Meet Saba Asefa: Sr. UX Researcher, Career Changer, Grief Wrangler
A personal journey on channeling grief into hope during tough job hunts
Grief as a catalyst for change
Saba Asefa is sensational leader. The juxtaposition of grief and an early-pandemic career change triggered a breakthrough where she challenged assumptions she’d made her entire life. Through this journey, she learned how to stay hopeful and channel inner values to guide her during tough job searches. I interviewed Saba on the last Friday of 2023, when most people were already physically (or mentally) checked out of work. She joined me on a video call, bright and early from her home office in Minneapolis at 9:00AM.
Saba spoke, leaning forward on a burgundy leather desk chair situated in a corner of the room. On the eggshell-painted walls behind her, two identical picture frames hung evenly. In the frame to her right was a photo of Saba and her wife on a lake’s beach at sunset. To her left hung a photo of the southern Alaskan coast where she told me she had deejayed a friend’s wedding.
Saba was dressed in comfort and style, donning a forest green hoodie with one ornate, silver pendant earring dangling from her left ear.
Saba Asefa’s Background
Saba is a senior UX researcher (UXR) at Aya Healthcare and was formerly a geologist. She identifies as “a queer Black woman, a daughter of a refugee, a descendant of the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, and an advocate for generational healing.” Saba grew up in Columbus, Ohio, where an interest in STEM sprouted at a young age.
Kid scientist Saba was specifically interested in rocks. She eagerly anticipated trips to the mall’s rock store so she could gape at the gemstones and crystals, and, hopefully, acquire more for her collection. She had a curiosity about all of the things that made Earth what it is.
When she was 8 years old, she would go to rocks and minerals section in the library to thumb through books and absorb hard knowledge.
She recalled one book whose final chapter described how to become a geologist. Pictures illustrated the necessary gear, such as a rock hammer and lens. A spark ignited in young Saba’s mind as she realized that collecting rocks outside was more than a hobby for some people: it was their profession. It could be her profession.
In high school, Saba was still intent on being a geologist. Her guidance counselor and teachers confirmed that she could pursue STEM as she was gifted in math and science. She picked up a few extra-curricular activities, such as one program for high schoolers that met every Saturday to visit and learn from local, science-related businesses in Columbus. In her junior year, she completed an engineering-focused program with MIT.
Saba had a head start on the trajectory to fulfill her cherished childhood dream. But often, expectations we pursue when chasing our dreams may not match our reality.
Fast forward 9 years, beyond Saba’s MSc in Geological and Earth Sciences, to late spring of 2020. She was coming up on two years working for the state of Arizona Department of Water Resources. The world was freshly into a global pandemic, and the COVID-19 shutdown had reached Arizona.
For Saba, the shutdown was transformative. She described it as a “flip of reality. It felt like this big shift, and it also felt like an opening, like a spaciousness happened.”
With things’ shutting down, the usual noise, constant movement, and busyness in people’s lives were able to stop for awhile. “I feel like for me, it created this space to think a little deeper and reflect on life,” Saba described.
Saba was beginning to feel jaded about government work. A common complaint from government employees is that work can move frustratingly slow due to, for better or for worse, a lot of red tape.
While Saba enjoyed geology through the academic lens of wanting to learn, explore, and discover, she often felt boxed in within the working world. Additionally, Saba worried that, despite government employees’ duty to serve others, a lot of decisions she observed seemed, instead, self-serving.
These concerns were mounting for Saba, and then, on May 25th, 2020, George Floyd was killed by a police officer.
“You could die at any time, right?”
Saba described that day as a time of reckoning.
