Tolu Adegbite

What does accessibility design look like at the largest social media company in the world? According to this week’s guest, Tolu Adegbite, it’s a lot more than you may think! Between websites, apps, and devices, there are a lot of considerations to factor in, and Tolu’s unique background makes her well-equipped to solve these problems.

Tolu gave us a peek into the mood at Meta fresh off the launch of Threads, and she spoke about her day-to-day routine being on the company’s app design systems team. She also shared her story of starting out as a developer, and went into how recent current events inspired her to get more involved with including intersectionality as a key factor in her work. Tolu’s also writing her first book, so she talked about how she juggles that with also being a graduate student.

Tolu is a great example of how using your life experiences can shape your creative perspectives!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:

All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Tolu Adegbite:

Hi. My name is Tolu Adegbite. I’m a product designer. Currently in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And I work on inclusive design. Right now I work at Meta, specifically working on Facebook, the design system, and making that as inclusive as possible.

Maurice Cherry:

Nice. How has your year been going so far?

Tolu Adegbite:

My year so far has been really interesting. I think this year started off kind of tough. There were a lot of just layoffs happening in tech. I felt like everywhere I looked on social media, there were just like a lot of sad messages, layoffs people having to really rejig their lives. So I kind of took a step back. I got rid of most of my social media accounts, which is kind of ironic seeing as I work for a social media company, but I really needed to take some time out to get in a better headspace because of all the tough stuff that was going on. But now I’m definitely feeling a lot more optimistic. I feel like things are turning around, so I’m feeling good about the year from here on out.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, look, I can tell you as someone that also was laid off during that time, I know what you mean about sort of retreating from social media and just seeing all of that as it takes place. Because there was a period last year where I felt like there were layoffs happening every week for like a few months. And not in small numbers either. It’s like 200 people here, 1,000 people here, and it can be super demoralizing, especially if you’re somewhere and you’ve survived a layoff like that. Survivor’s guilt. It’s bad and social media just compounds upon it.

Tolu Adegbite:

Absolutely. I totally agree. I know so many people who experienced the same thing, but for the people who weren’t laid off, there definitely is that survivor’s guilt. Looking around, realizing that it could have just as easily have been you. It was a really unusual way to start the year, especially given last year was the complete opposite. Everyone and their dog had gotten a new job and was talking about it on LinkedIn.

Maurice Cherry:

And this is independent of, sort of, talks about layoffs. Social media as a concept has been in a tailspin this year, particularly with the advent of new services — and we’ll talk about Threads — but with the advent of new services and stuff like that, it’s causing a lot of people to sort of re-examine their relationship to social media. Like…we’ll just talk about it. Twitter is crumbling at the moment and people are looking at all these different alternatives to possibly go it could be on Spill, they could go on BlueSky, they could go on Mastodon, et cetera. And it’s causing some people to say, “you know what? What if I just divest altogether from social media and not use any of these new platforms?” It’s an interesting time to be a social media user, I think.

Tolu Adegbite:

It definitely is. I feel like for so long it’s been a source of a lot of community. I am a chronic lurker. So for years I would lurk on Twitter without ever having an account. But I don’t think you can even do that anymore. I definitely can’t see accounts now that I’m not currently on Twitter, so it’s definitely an interesting time. Definitely more difficult to look in from the outside if you are also a chronic lurker like I am.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I hear you. Yeah. Twitter is becoming a walled garden. Some of these other places are similarly like that, where maybe you can only see a couple of things, but you have to join. And it would be one thing if the social media were more inherently social, but then it’s like tied up with algorithms and data collection, and you’re just like, I just want to talk to my friends and see what they’re doing and look at cute pictures and all that sort of stuff.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, especially since the pandemic. I think social media started being a major source of interaction for me during those, what, like, years that we couldn’t really do much in Ontario. Our laws were pretty intense about lockdown. There was a point in time where you couldn’t even leave your apartment. You couldn’t go outside with anyone who you didn’t live with. So social media was pretty much as much as I interacted with my friends and people that I knew.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. What do you want to try to accomplish for the rest of this year?

Tolu Adegbite:

I’ve been thinking a lot about my mindset and perspective on my career. I’m going to keep it short, but ultimately, I think as a Black woman growing up in this country, I’ve learned to present kind of a palatable version of myself. And I realize in the work world, it doesn’t always translate to where I want to go in my career and I’m having to show up differently. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about that, and I’m really focused on my career this year, where I want it to go and how I think my skill set can kind of propel my career forward.

Maurice Cherry:

Can you expand on that a little bit?

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, absolutely. I’m one of those people who I think, lived in a fantasy land. When I was a kid, I was in my head so much, so I really remember my childhood very well. And I remember as far back as grade one, grade two, sitting in class, feeling like I had to be really good. I don’t think I could put it to words back then, but there definitely was this feeling that in order for me to not be seen as a problematic child, that I had to present myself in a certain way. I had to be super smart. I had to always be raising my hand and giving answers. I had to be super nice to the people in my class. I just had to be the best student, a model student, and I’ve definitely taken that through with me today. I feel like I’m a compulsive people pleaser. And that doesn’t really translate well into the workplace, especially when you want to take on leadership roles.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. These companies will drain everything out of you and ask for more, so I know exactly what that feeling can be like of always trying to make sure that you’re showing up in the right way and doing the right things. And oftentimes, even if you’re doing that, just how you’re presented in the workplace, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to have a good effect, which can be a bit jarring, I think, especially if you’re early in your career, it can be a bit jarring because everything that you’ve been sort of told and seen has been to that point where that’s what you’re supposed to do, that’s what you’re being told that you have to present and do. And then you get in the workplace and they’re like…not so much. It doesn’t necessarily translate that way.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah. Especially starting my career as a developer, I definitely did not think about this stuff nearly as much. But I feel like as a designer, half of your craft is just how you show up. You could have the most amazing ideas and innovative, I don’t know, ideas for apps and ideas. But if you don’t show up in the right way, if you’re not confident, no one is really going to take your idea on board as well as if you show up in a certain way, which is really interesting to me. Half of this job is just how you present yourself.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. I’m thinking of like ten to fifteen years ago, when conversations around Black folks in technology, particularly around this new area of tech with social media and stuff like that, and how those conversations have went about and how people are trying to present themselves and making sure that you were a part of all this. It’s kind of amazing that even now, after all of that, that these are still sort of such big concerns, because company culture — trust me when I tell you this — company culture has changed a lot. Like a lot, a lot since then, but yet these are still kind of these pervasive things that mostly people of color have to deal with.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah. Now that you bring that up, I feel like life kind of exists as life before and after the pandemic, but similarly life before and after George Floyd. And I think I saw a complete kind of change in how I think about work, in what we’re allowed to say, what we’re not allowed to say after that. I feel like that completely changed my career. It was recent, but a lot of conversations have happened since then. A lot of conversations that I don’t think would have happened before George Floyd.

