Khanversations — Taty and Kitt
A conversation about impact, college access, and Harry Potter
Tell us a little about yourself and your role at Khan Academy.
Kitt: I started at Khan Academy seven years ago, and I’ve worked as a Product Designer on a lot of different parts of Khan Academy over the years, including tools for teachers, Official SAT Practice, and redesigning our home page — three times, ha! I also really love running Growth experiments and trying out ideas to motivate students.
Taty: I’m a Product Designer, and I’ve been here for 2.5 years. How the time passes! 😱 Kitt, you’re the one who interviewed me!
Kitt: I know! I was like, we gotta hire her!
Taty: I remember I was nervous but excited to work here. During my time at Khan Academy, I’ve been mostly focused on the learner experience. I’m currently working on increasing the efficacy of our personalized learning experience by incorporating a combination of pedagogical and game design principles.
What’s something you both have in common?
Taty: Ah, we both like magical things! ✨ I’m very into Disney princesses and everything that is whimsical and magical.
Kitt: Ha, and I used to work at Disney.
Taty: I know, that’s part of why I was so nervous in my job interview with you 🙃.
Kitt: We’re also both into Harry Potter.
Taty: I’ve watched all of the movies multiple times.
Kitt: Khan Academy’s annual Hackathon is Harry Potter themed. Sal dresses up as Dumbledore and welcomes all the new “students” (newly hired employees) to Hogwarts, and everyone spends the week working on fun new ideas for Khan Academy learners and teachers, or ways to improve how we work at Khan Academy. Which House are you in?
Taty: I was sorted into Hufflepuff by the Sorting Hat. We have a literal Sorting Hat that sends you an email the week before with your House assignment. I feel like more of a Ravenclaw, but Elizabeth Lin wouldn’t let me change. Anyhow, people underestimate Hufflepuffs. They’re hardworking, loyal, and have very good hearts. They’re the glue that holds everything together. I have a Harry Potter robe in my desk here that stays in the drawer all year until it’s time to take it out for Hackathon.
Kitt: I have the tradition of dressing up as Draco and being in character all week, changing my name and photo in Slack to “Draco Malfoy” and being smarmy and insufferable.
Taty: Do you get tired of being in character?
Kitt: Not at all 😛. Halloween is my favorite holiday, so getting the chance to be in character all week is fantastic.
What’s something you’ve made that you’re proud of?
Taty: Oh! This is related to how I got into design. I learned about design thinking as a methodology during a year-long class in the Stanford d.school. Growing up in Colombia in a resource-constrained environment, I intentionally picked engineering for college with the goal of learning how to fix problems that underrepresented communities around me were having. It was the d.school that empowered me with the critical thinking skills necessary to see how engineering, design, and technology could be used to create a meaningful impact on complex and systemic social problems.
Anyways, after that, I helped found a company to provide people in Colombia and China better access to a college education. It still helps thousands of under-resourced kids access a college education every year. It also brings together people who really care about fixing these kinds of problems. It was such a magical time learning about design, product, English, and Chinese (because we were building a product for the Chinese market). So many things! We never thought it would go so far to become one of the main players in the college admissions landscape in China. How about you?
Kitt: I was fortunate to be the designer who led the effort to create Official SAT Practice on Khan Academy. It was an amazing opportunity to fill the need for free SAT test prep that simply wasn’t being met, to create a system that takes what you missed on the PSAT and creates a personalized plan for what you should practice. Now, over half of all students who prepare for the SAT use Khan Academy. I just read a story about a girl in Florida who hopes to earn a college scholarship in track and used us to raise her score from a 750 to 1150. The kind of impact it’s making on so many people’s lives, it’s likely to be the highlight of my whole career.
Another really exciting project was LearnStorm, where students in a classroom work as a team on Khan Academy to earn levels and unlock awards for their class. It was amazing seeing how working as a team brings whole classes together, how it motivates students to work for something bigger than themselves. Teachers have told me about how their students come to them asking for more work on Khan Academy so they can help the class reach the next level. That doesn’t happen every day.
Khanversations are a series of dialogues between designers at Khan Academy as a way of getting to know one another.
P.S. We’re hiring! If you’re interested, check out our job listings.
Links to the series
👉🏽 Here’s May-Li’s introduction to the series, including a list of all the countries that were involved in our formation.
👉🏽 Elizabeth and Vivek talk about sneakers, fashion, capitalism, how they got into design (they even share some vintage work) and MORE. These two have incredible taste BTW I always want to know where they look
👉🏽 Louis and Erica on rearranging the furniture, skeuomorphic icons, working in the federal government and more
👉🏽 Cassey and Jacob on how neuropsychology, being an executive assistant, and not wanting to draw Mickey Mouse 1000 times could lead to a career in design
👉🏽 Priya and May-Li in conversation about Hypercard, Mariah Carey, and Priya’s inspiring journey from being a receptionist to being a product designer
