Full Stack Whatever

Hazel is a writer and designer who works on design systems and product architecture. Right now, she’s building the design systems practice at Duolingo. She was the founding member of Instagram’s first content design team, and later, their first design systems team. Our conversation covers where her career started, and how she found her passion in a life-defining role starting Instagram’s design system. We also chat about some of her best practices for building design systems, and her thoughts on taking agency over your career. * This episode is dedicated to the memory of Joy-Vincent Niemantsverdriet.

Andrea is a designer, leader, and executive coach working with unconventional leaders and teams. She has a compelling story about her winding career, from various startup roles, to finding her way to Interaction Design and executive leadership. Throughout our conversation we reflect on the industry, and the relationship between design and coaching.

Dan is a designer, creative director and photographer based in London. He has had a fascinating story so far, from the early days of the world wide web, to being part of the early blogging scene, to becoming a prolific photographer. We talked about his path towards design and the creative field, how he found his way onto the internet, and how he always gravitates towards writing and teaching as a means to clarify his thinking.

Everett is a multi-talented creative who is currently on the publishing team at Stripe as the executive producer of films and brand content for Stripe Press and Works in Progress. We talked about his path from East LA to the Bay Area and spoke about some of our shared formative experiences from reflections on our time at Facebook in the early 2010s. We dug into his perspectives as a generalist vs. being a specialist, and what the next creative challenges are that he wants to take on.

Linda is a designer, creative director, and as her website says: 'Your friend in design.' Her story starts in small-town Georgia, and since she has had an illustrious career, from being a designer at companies like Mailchimp and Dropbox, to her time as an Art Director at UENO, and most recently leadership roles at Help Scout and Mux. Linda shared some of her most meaningful lessons, and how they have affected both her leadership style, and her personal approach to life.

Vika is a designer and co-founder of Super. In our conversation, we discussed the challenges and lessons from her early career and some of the values and wisdom she likes to share with others now. Most notably, we covered her experience as one of the foundational Product Designers in Facebook's New York office and how she and her co-founder Lindsay approach building, growing, and leading Super.

Pete is a software engineer, startup founder, and one of the creators of React. We talked through his career, from Facebook, to Instagram, to starting his company Smyte, to their acquisition by Twitter, and now his new role at Elementl. You'll find a ton of never previously shared stories and tidbits in this one.

Michelle is a design leader who currently leads Airbnb’s Trust & Safety, Tooling, and Support design teams and one of my absolute favourite humans. In our episode, we talked about how she found her way into the field of design, some of the important people and moments on her path, her fascination with human connection, and how she coaches herself and others.

Rasmus is a designer, an engineer and a person who expresses their creativity through software. He was on the founding team at Spotify, created the typeface Inter, and had stints at well known companies like Facebook, Dropbox and Figma. We talked about a plethora of things and went on a few tangents, ranging from stories about his career, the differences between building software now versus the past, and how he expresses himself through software.

Dan is a husband, dad, teacher, creative director, designer, founder, and entrepreneur from Philadelphia. During the start of his career, Dan found himself amongst the people at the forefront of the web standards movement. In our conversation we talked about his career, the people who influenced him, the various eras of his design firm SuperFriendly, and his personal mission to create better opportunities for those who wouldn't have them otherwise.