It was a lot harder being a Black woman in design and not having the mentorship available to scope out that experience. Once I had that first internship, it helped feed into my current job. I’d say it was harder to find that first internship than it was to find my job. It wasn’t until my second year of undergrad at North Carolina A&T State University that I was introduced to UX design. That is what we have to make design more of, rather than I’m just a “doer.” We have to project this out to everybody. It’s transformational in the way somebody is going to exist and that can be influential. What they say and how they say it that is incredibly important. The colors, the form there’s something about it. When you walk into a designer’s home, there’s something about this place that’s really interesting. Some of my neighbors who know me very well – it’s like the difference between H&R Block and Goldman Sachs. When people ask me at a dinner party or on the street. We need to instill the idea that design is more than a profession. There needs to be this sense of authorship and understanding. It’s up to people like us: mentors that can provide that. It’s about providing them with that goodness and that quality. It’s not about chucking people into a profession (because it’s a profession not a job). We had a conversation once: it was more about not just, “We need designers from minorities–and very much so from the Black community–but we need good ones.” That’s where people start. I was talking to a really good friend who is at PBS who is also British we graduated together. Folks focused on growing the industry should be looking at the equity side and the folks focused on the equity side also need to focus on growing the industry. This would be an opportune time to think about these problems at once. That’s been a really cool shift I see in the industry.Īs an industry we know we need to grow because there aren’t enough designers to keep up with the demand. This is ongoing work as opposed to something just in February. There is a lot of talk about it but we’re getting to a point in the industry that its’ becoming apparent that talk isn’t enough. How do I get recruited? And how do I find companies that are great and not just say they are great? How can I find people who are going to make the intro for me, or give me the stretch project? Those are the types of problems we’re addressing. One of the things I’m working on now with Miller Knoll is more about recruitment and retention. It’s a collective of different companies in the design industry helping to make it more equitable for Black and brown designers and increase the awareness in education on Black talent in the design field. Last year I got involved with Miller Knoll’s Diversity in Design. I work with the designers on our team and make sure they are growing in the right ways, that we have a really solid design vision we’re working toward, that we are making the most cohesive product. Right now, I’m a product design manager and I’ve been here at DropBox for six years. That probably came from something my dad told me early on that I always had in the back of my head: “You can do whatever you want, just know how to work computers well.” In high school, I just wanted to figure out how to do websites for myself and my friends. For me, I kind of came into design at a weird time in the late 90s, early 2000s. You don’t need to go to MIT, but you can get into this skillset and still work with all of those people on really cool problems. We need to figure out how to change the narrative. The design skillset is definitely at that intersection of art, and intuition, and data. Product Design Manager, DropBox Founder, BlacksWhoDesign
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