From Marketer to Product Designer

After working a variety of roles and still feeling unfulfilled, Callie decided to resign and travel the world. During her travels, she thought about what she loved most about her previous roles and where her career path should head. Callie realized that design was her passion and enrolled in Bloc’s Designer Track to start her new career path.

Tell me: what were you doing before Bloc?
I worked at IBM for five years (plus two internship years) in a wide variety of roles, including events manager, project manager, and digital marketing strategist.

Why did you end up taking Bloc?
I had the urge to travel the world for years, and tried several times to get an international role at IBM. After a few failed attempts, I decided to resign and travel solo for four months. During my time away, I thought a lot about what I liked and did not like about my time as a marketer.

The projects I loved working on most were those with the product and design teams, such as improving the user experience of our websites. Upon returning to the US, I researched more about design roles and realized that design was the direction I wanted to go in for the rest of my career. Bloc was one of the most highly reviewed programs out there, and I went for it.

What was your favorite part of the Bloc curriculum?
The community. My mentor meetings, design sessions with the experts, and Slack channel full of students willing to help on any project were the greatest parts of the program. It really made me feel like we were all in it together.