Maurice Cherry:

I’m curious about this because you’re in Canada and granted, you know what you’re mentioning, like with George Floyd and things, this is like…I wouldn’t say it’s a uniquely American issue, but certainly it’s something that people worldwide have been able to resonate with. I’m just kind of curious know, you being from Canada, growing up in Canada, and now having to sort of hear about these issues and see how it affects your workplace. Like, how does that make you feel?

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, I think growing up in Canada is really interesting. Our proximity to the U.S. makes it so that sometimes I’m more aware of American news than I am of Canadian news. Our Canadian news sources are definitely talking about American news, but we definitely felt it up here too. I think there’s this perception that these are problems that are unique to America. They’re really not. Whenever I go to the U.S. and I meet Black folks, one thing that really strikes me is that very often I’m asked, “is there racism in Canada?” And it really breaks my heart in a way that the thought of Black Americans is like, is there a place out there where this doesn’t exist? And the answer is no, it exists up here too. But it’s definitely a different brand. I think Canadian culture kind of makes it more covert, it’s less out there than it is in America. But we definitely had those conversations. Definitely was a reckoning here too, but probably not to the extent that Americans dealt with.

Maurice Cherry:

Hmm. Well, I’m not going to stay on this. This is not a nationalist podcast about, you know, issues like this. I want to talk about you and your work, so let’s go into that. So you’re a product designer at Meta. Tell me more about kind of the work you’re doing there. You mentioned you’re on the, sort of, Facebook product. Like, talk to me about that.

Tolu Adegbite:

I know that when Meta came out as a brand, there was some confusion, but I’ll just explain it for folks who are listening. Meta is the parent umbrella company that is an umbrella over Facebook. WhatsApp, Instagram, Threads, Reality Labs, all that stuff. So Meta is the parent company over Facebook. So yes, I work at Meta, but specifically, mostly on Facebook at this moment in time. And it’s been really interesting. I think there’s a very specific external perception, and we’re not going to talk about that too much. But I will say working at Facebook at Meta, one thing that I’ve been really surprised by is just the amount of attention that’s paid to accessibility and inclusive design. It’s definitely a bigger topic here than it’s been probably anywhere else I’ve worked, which is really incredible. Yeah, it’s really incredible. And I’m excited that I’m here at this point in my career that I don’t have to fight and explain why what I do is important and we’re just getting to the work and trying to make these products as accessible and inclusive as possible.

Maurice Cherry:

Tell me more about what does a typical day look like for you? Are you working with a team? Are you working remotely in the office? Like, what does that look like?

Tolu Adegbite:

So I work remotely from Toronto. There are several of us here, but not a lot. Most of my coworkers are in the U.S. on the West Coast, in California. But a typical day looks like…it looks like a lot of conversations with the design systems team; accessibility falls under that team. We do a lot of the typical stuff. We do crits, we talk about components, we talk about the future of our design system. But we spend a lot of time actually thinking about how to make these things considering the largest number of people. When you work on a product that touches billions of people, it really is a huge consideration and something that we spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, I know you mentioned you’re not going to get too much into Facebook stuff. We’re not going to dive into that too much. But on the show a couple of episodes ago, I talked with Kevin Tufts. He’s a product designer. He works…I think he works moreso on the Instagram side from what he mentioned to me. But when we had talked before, this was prior to the release of Threads, which is an Instagram app very similar to Twitter in that it’s sort of this microblogging platform that you can basically put out…I mean, I’m saying “tweets”, but you can put out these small posts. It’s connected in a way to Instagram in that you can share to and from things like that. And that just came out a couple of weeks ago. It’s had massive appeal. I think there’s up to 30 million plus people that joined within the first 24 hours or so.

Knowing that, what is the internal mood at Facebook like? Because Facebook has taken some knocks. They’ve had layoffs, there’s been the whole thing about the metaverse, et cetera. But now it seems like Facebook’s got like a win in the win column. Like, what’s it like there?

Tolu Adegbite:

You know, internally the feeling is really optimistic. There’s some really tangible excitement and that’s a really nice feeling, especially after how things have been in the tech industry lately. You can tell people are really excited and it’s awesome. So many people are trying it out themselves, wanting to test, wanting to dog food, kind of to make sure everything’s working as it should. So it feels really awesome to see that kind of excitement and it definitely is energizing.

Maurice Cherry:

Does any of your work deal with Threads in any way?

Tolu Adegbite:

Not so much. It’s mostly falling under Instagram, so they kind of do their thing. But there definitely are conversations, especially when it comes to inclusive design concepts.

Maurice Cherry:

I’m going to be really interested to see how Threads and these other similar services are going to play out in the market over the next few years. It’s not the first time that there have been a number of Twitter-like clones that have come out trying to unseat Twitter. And I think I mentioned this actually, I don’t know if I mentioned this on the show — I might have mentioned it a couple of episodes ago — but right around like 2006, 2007 when Twitter was starting to sort of come out of its quote-unquote “beta phase”, but it was becoming more popular and more well known. There were a number of other services that tried to compete for that same market share. There was Yammer. There was Pownce. Jaiku. Oh, God…it’s Plurk. That’s what it was. Plurk is another one. And they were all kind of trying to sort of compete for that same space of like “we also want to be a microblogging platform.” And this is prior to what people know of Twitter as now. This was 2007, because Twitter had pivoted from this podcasting startup. Actually, I don’t know if a lot of people know that it started out as this podcasting startup called Odeo — O-D-E-O — and then they pivoted into this sort of microblogging-esque platform around 2006.

So I’m just curious to see how they will fare because a lot of those services now got bought by bigger companies and then they shut them down or they’re just super popular in other countries and not so much here in the U.S. I know people are trying to migrate to Threads, migrate to BlueSky, migrate to Mastodon, et cetera. I’m still kind of taking a wait-and-see approach to see where the masses go or where the conversation — or really where the culture — ends up moving towards. I mean culture in a broader sense, not just like Black folks, but where the general Internet culture is going to migrate towards because it eventually will settle honestly into one place. Like it’s not going to be, I think as splintered as it is right now.

