#17 Kara DeFrias on changing careers, curing cancer and being a sponsor

I loved chatting to Kara back in August, excited to finally get this episode out to your ears!

Kara started her career as an instructional designer, eventually working her way to leading user experience design through experience at (amongst others) top-flight companies in sport (the Super Bowl), Film (Oscars) and politics, both as senior advisor to 18F and as Biden's Director of UX during Obama's cancer moonshot. She was also one of the first Presidential Innovation Fellows.

We talked about Instructional design, meeting Obama, pale males, career progression of a person vs a professional and where you can use existing skills in new ways and readjust your career to suit the things you’re good at AND the things you love. 

We also covered attempting to cure cancer, doing user-centred design in government, being a good sponsor and our mutual love of the West Wing.

Show links

Obama announcing the cancer moonshot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W2Fl_X_6I4

Kara's article on how to care and feed a team: https://medium.com/@karadefrias/the-product-managers-guide-to-the-care-and-feeding-of-humans-ee2854bc5944

Find Kara on the web at https://www.karadefrias.com/, and on twitter at https://twitter.com/karadefrias.

Who else should we be speaking to?

We have a fantastic set of interviews already recorded so we're sorted for getting into your ear-holes for this year, but we're looking for guests for 2020 episodes, so if you or someone you know is doing great work, let us know! Even better if it's someone who might not be regulars on other podcasts or stages.

Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.

Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo!

Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. It really is an exciting and fun place to work (I should know as an alumni).

Go check out the team, blog and open roles at deliveroo.design or follow them on twitter: https://twitter.com/deliveroodesign