Full Stack Whatever

Kim is a designer and leader with a very colorful track record including past roles at well-known companies like The New York Times, Etsy, and Dropbox. She is currently part of the Experience Design leadership team at Netflix.

We covered a lot of topics, including burn-out, management styles, values alignment with your team and your employer, our shared thoughts on research, as well as her deep interest in food and wine.

Aaron is one of those great individuals who is both a great designer, as well as a fabulous leader. He recently joined eBay as their VP of Design, where he continues his quest to bring re-commerce to the masses.

We talked about his path into design, from his days in service design to realizing he wanted to go in-house, and eventually ending up having a long stint at Facebook, where he most notably was pivotal in the success of Marketplace.

Didier studied to be an economist before making a pivot into design. Since then, he has been a design lead at Flipboard and led a large part of the Uber design team. Most recently, he co-founded a fintech company in Paris called Bloks.

We spoke about the genesis of his career path and the big lessons that he’s learned along the way. Some of the notable topics we dug in to were: working on mobile apps in the early 2010s, how to deal with working at a company that is experiencing major adversity, and the challenges of getting off the hamster wheel to take a long sabbatical, and figuring out what to do afterwards.

Mia Blume is an entrepreneur, design leader, and leadership coach. She is the founder and CEO of DesignDept, and the founder and host of the design leadership conference Within.

First, we discussed her career and how she went from service design to in-house design leadership. From there, we spoke about how she ended up starting her companies, and more specifically about how she guides and supports design leaders through her workshops and coaching practices.

Towards the end, we dug a bit deeper into some of the most common areas where she gives guidance, including the importance for design leaders to gain business acumen.

Jessica is a lettering artist and author who has created custom lettering artwork for established brands, films, classic books, postage stamps, and so much more. She’s traveled the world speaking at creative conferences and colleges and has befriended innumerable internet strangers while navigating the depths of social media.

Most recently, she wrote and illustrated her latest children’s book: “Who Will U Be?”. We talked a bit about her career and the meaningful moments within it. And we chatted about befriending tons of people by being extremely online and the differences in connecting with people nowadays versus the past decade and a half.

Michael is an entrepreneur, investor, and product person. He is currently the co-founder and CEO at Taika, making beverages that fuel creativity. He was Facebook's first mobile product hire and subsequently led their mobile product development and strategy—including the company's pivot to mobile—for more than five years.

We talked about his path from South Africa to the US, his career-defining role at Facebook, and his path since.

Matthew is a designer, entrepreneur and a co-founder of Letterboxd, a social media site for film discussion and discovery.

We talked about his path, how he bootstrapped and incubated Letterboxd, and how he has approached leading the company, and evolving the product, in the decade-plus that it has been around.

Halli is an entrepreneur, creative, design leader and musician from Reykjavik, Iceland. He previously founded and led UENO. Currently, he is building 1000 ramps in Iceland, releasing music under the name Önnu Jónu Son and just launched his restaurant, bar, and mini theater Anna Jóna.

We spoke for a short period of time during the happy hour of the first day of Kinference in Brooklyn. We talked about his experience being a recovering alcoholic, cover some meaningful stories about what drives him, and what projects he is focusing on next.

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.

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 talked about the challenges and lessons from her early career, and some of her 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, 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 Swedish designer and software engineer. 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, how we build things 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.

Kathy is a multi-talented creative who works as a digital product designer by day, and pursues various creative endeavors outside of work, including her ceramics project prettygoodclub.

In our conversation we covered her various perspectives on careers, and some of the biggest lessons she learned at GitHub.

Brian is a designer, podcaster, writer, and software tinkerer. He is currently building Campsite, a tool that helps software teams share and organize work-in-progress.

We talked about his path so far, what drives him, and why he started building Campsite. I hope you enjoy this pilot episode.