Tolu Adegbite:

I hope that happens, you know, for the culture. I really do miss Black Twitter. That was amazing. I don’t know if it’s still happening because I can’t see Twitter, but I would be really happy if everyone ended up kind of in the same space. That would really be ideal for me.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, only time will tell. I think it’s way too early now for anyone to really be able to pontificate on who’s going to, quote unquote, win. Still a little early to tell.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, we can check back in in a bit and see where this all lands.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. Speaking of that, Facebook’s coming up on its 20th anniversary next year. What do you think their place is now in this modern Internet age?

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, that’s an interesting thought. I definitely remember when Facebook became a thing, probably when I was in elementary school, high school maybe. It’s interesting to see how it’s progressed now, how the audience has kind of like grown and changed and shifted. I think Mark Zuckerberg has been really good. historically, he’s made a lot of good bets. Things are going really well. He’s invested in the right places. And I think going forward it’s still going to remain like a powerhouse. There are billions of users, there’s a really big international presence, and I don’t think that’s necessarily going to change. My great aunt uses WhatsApp. I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon, but I think we’ll definitely continue to see maybe things change, but I don’t really foresee it, I don’t know, going anywhere anytime soon.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, that international presence is also, you know, there’s all these other products that are not just Facebook. You mentioned WhatsApp I know there’s different versions of Facebook in other countries like Facebook Lite, et cetera, and…it’s not the number one website in the world by accident. In some places, Facebook is the internet. So to kind guess, you know, prematurely call it dying. Like I’ve heard a lot, certainly here in the like Facebook’s everywhere.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, it’s growing and changing. And I think Threads is a really big testament to the team being willing to kind of go where the audience needs them to grow with the audience and the base. So that’s pretty awesome to see.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, seeing that Facebook has that global footprint, let’s talk more about what you do in terms of accessibility. Can you kind of touch on how your work affects different products at Facebook?

Tolu Adegbite:

So I started out as a developer, like I mentioned before. Kind of fell into right out of school working on web accessibility, so finding accessibility issues, fixing them…, So when I say accessibility issues, I mean things like color contrast. If you go on a website and you can’t see the text because the color contrast is too low. Or visible focus indicators, if you’re pressing the Tab button to navigate through a form and you can’t see where your cursor is. So things like that eventually morphed into working on it from the product design angle.

But it’s been really energizing to come here and see that this is a focus area and be able to work on these parts of the app design system before they make it to people and starting at that stage. So there’s a small but passionate team working on that. And I kind of see my role on that team as coming from external places that talked about web accessibility and tried fixing it, working on it in multiple different ways. But these days one of the things I’m really most passionate about is inclusive design and specifically what intersectionality means in the context of all these things.

Maurice Cherry:

Talk about that a bit more.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah. So I’ll tell you how I started thinking about that.

I worked at Shopify a few years ago, and while I was there, I wrote an article for the blog. I can’t really remember why it came to mind. Probably still the fallout of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protest in the U.S., but I was thinking a lot about what this means for accessibility. So there’s this awesome woman — she wrote this book called “Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard.” She was the first deafblind person to ever graduate from Harvard Law, which is a pretty massive deal, in part because before she started at Harvard Law, there were not materials that existed for a deafblind person to make it through the program. Right? Like, they didn’t have access to braille for all their materials. They didn’t have, necessarily maybe, interpreters…things like that. And she got through it. I was really touched by her story, but also her social media presence. She talks a lot about her experience as a deafblind woman who is of African descent. She made a post in particular talking about how when she interacts with other blind people, they almost always assume that she’s white. And that really got me thinking. Why is that?

It got me thinking, especially [as] someone who works in inclusive design about things like alternative text. So, you know, when you go on a website and the image is broken and you see a little bit of text, like dog, you see that text. If someone has put an alternative text attribute, which basically is what someone using something like a screen reader would hear, when their screen reader hits that image, they would hear whatever alternative text you put on it. If you put any. And oftentimes if a website even has alternative text, it’s very basic. Let’s say we go on a news website and there’s, I don’t know, a picture of a farmer. It might say farmer standing on a field, but it won’t really say anything about what the farmer looks like. Typically when we do that, I guess in a society where white is kind of the majority is seen as the default, you kind of implicitly are sending the message that this person is white, right? Yeah, it really got me thinking.

I noodled on that for a really long time, and I thought about my own experiences in elementary school. I was one of those kids who had begged to stay inside at recess, so I’d go to the library and read by myself. I read a lot of books, and I actually didn’t read a single book with a Black main character probably until middle school. And up until that point, I kid you not, I just assumed that people didn’t write books about Black people. It never even occurred to me that I just wasn’t coming across books with Black main characters for a reason. And so I was like, “okay, this is absolutely an accessibility issue.” Let’s write an article about it.

And I did, and initially actually, it’s a little bit controversial. It initially was not approved to be published, which was interesting, but eventually the editorial team was like, “okay, we’ll publish it.” But my one condition was, “okay, we cannot publish it during Black History Month.” I’m not going to publish this during Black History Month because I don’t want this to be like a topic that we relegate to Black History Month and never again. But I wrote that article, and it was the first time I’ve ever gotten hate mail. So believe it or not, some folks from the inclusive design community, I’m assuming it was those folks who were reading it, some people made fake email accounts and just, like, sent me hate mail. And I was like, “wow, this is kind of wild, kind of offensive.” But I’m like, you know what? If this is upsetting people to the extent where they’re sending me hate mail about it and telling me that race is irrelevant to people who are blind, then it means that I need to talk a lot more about it.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, look, I can tell you, as someone that has done a podcast where I talk to Black designers, I can completely believe that you got sent hate mail because people are really shook by the acknowledgment of race. Like, what you’re saying is not pinpointing this on any specific person or people. You’re saying like, “this is a behavior that needs to be corrected for greater context.” And then people are sending you hate because you want clarification. It’s madness. But I can 100% believe that you got that, which I’m sorry to hear that you’ve gotten that, but unfortunately, I can believe it.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah. And I guess people had very strong reactions. But I guess working in accessibility, you kind of have these rose-colored glasses — or I did — thinking that, okay, this is a space where we’re talking about exclusion. We’re talking about people who are from marginalized groups. There absolutely should be a conversation about this. And I was really surprised that that conversation wasn’t necessarily welcome, which tells me that the folks who have the loudest voices in this community are maybe from one marginalized group, but aren’t seeing the intersection with others. Like the experience of a white woman who is blind is going to be very different from Black African immigrant who is blind, who is deafblind. And I think having more conversations about that is really important. But I’ve just really learned that for some reason, these conversations have not been at the forefront of the inclusive design movement. That tells me I need to talk about it more.

