Rochelle King

Talk

The itchy discomfort of trying to fit in

Mon 24 October 16

Over the past two years, there’s been an increasing focus on diversity at tech companies. Diversity can be a difficult conversation to both initiate and to engage in, but it’s clearly a necessary one. An often stated Japanese proverb is that “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down”. As a Japanese American woman who also grew up during a time of affirmative action and having had a career that began well before the open and candid dialogue that we now have on diversity, it can often be an uncomfortable and difficult territory for me to navigate both personally and professionally.

Establishing design in tech centric companies feels like it has similar challenges. Although there are a few companies where the founder was a designer or where design has been important from the start, it is more often the case that design was added late to the table and then has to work it’s way up from a disadvantaged position. I’ll talk about lessons learned on my design leadership journey - and the delicate balance of fitting in vs finding strength in a unique voice..

Slides from Rochelle’s presentation.