years, InVision influenced MailChimp’s design practice, helping us work through ideas more quickly and at higher fidelity so we could be more certain of our decisions before developing. It’s become the heart of design in so many other companies, too, and the place where big decisions are made.
It’s a special time in our industry. Finally, our tools are evolving to serve the needs of our medium, but we’ll need to unite them with best practices so design can play a more central role in companies.
At MailChimp I enjoyed the freedom to experiment with process and practice. I learned so much about folding design thinking into all of our work. Design was given the space to grow, and as it grew so did our business. Clark and the team at InVision also recognize the value design creates, and they want to help companies — small, large and everything in between — grow through design. I think that’s incredible, and I want to help make that happen.
And that’s why I’m joining InVision today as VP of Design Education, helping companies put design best practices at the center of their strategy. Design and education — my two passions — will be united in this new role, serving a mission I dearly believe in.
Clark and the InVision team have done so much to push design forward, but there’s more in the works. I’m excited to join the team and the cause to elevate design.