Maurice Cherry:

Do you think that it’s getting better?

Tolu Adegbite:

I don’t think I’m seeing enough conversations happen about it. The vast majority of people I know who work in inclusive design are white people. And I inherently…obviously the people who are going to talk about this issue the best are the people who’ve experienced it, right? So I think getting more Black folks in the inclusive design community will make it so that those conversations happen more often. But of course, people who don’t experience kind of what happens at these intersections of multiple marginalized identities, of course they can’t talk about it. They definitely shouldn’t be silencing us either.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. Now, we’ve talked a lot about. Your work, what you’re doing at Facebook, et cetera. Let’s kind of shift gears and learn more about you as a person, as a designer. Tell me about where you grew up. Are you originally from Toronto?

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah. So I was born in Nigeria in a place called Ilé-Ifẹ̀, and I moved here when I was about four years old, and I’ve lived in the greater Toronto area, like, Toronto, the towns in and outside of it ever since. So I definitely feel very Canadian. But at the same time, I think a lot about my culture. I speak Yoruba. My parents speak Yoruba. To me, we’re immigrants, and it’s something that I think a lot about. Even though I think people often don’t read me as an immigrant, maybe because of my accent, I think it’s still a very important part of my identity.

Maurice Cherry:

Were you exposed to a lot of design and stuff growing up?

Tolu Adegbite:

Absolutely not. I did not think this was a job, which is why I started out as a developer. I felt like that’s the closest I could get to making things online look nice. When I told my parents that I was going to do design, I think there was a bit of a freak out. My mom was like, “what are you going to design? Like, houses?” There definitely was a disconnect in what that meant. But yeah, it’s interesting what design actually means on the inside. It’s been really amazing, and I think there’s, like, nothing else I’d rather be doing.

Maurice Cherry:

Now you ended up going to the University of Toronto. Tell me about sort of, like, what your time was like there and whether it really kind of helped you once you got out there as a working designer.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, I went to U of T for my undergrad. I studied psychology. U of T was the first university I kind of knew of in Toronto. There’s kind of this joke in the Nigerian community that U of T, for some reason, is like, the only university Nigerian people in Nigeria know about. So when I was little, my dad would take us there, take us to downtown, and he asked me once, when I was like, maybe five or six years old, :which university are you going to go to?” And I looked around and we were at U of T. So I was like, “I’ll go to the University of Toronto.” And then I kind of did.

I think in my head I thought I would always go there because it’s just the one that I knew of. So that was really interesting. I learned so much studying psychology, and it’s probably very cliche because I know it’s, like, one of the most common undergrads that people take. But I learned so much about myself and the way that I look at the world in classes like sex roles and gender and cultural psychology, I just completely shifted my worldview. How I think of things, especially as an immigrant. When my parents and I argue, I look at it from a cultural psychology lens. Why are we arguing? It’s because our collectivistic versus individualistic outlooks on the world are colliding. So I think it definitely helped shift how I look at the world. And I think that’s been really important as a designer to not singularly look at things from this individualistic lens, but think of things from kind of how alternate cultures will look at things. And I think I definitely live in between two cultures, so maybe it makes it a little bit easier to shift my mindset.

Maurice Cherry:

And I would imagine, kind of with the work you’re doing with inclusive design and accessibility, that psychology background is probably super helpful.

Tolu Adegbite:

I’d like to think so. I definitely try to look at it from that perspective. But ultimately, there’s so many different disabilities that people have, you’re never going to understand necessarily where all your users are coming from. So I try to, I don’t know, stay humble, try to not fall into that all-knowing designer kind of stereotype.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, I think at least it probably gives you some empathy into knowing what those kind of different disabilities would be. So tell me about your early sort of post grad career. I know you ended up working for Publicis Sapient as a product designer and as a developer, and you were there for a little over three years. Talk to me about what that experience was like.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yes. So after undergrad, I was like, okay, psychology is awesome, but what am I going to do now? And I kind of just went online trying to find interesting things to do, and I was like, oh, web development looks cool. I could do that. So I studied web development for a year at Humber, and then I started working at Sapient as a web developer. That was really interesting in that I worked mostly on websites, on the digital side of things, worked on a lot of different things. But it was also my first time working with designers, UX designers and visual designers. And I just kind of spent a lot of time working with them. I felt like they were kind of like my people. We talked a lot about how users might think about their perspectives, and I was like, I kind of want to do this. I feel like I could do this. Eventually, I convinced my very supportive director to let me kind of dabble in both, and eventually I moved over to UX.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, usually when I think about designers that are working at an ad agency — that’s what Sapient is — it’s moreso, like visual design or art director or creative director. But you were working on the development side. So they had, like an in-house team, it sounds like.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, exactly. So we’d work on different accounts, creating their websites or digital campaigns, like mini microsites and things like that.

Maurice Cherry:

And you said this is your first time kind of working with UX designers and such; did that give you a greater sense of the type of work that you could be doing?

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, I had no idea that that job even existed. I think I always have loved creativity. I love art. I took art in grade eleven. Grade twelve. I took art as often as I could. I would go to art classes. But there was this one art class I took where the teacher told me I had no technical talent, and I kind of believed her. So for years…

Maurice Cherry:

Damn.

Tolu Adegbite:

I know, right? She was kind of right. But for years, I felt like I couldn’t even broach that world. I didn’t draw anymore. I didn’t paint anymore. I was never very good, but there were fun things to do outside of work. But for the first time, I saw design through a lens of not necessarily being making pretty things, but working on creating products and functional things that could exist in the real world, in the digital world. And I felt like I was more able to do that. I’m not going to be able to produce a beautiful oil painting rendering of you, but I can definitely design a landing page or a form. So I think that kind of work really appeals to me. It feels very logical in a way that appeals to me, but also creative in that you’re bringing together these elements in a way that kind of makes sense for your audience. But to me, it’s like the most creative job, even though you’re not necessarily making anything visually, like, groundbreaking or anything.

Maurice Cherry:

Now back then, were you focused on inclusive design and accessibility, or is that something which kind of came about later on in your career?