[Floyd’s murder] triggered another paradigm shift in a way where it was like, ‘Oh, we all have time to really sit with this.’ Like, we know this wasn’t the first Black man that was killed by a police officer, right? Countless, I can name countless people. But this was very interesting, the timing of it, like ‘Oh, we can all actually look and see and feel and be in this.’ As we saw, across the world, there were people protesting and sending their love and coming together. It inspired me in multiple ways. One of the ways was, ‘You could die at any time, right?’ So that’s a part of the grief: sitting with [the fact that] loss happens all the time: ‘What do you wanna do with your life when you do have the time, when you are alive?’ But then also it was, ‘Wow, so much could be influenced by one person’s life… I can do more with my life.’ It was both of those things happening where it was like, ‘Time is limited, what do I want to do with it?’ One life can change the world, right?
Saba then referenced the moment that George Floyd’s daughter said, “Daddy changed the world.” To Saba, it felt so inspiring and real, and it began turning her wheels of thinking, “Okay, what do I actually wanna do with my life?” At 26 years old, it was the first time she had asked herself that question seriously since she was eight.
Previously, Saba was focused on acquiring the building blocks to achieve her dream: get an undergraduate degree; get a Master’s degree. Hardcore academics also get a PhD, which was included in Saba’s initial vision, but she described feeling a “pit in [her] stomach” when she was accepted into a program. In retrospect, this was the first sign that a different occupation might suit her better. Instead of joining the PhD program, Saba took her hard-earned degrees and research experience and entered the workforce. Two years later, she was confronted with the sudden awakening that her values no longer aligned with the dream she had always chased.
Saba knew that she needed to leave state government work. At first, she considered staying in geology but working for a private company. She also looked at municipal and county government agencies, even interviewing for a couple of those vacancies. But during that exploration, something still didn’t feel right. Specifically, it still felt like the things she’d be working on were so small and so in the weeds of policy.
Working for Arizona, she was specifically focused on water policy. For the desert state with over 7 million residents, water is no small thing: it is life. Despite this, Saba felt like her duties were mostly centered on reporting to personnel who would in turn make decisions without ever really hearing what she was saying.
During interviews with other agencies, public or private, she got the sneaking feeling that she’d be repeating the same situation as before: that her research wouldn’t be used in actual decision-making, limiting her potential impact. So, she started looking elsewhere.
Research, creativity, discovery
In addition to seeking greater impact, Saba was also missing the creative side of research. Geology had become so methodical to her, with all reports following a specific structure and every problem being relatively well-defined.
She recalled that, as a teenager, around age 14, she developed a passion for cars. She hung posters in her bedroom and read books about Ferraris and other Italian sports cars. She was attracted to the design of them, being both functional and beautiful.
While she loved car design, she didn’t fully grasp what vocation would include that line of work, other than engineering. At one point in high school, she almost wondered if she would rather be a car designer instead of a geologist. She loved the idea of, for example, applying scientific formulas to create an outline of a car to make it more aerodynamic (and simultaneously, more attractive). That kind of creativity, especially the aesthetics, ways always absent for Saba in geology, especially while working for the state.
“[Government work] felt like: step one, step two, step three, step four, write the report, here you go. And there wasn’t a lot of: here’s the problem, how do you want to solve it and be creative with it?”
So, in June of 2020, she started Googling the keywords “research, creativity, and discovery.” UXR kept coming up. When Saba opened up to one of her friends, a software engineer, about what she wanted from her next job, they also recommended that she look into the field of UX. The more she read about UXR, the more Saba saw herself thriving in the field. Before taking a leap of faith, she obsessively researched to confirm, “Can I really do this?”
One month later, in July, 2020, she said goodbye to her safety net and quit her full-time employment. Based on her savings, she gave herself one year to find a new, full-time role in tech.
“I don’t need to pay $10,000 to get a mentor.”
Saba didn’t want to go back to school for another degree. Bootcamp ads kept popping up in her search results, but she found their cost (averaging $10,000 USD) shockingly expensive.
Still, she thought she’d give them a try. Saba signed up for a one week trial with Springboard where she could opt-out of the paid tier to continue with the free content only. As a researcher, naturally, she browsed the entire course catalog to preview the contents. She found that the paid Springboard tier was still simply directing students to YouTube videos. “I was like, no, YouTube is free.
