This piece was originally published on Join Interact, as part of a series spotlighting their community members. Interact is a community of mission-driven technologists. Applications for the 2019 cohort of fellows are open until January 31, 2019. Find more information at http://joininteract.com New York, New York — Ari Melenciano lives, breathes and thrives in the space where art, technology, and activism meet. A polymath in the truest and sincerest sense of the word, Melenciano is a Brooklyn-based and interdisciplinary artist, designer, creative technologist, researcher, educator, activist and DJ who explores the relationships between
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? I’m Brenon, a second-generation Filipino-American born and raised in Vallejo, California, right outside of San Francisco. I currently live in Harlem, New York and recently joined AppNexus as a UX Designer. Before AppNexus, I worked at Havas as an Experience Designer, Bloomberg as a UX Research & Design Intern, and Comrade (now CI&T) as a UX Designer. User experience design is a pretty nebulous term, but if I had to summarize what I do, it would be this: I understand
A conversation with the hilarious ex Googler and now stand-up comic and author Sarah Cooper. We talk her career transition, Trump, Beyonce and Jay-Z and her brand new book: How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings: Non-threatening Leadership Strategies for Women I think the obvious question to start with is how does one go from being a Googler to a comic/author? It was all based on a viral article that I wrote called “10 tricks to appear smart meetings” I wrote while I was working at Google as a
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? I am a Filipina American born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. More recently, I pulled up stakes and relocated to Brooklyn, NY. I am a UX Researcher at 2U and am also a full-time graduate student at the University of Southern California, pursuing my Master of Science in Integrated Design, Business, and Technology. As the predetermined career trajectories for Filipinos are typically a nurse, doctor, engineer, or lawyer, I realized that my passions and interests never did
Tell us abit about yourself and what you do? My name is Priyanka. I was born, raised and educated in Mumbai. I grew up around artists, so to pursue a career in the arts was an obvious choice for me. I studied graphic design in college and got my first job at an entertainment startup. I immigrated to the US twelve years ago, six of which I spent designing at a non-profit in Austin, Texas. Before moving to the US, I spent a few years in New Zealand. I currently live
Tell us abit about yourself and what you do? I’m a first-generation Mexican-American born and raised in Santa Ana, California. I studied psychology at the University of Notre Dame, but I had been tinkering with computers and the web for a few years before then. I recently joined the Product Design team at Automattic, which is the company behind WordPress, the platform that runs about 30% of the web. Much different from where I was at before, IBM Watson, where I designed AI software. My career has a quirky history,
Tell us about yourself and what you do? Talofa, my name is Pou Dimitrijevich I am a Product Designer, living and working in the epicenter of tech: San Francisco, CA. I was born in Pago Pago, American Samoa, but grew up in Southern California. As a woman of color and as a first-generation Samoan woman, where I would go ‘next’–after high school or post-college–wasn’t always so perspicuous. I never thought I’d end up in Tech. I was raised by a single mother, in a two-bedroom apartment with seven siblings and
This is part two of our new series Fashion Meets Tech [see part one here], in tandem with onchek Jordan, a software designer at Etsy and formerly Twitter, is one to talk about music, art, and design. As a creative, who currently shares his creativity through software, he can easily go in depth on fashion and poetry as well. In his world, creativity is fluid. It can can take any form. “I’m glad to be here,” he said as he walked in. “I’ve never really done this before, but let’s
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? My name is Jennifer Cao. I’m a Service and Interaction Designer at Fjord. We help clients create digital services and products. It’s a great intersection of design research, strategy, and product creation. Every project a different dynamic and ask, so there is always a lot to learn. How and why did you get involved in tech? I had an interest in the arts growing up, but my parents were refugees and encouraged me towards a pragmatic and stable career path.
How and why did you get involved in tech Most of my studies from elementary school to college focused on the arts, specifically painting. I made the switch to graphic design during my latter years in college where I took courses around typography, photography and design theory. Unrelated to that, I also studied economics to gain a more balance education. It gave me the chance to train both my creative and critical thinking. My first gig was at a boutique design agency where I got exposed to many different skill