Tolu Adegbite:

I think starting as a developer working on web accessibility, it definitely was the lens through which I always wanted to work in UX design, product design. And it was kind of how I made my case in that we didn’t have a lot of people who are specializing in accessibility, but even fewer who did that from the product design side of things. So I was able to make a case for that need on the team by working on things through that lens.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, after you were working at Sapient, you worked at Shopify for a while, which you kind of mentioned a bit earlier. Tell me about that experience. I’ve heard that their internal design culture there is really good. Is that what your experience was like?

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, I felt like their culture was really intentional, and it kind of presented design through a different lens for me. Yet again, that’s when I started thinking of design not only looking like building interfaces, but building your team, building very intentional relationships with your partners in product management, in development. Yeah, definitely very intentional. Definitely lots of process behind the way that things were done. It was a really nice way to broaden my horizons I feel it was a really good experience.

Maurice Cherry:

And from a design perspective, what sort of things were you working on there at Shopify?

Tolu Adegbite:

At Shopify, I specifically worked on Shopify Fulfillment Network, which — rest in peace — they had a recent round of layoffs, which is basically shedding that part of the company. But it was kind of their answer to Amazon Fulfillment. It was enabling merchants, small merchants, to ship out things from warehouses from centralized locations. And I felt like design was just taken very seriously there.

I was working on a project to build, like, a system for the warehouse. And so I started by requesting a visit to the warehouse because I had never visited a warehouse before. And so I went to a warehouse. I worked there for a couple of days, chatted with all the folks on the ground and yeah, got to experience the warehouse through their eyes, I guess. And then I went to start doing the design work, but it felt like they took it so seriously. They actually listened to me. They actually let me experience what I was designing for. And that was really cool. That’s still, I think, one of the most maybe interesting projects I’ve worked on. I feel like it was kind of like that seminal project that I worked on that made me officially a designer.

Maurice Cherry:

I get what you’re saying. Yeah. Sometimes once you start to get that internal validation, or rather I would say, once you get that external validation from your team, that the work that you’re doing is making that impact, it does so much for morale. It does so much for sort of just building yourself up as a designer to know that you are making good decisions and that you’re doing good work.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, absolutely. I guess it brought that aspect of maybe what I love about psychology, getting to understand other people into it. It wasn’t just sitting in a room and I guess making decisions from afar.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. Now, you’re also currently working on a book about intersectionality and design, which we’ll get to. But before we talk about that, I’d love for you to kind of give your definition of inclusive design. What does it mean to you and why? Is it something that other designers should be sort of aware of as they work?

Tolu Adegbite:

I think inclusive design to me is going beyond just compliance and following accessibility laws and making sure you’re up to code. It’s about truly designing for a variety of experiences to make a good experience for the variety of users that you have, whether that’s users with disabilities or users without disabilities, maybe users with temporary or situational disabilities.

But for me, specifically, bringing intersectionality into it is what I thought of a lot after know those few rounds of hate mail. I think that word is so often kind of divorced from where it initially came, intersectionality. Kimberlé Crenshaw, like, that whole thing was about the multiple types of oppression that Black women experience, right? Like the misogyny and the racism, how does that intersect to create a unique social experience for Black women? Let’s pivot and look at accessibility in that same way. How does being disabled and being a Black person, being a brown person, being an immigrant, how do those things intersect to create a unique experience of disability, of exclusion, but kind of bringing Black folks back into that conversation? I’ve had experiences where I’ve seen people use the word intersectionality, and never do they even mention Kimberlé Crenshaw or Black people, which I’m like….that’s wild. That’s where the word came from. So I think we need to have those conversations. I think we need to acknowledge where this word came from, what the concept means. Kimberlé Crenshaw…shout out to her. She is still making books. She’s still writing things. She’s still talking about this. We need to acknowledge where this term came from and what it actually means.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, how does this sort of factor into the work that you’re doing with your book? Is it kind of expounding on this in terms of design?

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, I think what I’m hoping to do is have more conversations about this. Get people thinking about it, get people to understand that just like a lot of other places in tech in which we have kind of our dominant group in society, white men driving things, it’s the same thing in the disability movement right now, in the accessibility movement right now. And that needs to shift in order for the accessibility movement to truly be helpful for people who are not kind of the dominant societal group, right? People of color, immigrants are more likely to be disabled because of things like environmental racism, less access to essential health care. It absolutely is an important conversation to have because we make up so much of the body of disabled people in our countries.

Maurice Cherry:

I remember super early conversations around web accessibility back when I was — oh, God, I keep aging myself when I say these things — back when I was designing websites in 2005, and even just trying to advocate for alt text on images and being told that, “oh, well, that’s only for disabled people and they’re not really using the web and stuff like that.” And I know that a lot of the technology around accessibility has increased, especially as browsers have gotten better. but I remember when it was just like pulling teeth to get people to even consider accessibility when it came to their work. They just wanted to make interesting, cool stuff online and didn’t think about anybody, but just impressing, I don’t know, other designers or friends of theirs, not thinking about who the people were that could possibly be using the thing that you’re designing.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, and I think in some circles that’s still the situation, unfortunately. But I think a lot of people maybe don’t know people who are disabled or like a lot of folks don’t maybe or didn’t know people who are Black in the past and that kind of painted their worldview on who Black people are. But if you know people who are disabled like anyone else, people who are disabled just want to have their independence and be able to do things that everyone else does. So if we don’t make our banking website accessible, the consequence of that is…the real world consequence is that someone out there needs to trust a third party to handle their money, and that’s not really a situation that would be acceptable to anyone else. So why should we subject disabled people to that experience?

I definitely think that things like laws and getting sued and lawsuits are a big reason why people are starting to care. Companies are starting to care, net-net honestly, if that’s what gets them to make their websites accessible, that’s fine with me. Be nice if it came from a place of “this is what’s right,” but if it’s going to come from the law, that’s cool too.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I totally agree with that. Having that accountability is unfortunately the only way that some companies are going to make that happen. Like they have to be fined or otherwise censured in order for them to actually take it seriously.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, absolutely. And if that’s what gets us where we need to be and having the right conversations, I can live with that.

Maurice Cherry:

There’s a book on inclusive design written by Reginé Gilbert. She’s been on the show a few times actually, who wrote “Inclusive Design for a Digital World”. Really great book. If people are listening and they want to just learn more about this, they should check that out. But I’m super interested in seeing what your book is going to be like when it comes out because I think definitely what you mentioned with intersectionality and race as it relates to design is something that is still super important, especially during this current — I guess you could say in the U.S. — this current political climate. But I think it’s probably worldwide or starting to become worldwide as it relates to things like critical race theory and things like that, where things are being either rewritten or omitted that just leave race out of it or completely rewrite history in some odd ways. So I’m really going to be interested to see the reception that your book gets once it’s out.