“I knew that they were going to add on a mentor, so there’s like parts of it that for sure are worth paying for. But I felt really put off by specifically the YouTube videos. So I of course opted out of that [paid tier].” Now that Saba had seen how Springboard ran a certificate program like their UX design bootcamp, she thought to herself, “Why not create my own course and just find the YouTube videos, find the groups that would do workshops and would do interviews of people that have been in UX?” Why couldn’t she find community and mentorship somewhere where she can just talk to someone who is currently practicing UX?
“I don’t need to pay $10,000 to get a mentor, right?” Saba knew there had to be a way where this would cost less. So, she decided to learn as much as possible on her own, signing up for UX courses on Coursera, and being frgual with her money. She figured she’d leverage networking to find her way into a UX role.
Saba found and joined a UX-focused Slack group (she doesn’t recall which one, specifically). In it, someone had posted about an upcoming UX webinar panel discussion that Saba chose to attend. In the side panel chat, Everett Swain II, the founder of UXD Academy — The college for career switchers™— posted a call to action. He had just launched his education business and was seeking apprentices to help him build while learning in real time. Saba was only one or two weeks removed from quitting her job, and his offer came at a fraction of the cost of Springboard and other UX bootcamps. As a hands-on learner, this looked like the perfect deal to Saba.
She reached out to founder, and they connected on LinkedIn to talk more. On a call, Everett explained in depth his vision for UXD Academy, and Saba eagerly signed up as one of his first students.
“And so that was where I got a lot of my more tangible learning instead of just reading or watching videos or whatever. It was like, ‘Okay, here’s work. And here’s how UX people think about work and the things you actually do on the job.’”
UXD Academy’s education included not only instructor-led courses, but it also afforded Saba the opportunity to work alongside Everett as he built his business from the ground up. She received intensive mentoring as she helped him build UXD Academy’s website while learning all the features an online business should have. When that work was done, she helped Everett’s freelance work by directly interacting with his UX clients.
During the three-month learning-apprenticeship with UXD Academy, Saba concurrently participated in a free, three-month mentorship program with the UX Professional Association (UXPA). Saba and her mentor, Joe, met monthly to discuss her UX questions and provide feedback on her portfolio. Saba appreciated Joe’s many years of experience during which he had accumulated vast knowledge of the field and its active communities.
After the UXD Academy apprenticeship ended, Saba’s growth mindset persisted. She volunteered with UX Rescue where she practiced her newly acquired UXR skills to help African Development Association (A.D.A.), a Cameroon-based non-profit. Her work as a UXR team lead helped A.D.A. secure critical funding to attend a UN conference in Oslo via a new grant and an increase in donations thanks to an improved online presence. Saba continued volunteering with A.D.A. until starting her first full-time role.
Meanwhile, Saba continued to meet with Joe. To prepare for her job hunt, Joe suggested that Saba sign up for mock interviews with Inneract Project. Saba’s practice interviewer was a UX professional named Alison. Alison was floored by Saba’s tenacity and concluded that Saba was ready for the next step in her UXR career.
Alison, in turn, shared Saba’s story in an IDEO alumni Slack channel where Julka, a design researcher at Target, read it and reached out. This introduction eventually led Saba to that first, full-time, UXR position.
Landing her first full-time position
Saba and Julka met on three occasions, after which she shared an opening at Target. Saba confirmed interest in the role, and Julka forwarded Saba’s application to the UXR team’s hiring manager.
A mere six months into Saba’s career change (and six months ahead of her self-imposted deadline), Saba accepted a UXR role at Target. She attributed the achievement largely to networking and finding places to talk to people about UX.
Expectations vs. reality
Saba is now four years into her career as a UXR, and she sees herself doing it “for years to come”. Four years represented an important milestone for Saba, as it was the same length of time that she spent in geology. “It really shows me, ‘You made the right pivot.’”
Other than fulfilling the values of “research, creativity, and discovery,” Saba held relatively few expectations going into UXR.
