“Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.”
Mentorship
HexagonUX
I am passionate about…
Changing the Ratio
At the mid-point of my career I knew that I wanted a mentor, someone to help guide me in some of my future decisions, but I honestly didn’t know how to go about finding that person.
So, I co-founded the Seattle HexagonUX mentorship chapter back in 2016 to help not only myself, but others that might be in the same boat. Our goal is to support junior womxn in UX by partnering them with senior-level womxn in the field. What began simply as an idea quickly turned into a popular program. We are now in our third year, and offer mentorship cohorts every quarter (even expanding our program to not only 1:1 mentorship but senior womxn circles) and have successfully paired 218 mentees with 205 mentors in 9 cohorts (as of winter 2019).
I truly believe in order to create a successful team, you need diversity —this includes your leadership team. I am super passionate about changing the ratio of women in leadership and by starting and co-chairing this program I feel like I am actively changing that ratio.
Speaking
Teaching is listening.
Learning is talking.
I used to have a fear of public speaking, so early in my career I nipped that in the bud and joined Toastmasters. It was a great experience that built up my confidence, but honestly I didn’t do a lot of public speaking afterwards, except to present on the job. More recently I’ve decided to challenge myself —do something outside my comfort zone— so I’ve started “speaking.”
While I’ve been MC’ing the HexagonUX events for the last 3+ years, I have also done a few panels on Mixed Reality for IXDA and for the University of Washington HCI department, their XR Design Jam.
In 2018 I was chosen to be a speaker at XRDC, in San Francisco —my first conference! And am slated to speak at AWE 2020 in May.
I learn something new about myself each time I do an event, and have found that stretching yourself can be enjoyable and rewarding.