Tolu Adegbite:

I am interested in seeing myself finish writing it. I’ll definitely keep you posted. I’m excited to have this conversation; hopefully get less hate mail this time. But yeah, the fact that people have reacted so strongly to conversations about that tells me that we need to have more of those conversations and it’s something that we’re not talking about enough right now. But we definitely have folks who are starting to build that conversation. So I’m excited to join the chat.

Maurice Cherry:

So between your product design work that you’re doing at Meta, you’re writing this book, I think you also mentioned a bit earlier that you’re in another educational program. Is that right?

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, that’s right. So I’m starting a Masters of Inclusive Design program at OCAD U. So kind of a funny name, but Ontario College of Art and Design…University? It recently became a university. I’m so so excited about that. It’s a really small program, but it’s been really foundational in the accessibility and inclusive design community. And I’m excited to be surrounded by people who’ve done a lot of thought in this area and just to absorb their knowledge and learn from them.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I know Dr. Dori Tunstall was the dean there. She just came out with a book recently called “Decolonizing Design”, but I think she recently stepped down. And there’s another Black woman or BIPOC woman that’s stepping up as dean, I think.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, Dori’s amazing. I ran into her on the street in Toronto once and I talked to her for a while and she was super nice, and I was like, a weirdo. But she played a huge part in the creation of this program, actually, and in making it actually truly inclusive. This program has, like, remote and asynchronous options. It has options for folks who have to work while doing the program. And I’ve never really come across a program quite like that. So when Dori says inclusive design, Dori means inclusive design.

Maurice Cherry:

That’s awesome. Yeah, I had her on the show back in…oh God, 2015. Maybe she’s like episode 107 or something like that. At the time, she was still teaching in Australia. She was still teaching at Swinburne. This is before she came back to North America. So it’s been amazing to see just her glow up and change and really how fiercely she’s advocated for decolonizing design and inclusivity in her work. It’s been really a powerful thing to see.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah. And it’s one thing to say it, but actually doing it and creating a course that’s actually centered around being inclusive and providing multiple ways of learning where you’re able to codesign your education, that’s just walking the walk. And I really admire that. I never come across another higher education program like that, and I hope other programs take note and we can see more options for inclusive education.

Maurice Cherry:

So, Tolu, what does your downtime look like? I mean, I imagine a lot of this work takes up a lot of just, like, brain space and things like that. What do you do in your downtime?

Tolu Adegbite:

I’m working on that. I feel like I’ve been called by people in my life a bit of a workaholic, and I’m trying to just find hobbies that do not necessarily relate to my work. I’ve been doing some photography lately, which is fun. I really love plants. Trying to spend more time outside, but also watching movies, shows. Again, I feel like you really can’t unsee inclusive design. Right now. I’m watching “I’m A Virgo” about a 13 foot tall Black man from Oakland trying to find his way in the world. So, yeah, I really enjoy things like that. I need to get out more. But I love movies. I love film.

Maurice Cherry:

I need to catch “I’m A Virgo.” I know it just came out, I think last month — we’re recording in July. This will air in September. But I think it came out like June-ish something like that. I need to check it out because I’ve heard it’s really good.

Tolu Adegbite:

I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s amazing.

Maurice Cherry:

What are some pieces of advice that you kind of find yourself coming back to? This could be, like, life advice, career advice, et cetera.

Tolu Adegbite:

This sounds kind of silly, but I say this. I think this is a quote from Winston Churchill, who is otherwise very problematic, but “when you’re going through hell, keep going.” Honestly, whenever something weird happens, something demotivating happens, I just think of that and I find it incredibly motivating. If you’re in hell, why would you stop there? You got to keep going so you at least move yourself out of hell. I’m not saying I’m in hell, but I find that quote really motivating and I think of it often.

Maurice Cherry:

Who are some of the mentors that have kind of helped you out in your career? And these could be peers as well, but who are some people that have really kind of helped you to get to where you are today?

Tolu Adegbite:

Oh, my gosh. Basically everyone you’ve talked to on this podcast. But I’ve been lucky enough to have some really amazing mentors in my time. The person who I worked with at my first company, Allison Walton, who got me started in web accessibility, amazing mentor. Zoltan Hawryluk, who I worked with as a developer, I got to dip some of him once a month. Just people who have been in the industry for a really long time have taught me so much. Tory Hargro, who works at Meta, has been such an incredible mentor to me. He’s amazing and he’s so accessible, even at his level, which is amazing. I work with a designer called Alexis Cotton, who has just been an incredible mentor to me. I’ve learned so much from her about how to show up. She’s a really unique and interesting person, and I feel really lucky to have access to all these people who have made themselves so available. And, yeah, it’s very humbling, and I don’t think I’d be doing the things I’m doing now if it wasn’t for those folks.

Maurice Cherry:

I’m going to text Tory and I’m going to let him know that I talked to you for the show. When you think back on your career and sort of what you’ve learned to get to this point, and I think you may have somewhat answered this earlier, but what are you still working on unlearning as you grow as a designer?

Tolu Adegbite:

I’m trying to unlearn that kind of being a wallflower, being humble, minimizing and shrinking myself to be palatable. I think it’s going to be a long process of unlearning. But, yeah, I’m trying to just show up more. I look around at my peers and kind of how they show up in rooms and how they take up space, and I’m like, I should take up that space too. And I think a lot of women struggle with this in general, but I want to take up more space, and I want to show up as that person who yeah. Who just puts themselves out there and doesn’t need to shrink themselves to make a version of them that they feel like is palatable to the people around them.

Maurice Cherry:

Do you have like, a dream project or something that you’d love to work on one day?

Tolu Adegbite:

Honestly, I can’t even think of one off the top of my head. My dream project is talking about inclusive design and intersectionality and where Black people, where people of color, where immigrants fit into this design story.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, as you look kind of into the future, of course, like you said, you’re still working on this book, you’re in this program. Where do you see yourself in the next five years? Like, what does Tolu in 2028 going to be doing?

Tolu Adegbite:

I see myself deleting a lot of hate mail.

Maurice Cherry:

Hopefully more than that. Hopefully more than that.