“I don’t know if I knew exactly what to expect besides, ‘Oh, I get to talk to people. I get to understand more about how these products work and how they’re used.’”
Saba warned that, still, like any company, there are politics involved. Sometimes, a director or someone who is two or three levels above you will mandate something that you don’t feel is important or necessary, and you don’t want to do it because it feels like a waste of time. But Saba recognized that as the cost of working with other people in a big organization: “It’s not just you making decisions for yourself.” She is, nonetheless, satisfied by getting to do the work that she enjoys, daily.
On being impactful
I asked Saba if she feels impactful, especially in contrast to her previous vocation in geology.
“I think this happens a lot of times with sciences in general: they’re so slow moving. When you publish the paper or you finish the dissertation, it can just sit on a shelf and collect dust. It doesn’t really change or impact much. Juxtapose that to UX research or any research that is more in the product space or business space. In that arena, you can see the impact almost immediately because it’s working with people that are then going to do something with it.”
In other words, as a researcher outside of academia, you are not solely working with other scientists who will read your paper to discuss its interestingness and other merits and whether it should be experimented on further. When you’re a researcher in a business, people are coming to you with questions where they need immediate help.
In turn, when you give your coworkers your results, they run with it. Saba compared this to how she felt in her previous line of work.
“When I was working for the state, I was doing stuff that would help people make decisions, but like I was saying earlier, it’s like they didn’t care. They still were just like, ‘Oh yeah, this is the law that’s been [in place] for this many years. So we’re going to continue down that way because it’s an easier path than doing a change that might help with water regulation.’”
In UXR, Saba feels like her work makes a difference.
We grow accustomed to the dark
Saba pivoted careers from geologist to senior UXR in under four years through a formidable combination of skill, ambition, resourcefulness, and bit of luck. However, her path to success was not always joyful, and her journey navigating grief did not start or end with George Floyd’s murder.
Saba’s ancestry, having withstood generations of displacement and loss, brought “layers of grief that started before me and that have affected my life as well.” Additional layers piled on in 2019, when Saba came out as queer to her extended family, leading to abandonment on one side. Then, there was the collective trauma of living through the global COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, one of Saba’s close family members was diagnosed with cancer.
Yet, Saba managed the additional struggle of starting a new career and job hunt in 2020 on top of the pain.
“Similar to the killing of George Floyd, there was this feeling for me that was, ‘There’s all this loss and all this pain. Either I can go into the darkness and stay there, or I can make something out of it.’ And so it was this interesting duality of feeling loss in multiple ways and making that choice of, ‘Okay, if I’m gonna keep going, then let’s make it the best keep going possible. Let’s make it the best life possible.’ And it’s not to say that it was a choice made and then I was good, right? Grief is one of the biggest teachers in life.”
Saba then referenced one of her favorite Emily Dickinson poems, We Grow Accustomed to the Dark. In the same way that you don’t know the lightness without the dark, “You don’t really know joy without grief, at least in my experience. There are happy moments, there are good times, there are all these things, there’s fun. But when you like feel like you’ve lost so much and then you feel the opposite, you’re like, ‘Whoa, there’s a lot of joy, also, to experience. And so why not go for it?’
“Another lesson [from grief] is, there’s nothing left to lose. So go for the thing. That helped me with the job search, too. I did two different job changes in these past years. So even in my next job search, to Aya Healthcare, I could see in myself, there’s nothing to lose. Reach out to that person. Apply for that job. Do that thing.”
Saba said she still embraces “Do the thing” in most aspects of her life. “Because you just never know what can come of it. You’re not gonna die from reaching out to that person, right? At the worst, they’re gonna ignore you, and you’re gonna move on. You’re gonna forget you even reached out to them, and a month later, you’re gonna be like, ‘I don’t know who that was.’ Just do the thing.”
Looking back, Saba appreciated how her “Go for it” attitude has fueled her career journey in a lot of ways. “It’s like not every day feels amazing. It’s the vicissitudes of life, right? Some days, that thing that causes the grief feels heavier than other days. And I think what’s helpful and hopeful is remembering the days where you haven’t felt the heaviness so much and remembering that tomorrow is a new day that won’t necessarily feel the same.”
