When Aarron was in college studying painting and drawing, he had an absolute certainty about the path my career would take. He was going to move to New York, make it big as an artist, and never look back.

And Eli, as an undergrad in product design, wasn’t sure what a career in his field even looked like. The skillset wasn’t clearly defined yet. The outdoor product companies he was eyeing wanted me to conform to a neat little box: “Are you an industrial designer, or a mechanical engineer?” He wasn’t sure how he fit in.

Did our careers unfold as we expected? Absolutely not. Life and careers rarely go according to plan. There’s so much beyond our control. But, despite the unexpected twists, there are lessons that can guide us in the right direction. And that’s what we’re here to explore today in this special live episode of Design Better, recorded right here at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Today, we’ll be speaking with four design leaders who took a winding path but all found their way to significant work.

Bios

Kate Aronowitz is a design executive who has built her career empowering teams at some of Silicon Valley’s most iconic companies. In addition to her role leading GV’s operations team, Kate coaches GV portfolio companies on cross-functional design processes, scale, product development, and management strategy.

Kate has built world-class design teams at eBay, LinkedIn, Facebook (now Meta), and Wealthfront. She joined the first user experience team at eBay before taking her experience to LinkedIn, where she started the user research team. As Facebook’s first design executive, Kate grew the organization from 20 to 200, establishing multidisciplinary design teams in front-end engineering, user research, content strategy, and communication design.

Steve Johnson, VP of Design at Netflix, leads a diverse, multidisciplinary, Emmy-award-winning Experience Design organization. His team's commitment to discovery, product innovation, brand development, and personalization has set the standard for streaming media platforms across the world. Prior to Netflix, Steve also led design teams at LinkedIn and Adobe.

Jaime Lopez, Chief Design and Marketing Officer at Flatiron Health, Jaime Lopez is the Chief Design & Marketing Officer at Flatiron Health. She has over 15 years of startup product, design and marketing experience with a passion for creative problem solving and building and mentoring teams. In her role at Flatiron Health, Jaime uses her background to create and deliver high-quality experiences to oversee the company’s entire marketing and design suite.

Kat Holmes is EVP and Chief Design Officer at Salesforce where she's driving the future of AI, Data, and CRM experiences. As the author of the best-selling book Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design, Holmes works with multidisciplinary teams to set a foundation for why designing with excluded communities drives better solutions for everyone. Her work has been featured by NPR, BBC, Fast Company, Forbes, The Economist, and many more.

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