Tolu Adegbite:

I see myself having more conversations about these things, about it becoming more of a mainstream conversation. I think in the larger tech community, we’re definitely at the point where we’re talking about needing more diverse representation. I’m really hoping we can talk about that in the inclusive design community as well. I see myself growing, helping other folks in the way people have helped me. It’s funny you mentioned that. I feel like ever since the pandemic, I’ve learned to think a lot more short term back then. Couldn’t even plan, like, two weeks ahead. And so right now I’m focusing a lot more on what’s on my plate.

Maurice Cherry:

Look, I’m right there with you. People ask me now about stuff to do in October, and I’m like, “do I want to do that in October? Where am I going to be in October?” So I think we’re all, in a lot of ways, still kind of trying to come out of this pandemic and think about the future. But it feels like with what you’re doing, your path is set. It feels like if you keep on this path now of working on inclusive design, I think you’ve got a bright future ahead. Especially as we look at things like Web3, the metaverse, other social media platforms, things of that nature. There’s just going to be more and more opportunities because the Web is expanding in a way to include everyone that it just hasn’t before. Because technology is changing.

Tolu Adegbite:

Yeah, there’s a new frontier. There’s the Wild West, where no one has ever done these things before. And there’s definitely a lot of conversations to be had about how to make these completely new things inclusive and accessible. I definitely am super excited about the people who are around me at Meta. There’s actually surprisingly a huge number of Black folks at Meta now, kind of starting with Tory. I think he was actually the first Black designer on Facebook, which is pretty wild. But I definitely look around work and I feel like there are the right people around to help on that path, the right mentors, and that feels really awesome.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you and your work? Where can they find you online?

Tolu Adegbite:

My website is tolu.xyz. Tolu is T-O-L-U. My Threads handle/Instagram is the same — tolu.xyz. Email. I’m also on LinkedIn. You can’t find me really anywhere else. I’m trying to reduce the amount of things that I consume, so those are probably the best ways to find me. Also via email. Old-fashioned.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, you also have the distinction of being the first person on the show to mention that they can be found on Threads.

Tolu Adegbite:

That feels pretty awesome. Hopefully future guests will follow that trend.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, Tolu, it’s been such a pleasure to have you on the show. So great to learn more about you and about your you know, like I said, the web is expanding in many different, know, virtual reality, et cetera, and the work that you’re doing just speaks to the greater need to include everyone in the conversation. So I really hope that with the work that you’re doing that we are all moving forward and closer to fulfilling that goal. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

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If you know how to deliver excellent creative work reliably, and enjoy the autonomy of a virtual-based, freelance life (with no non-competes), check them out at brevityandwit.com.

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Chad Brown

When Chad Brown contacted me a couple of months ago about coming back on the podcast, I had no idea that he was about to take me on such an adventure! Of course, if you’re a long time listener of the show, then you know Chad for his work as a creative director and photographer. Now, he’s fresh off an incredible journey in the Arctic Circle, and he’s chronicled the trip in a new documentary — Blackwaters: Brotherhood in the Wild.

We went right into talking about the film, and Chad shared how the idea for the documentary came to him, and what he wants people to get from it once they’ve watched it. We also touched on several issues, including using storytelling to bring awareness to social and environmental issues, Black men in the outdoors, and his nonprofit work dedicated to the power of collective effort in creating change.

You’ll definitely get inspired by Chad’s powerful exploration of storytelling, brotherhood, and the pursuit of justice and healing through the power of creativity!

More from Chad Brown:

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:

All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Chad Brown:

My name is Chad Brown. I’m the founder of two nonprofits — Soul River Inc., Love Is King — and I’m also a creative film director that does independent films around BIPOC communities connecting to the outdoors, as well as I’m an adventure photographer.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, first of all, welcome back to the show. It’s been a while. I remember when we recorded back in 2017, you were episode 175. Just kind of in general, like, how have things been going for you this year?

Chad Brown:

Things have been going really well. Been really busy this year.

I’ve basically been juggling with my second nonprofit, Love Is King, and the work and growing that; at the same time, balancing a couple creative projects that I’m working on. One of the film projects, which I just finished with my team, which is called “Blackwaters”, and that’s going to be premiering August 26. And so I’ve been really working on trying to raise awareness and get people to know what’s going on, what’s up, and what’s coming down the pipes.

And at the same time, I’m scheduling and reworking a whole new film piece centered around five women connecting into the outdoors. And it’s survival. Five Black women, actually. And the name of that film is called “Mother”. And that one takes place up in the Arctic Circle centered around conservation, indigenous and the survival of a Black woman, and how does that look when they’re moving through the outdoors. And so this whole new film is something that I’ll be launching next week; actually, starting shooting that next week.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, nice. So you’ve got a busy summer ahead.

Chad Brown:

It looks like I do. A pretty busy summer, but that’s kind of been my style of just not being stagnant. I’m constantly moving and shaking.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, let’s dive into the film. I mentioned this before we started recording. I watched it twice. Great film. It’s called “Blackwaters: Brothers In The Wild.” Tell the audience about it.

Chad Brown:

The film is interesting. To keep it as streamlined as possible,we have five Black men from five different backgrounds, five different lives, five different stories, five different challenges of how each one of us moves through this world as a Black man. Bringing these five men together — which I’m one of them — into an outdoor space centered around the backcountry, the most wildest backcountry in the world, which is the Arctic Circle. And dropping ourselves into this wild space and taking on the challenges of not just nature, but also taking on the challenges of many different issues that unravels within each one of us as we go on this adventure together.

These unravels…becomes topics like dismantling masculinity in the outdoors and what does that look like as a Black man and how do we approach that and how do we move through that in an outdoor setting? Then also, tapping on topics of mentorship and then also tapping on topics of dealing with…from stereotypes and how we were raised and the fear of the outdoors and trying to understand where does that fear comes from? Is it something that we project or that’s historical, generational fear that comes into play? It’s five Black men that moves through with challenging topics that relates that’s centered around conversations in the wild at the same time of moving through this journey together. And we are learning from one another and creating a really interesting brotherhood in the wild and experiencing conservation issues that are in that same space that we move through. And we are challenged through those conversations, I mean, through the conservation issues, into some really interesting conversations that we have amongst each other in that dialogue.