By listening to grief as a teacher, Saba channeled it into a successful career for herself.
Navigating values in the second job hunt
I asked Saba how her emotions in her second job hunt, where she landed at Aya Healthcare, compared to her first one when she was new to the field.
In addition to a “Go for it” mentality, Saba mentioned that things that are important in life “come to the surface when you’ve experienced grief. We can link it back to the pandemic for a lot of people. You started to realize what’s important, who’s important. [When] all the noise is out, what actually matters to you. So in the second job search, I truly was like, ‘What is important to me that I need in a job that’s gonna be my day to day?’
“One thing that came to mind was, I want it to be something that feels purposeful. Healthcare felt purposeful to me. And I like Target. I didn’t have an issue working for Target in general, but I also sometimes would find myself being like, ‘Does that matter?’ I mean, we’re just shopping, we’re just trying to get the goods, you know? So my next job search, I felt the lesson for me was, ‘What’s important?’ I need to go towards something that feels so important to me.”
Two other factors led Saba towards healthcare: her family member living with cancer, and her wife’s being a nurse. Saba knew that healthcare workers go through a lot and was interested in the type of work that would help them. Connecting to people she cared about helped her figure out a bit more purpose and values around what mattered to her and what she wanted to work on.
Advice for job seekers: “You can always keep going”
In my final question, I asked Saba if she had any advice for folks navigating a challenging job hunt.
“I know there’s been a lot of layoffs, which, there’s grief right there in your face. That’s loss, and it’s huge loss, and it’s unexpected loss for a lot of people. So there’s multiple layers to that. If it’s someone that’s been in a layoff, my advice is work through those emotions because that is potentially gonna come into your new job. That’s not helpful. So that’s one thing.
“If it’s a general job search, I think it goes back to, like, the vicissitudes and the job search has ups and downs, for sure. Especially if you’re in it every day, like you’re every day looking at jobs, applying to jobs, all those kinds of things, you are gonna have a roller coaster ride. None of my job searches have been, ‘There’s the job. Right there.’ You know, at least for me, I haven’t experienced that where it’s just like, *blink*, here’s the job. It’s a lot of trial and error.
“It’s a lot of going to the next day and being like, ‘Okay, I still got this,’ and reminding yourself that you still got this. Because you can easily keep on getting rejected and you know, get down on yourself, basically, and say, ‘Well, no one wants me. I’m not good enough.’ All the things that can bring you down. Again, with the grief lessons, I feel like what I’ve learned is that you can always keep going, even when it feels like all is lost or any of those kind of feelings of that nature.
“I don’t mean to push through those feelings and do something in that moment. I don’t mean to ignore that at all. I mean work through that because there’s something to gain from those things. Also, give yourself a lot of grace and that space and time to explore that, because that’s gonna keep coming up otherwise. No amount of ‘success’ will get rid of those feelings.”
Allow yourself the space to rest
Saba continued.
“I also feel like rest has been a lesson for me, too, with grief. Having rest in and throughout the job search and throughout life in general — that’s where you’re able to again have that space. Again, the pandemic, the shutdown, specifically, offered that space for the first time for a lot of people. So why not give that to yourself as well in your life where you can? Because that’s where a lot of those growing moments can really happen.”
Conclusion
While grief is never a feeling that we welcome, when given the time and space to be processed throughly, it can culminate into deeper understanding of ourselves. Saba Asefa, through self-care and graciousness, leveraged grief as a way to understand her needs and intrinsic desires to be creative and scientifically-driven while also making a difference in the world.
Saba knew that a community of mentors would be critical to help her on her path, and while she cherished them, she also learned how to take care of herself along the way.
Looking back, Saba has no regrets about her career pivot and is excited about what the future holds. You can follow her journey on LinkedIn where she regularly posts about UX research, technology leadership, and human-centered design.
