Diversity, equity, inclusion and design leadership

My responsibilities as VP of Design

Like so many others this year, I’ve felt motivated to create a better society — by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others and the subsequent protests against police brutality, and also by the difficult but important conversations that these events sparked in my personal life. When I was younger, going to protests and marches felt like my only outlets — but now, the privilege of my position offers me the opportunity to effect change differently. As a design leader, I look at my role regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) through new lenses:

• How can I lead our design team to create inclusive experiences?
• How am I creating a better community inside of NerdWallet’s (virtual) walls?
• How am I contributing within the greater design community?

Creating Inclusive Experiences

Our goal is to create a world in which anyone facing a financial decision comes to NerdWallet and feels welcome. And as the design organization, we have the accountability and power to make that happen.

One of our greatest opportunities is to create experiences that demonstrate an understanding of the images and language that make people feel included and welcome. The awesome Nerds on our Brand Studio and Content Strategy teams have always made diverse choices in photography, casting, illustration, and copy — but any progress we’ve made was because we had caring and empathetic designers and writers. Moving forward, we will be more systematic in our approach to ensure constant improvement and shine a light on missed opportunities.

We also have a responsibility to design with accessibility in mind so that anyone with different physical or cognitive abilities can take advantage of our wealth of financial resources.

In addition to these efforts in Design and Content Strategy, our User Experience Research team is putting practices in place to ensure that a diverse population of users is providing us feedback. We don’t know what we don’t know, and hearing from a wider variety of people will help broaden our understanding. For example, this excellent piece from the Washington Post really opened my eyes to the relationship between the Black community and financial institutions. NerdWallet’s vision is a world where everyone makes financial decisions with confidence, and understanding the unique perspective of marginalized communities helps us build experiences to provide them that confidence.

Building a Diverse Design Community at NerdWallet

Having a team of Design Nerds with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, eliminating structural impediments to equity, and ensuring everyone feels included are all major responsibilities of my role. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it’s also the smart thing to do as a business. Study, after study, after study has proven that diverse teams are more innovative and successful.

While I’m proud of the diversity on our team today, I know we can bring even more perspectives into the fold to make the design organization more reflective of our user base and the world around us. So we’re doing a few things to improve.

First, we’ve opened up all but a few production studio roles to full-time remote candidates throughout the United States and most of Canada. By expanding our talent pool beyond the San Francisco area, we’ll no longer be confined by the systemic issues of hiring people in one of the most expensive markets in the country to live in.

Second, we’re making some adjustments to our recruiting practices to ensure diverse pipelines of applicants. We’re putting in effort to ensure that candidates from underrepresented communities know about our roles and feel like NerdWallet is a company that will welcome them once they’re here. This includes public advocacy (like this very article and my upcoming participation in the Made in the Future Summit) and active allyship in communities such as Techqueria and Where are the Black Designers?.

We’re currently looking for a Sr. Director of Product Design and are committed to identifying strong candidates from underrepresented communities in that search before making any hiring decisions. We’ve enlisted an external recruiting partner to focus specifically on introducing us to awesome candidates from those communities.

But it’s not just about director-level folks. I’m building relationships with design students at HBCUs today for when we look to hire interns and college grads in the future. And I’ve been reaching out to more design professionals of color on LinkedIn to build those networking connections at all levels. While we will always hire the best person for the role, these efforts are ensuring we aren’t reinforcing a narrow definition of “best.”

Lastly, it’s one thing to hire, but we need the Nerds we have to know they belong here. As a gay man who has been in corporate America for two decades, I know all too well what it feels like to be the “other.” I don’t want that for anyone, let alone anyone on my team. That means breaking through tokenism with better hiring practices, seeing and celebrating our differences through events like the Black and Trans-inclusive Pride we hosted this year, and supporting and engaging with employee resource groups like Diversified, Latinerds, NerdOut, and NerdWomxn.

Showing up in the Broader Design Community

Many of us are drawn to the design community because we love creative problem solving. Broken experiences are opportunities for us to shine, and the lack of diversity in the design community is a broken experience that needs our engagement.

If, like me, you’re a privileged member of this community, the most important first step is to learn. We can’t solve a problem without doing discovery, right? Marissa Louie at Expedia has put together a phenomenal learning resource that I highly recommend: The Inclusion & Diversity Compendium for Designers.

Looking at myself, I realized that the first step in my journey was to diversify my network and my exposure to different perspectives. Until now, my circle was made up of personal connections and people who proactively reached out to me through LinkedIn. This, in and of itself, was an example of systemic racism. My network was an echo chamber. This year, I’ve proactively sought to change that. I’ve reached out to communities that are open to allyship so I can listen and learn. In doing so, I’ve built relationships with college students in these communities who seek mentorship in the field of design. Through them, I found out who they admire in their communities and followed them to educate myself and amplify their voices.

Looking Back and Moving Forward

I look back to when I began my design career. I think of all those people who offered their time, advice, and networks to advance my career to where I am today. Every career move I’ve made since 2013 was a result of a personal connection and referral. Everything I’ve learned is because someone was willing to take the time to teach me.

This is what we owe to the future of the design community — that we invest our time, advice, and networks in a way that counteracts the systemic inequalities that surround us. Together, we can design a future in which our community and our work represents the diversity of our world.

Want to be part of a team that writes about stuff like this? Check out open roles in Design + User Experience at NerdWallet.