And so it’s a heavy dialogue type of piece, and at the same time, it balances itself with this really interesting adventure. And of course, we’re stepping into a place where pretty much BIPOC/Black folks has never ventured really to, probably the safest way to say, where this is the Arctic Circle in the most far off regions for anyone to be able to get into a space like that. And so, yeah, in a nutshell, that’s really what the film is about.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, that’s a lot to pack into a film, even as you say that. And I’ve watched it a couple of times now. Well, there’s a couple of things that stick out. I think the main thing that stuck out to me was like, I wanted it to be longer. I felt like as soon as I really got into it, it was over. I was like, “oh, that’s it.” We could have went for another hour and I would have been fine. But I say that to say, I mean, I think one that’s just a testament to the compelling way that it’s been put together and the group of men that you’ve put together for this. So I’ll name them. You mentioned yourself. James Wdward Mills. Jahmicah Dawes. Nick Brooks, and Alex Bailey. The five of you together kind of going on this sort of expedition. I’m curious, why did you choose Alaska and the Kobuk River? Aside from, I think, the harshness that you mentioned of the Arctic Circle, was there some other significance to it for each of you?

Chad Brown:

I’m not for sure. Before the film kind of popped into play here, we actually found ourselves connecting on a local river in North Carolina at an event that we were all attending. That was the first time that when we came together as some brothers on the water. We didn’t really know each other really well, but the fishing was phenomenal and the friendship and the relationships that we built was awesome. It felt right. It felt nice making these kind of connections to each one of us. Who are? We are anglers. We never really been on the water with just brothers. It’s been a mix of, like, black folks and white folks, et cetera. But actually having this river and us on this water brothers, it just felt good with all of us. And so that was when the spark of our relationships and the awesome synergy just started to take place. And I guess you could say we didn’t really want this moment to leave us, even though that event was over and everybody’s going back home. And so we stayed connected through that process and through that connection.

It was like…I was really getting caught up into, from a creative standpoint, what could we do to kind of combine and tell this story tied into our friendship that we had on the water over a course of time? It evolved into the story of Blackwaters. And I’m the one that selected the Arctic Circle, I think for a couple of reasons. I do a lot of expeditions up in the Arctic, you know, with my organizations, and I do a lot of work in the conservation space — me as a board member with Alaska Wilderness League and and working with the Gwich’in people there, et cetera.

And I understand, like on ground zero, that is ground zero for climate change. Or you’ll call it climate science, et cetera. And there’s a lot of issues happening, especially with the whole recent projects happening, with the oil industry that’s coming and trying to take up the land, et cetera. And so why? I believe, because the sensitive areas that are happening up in the Arctic Circle and it’s tied in with the indigenous communities. And this is an opportunity to also bring this into a platform to share with more people, so more people could be able to have an understanding or just have some knowledge on what’s going on.

And the Arctic is also, even to this day, I would call it…it’s a white man’s paradise of an outdoorsman. It takes a lot of money to get up into that space. Just as much as it takes a lot of money to get yourself a seat to go to the moon. Really only the wealthy really plays in a space like that. If you’re not a government employee or a scientist or some type of nonprofit worker/activist that’s tied into work on the conservation spaces, et cetera, if you’re not part of those, or even probably in oil industry, military, then you have to come out of your pocket in order to see a place like that. And you’re talking a baseline of $75,000 easily to be dropping. That’s just getting there. That’s not all the other things that you need in regards to the transportation and the food and everything or what it takes to really have engage into an Arctic experience. And so, that can be an easily six figure type of trip. And that’s usually we’re talking about. That’s usually coming from somebody that has a lucrative income that can be able to afford that and not be hurt by that financial dollar that you’re dropping there.

And so going back to your question, is that it shows representation that we can do it. There are BIPOC folks that are doing many phenomenal things and thriving in the backcountry and doing phenomenal adventures, work, engagement, conservation, give back, et cetera. And we are in those spaces. We’re not really seen a lot, but we are in those spaces, and maybe a little of us and everything. And so I selected the Arctic Circle, just as I think this is an opportunity to display how we thrive in the backcountry as Black men. And then also, it displays the urgency of the issues that are happening in the Arctic Circle tied in with the Gwich’in people and how the oil industry is definitely a threat to the indigenous nations that are there. And it also speaks to the endangerment of wildlife and the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. That’s probably the why. And I gave you a lot of very long, lengthy answers to that, but yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

I love that. At the end of the documentary, there is a call to action for people to get involved with conservation of the area. But then also, in the film, you’re talking to people from the…you’re talking to some of the Gwich’in people. Like, I remember specifically, you talked with Gideon, one of the elders, and he said this one line that just, like…it was the line that definitely drew me in. I think it was as you all were, like, leaving his home. And he says, “Remember, when you go home, tell ten or twenty people that we were here.” That was such a powerful line. Just, I think as a person of color, as a Black person, to hear that we were here….

Chad Brown:

Just by you saying that, you just gave me goosebumps. Yeah, absolutely. We were here. Absolutely. Which in people are phenomenal people, and they are the people to that land, to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a government name of what we have named, but that land has been there and has been there before. It was named the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And Gideon is an elder, one of the elders of the Arctic village, and he hasn’t had a phenomenal life. He’s also a US veteran Marine, and he served his country. And so he’s seen a lot and done a lot. And he’s such a wonderful soul to be able to sit and speak to. He’s an artist. He loves to share his culture, the art, and he’s a wealth of knowledge. We really spent some time really engaging with Gideon at his house, and he’s very humble and he’s very proud of his people and the culture and the Gwich’in people. They’re just a beautiful nation, and it’s pretty phenomenal.

And it’s a blessing. Again, it’s a true blessing to be able to have the access and to bring these brothers up into that space, you know. To get there, their village is located up on the north slope of the Brooks Range inside the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. And you can’t drive to a place like that. You got to fly. You know, avbush plane will have to fly you in. It’s a two hour flight from Fairbanks and you’re definitely going way [into the] backcountry and you’re going behind time. We’re talking about the Arctic villages. Wow. I’m going to safely say it’s probably like thirty years behind our society. And it is kind of like going to like a third-world country. And it’s right in their part of the U.S. though. But they’re proud, very proud people. They’re connected to the land. 100% substance of how they live their life. And they are the Caribou people. They live their life along the caribou migration of the caribou. And all the storytelling is tied into the caribou. And that storytelling, which is tied into the religious side of how we call Christianity or Judaism or whatever, they have story creations. And those story creations are centered all around the life cycle of the caribou and how the caribou was formed and how they moved. There’s a story to each part of that caribou, to that relates to the Caribou people, which are the Gwich’in people.

Maurice Cherry:

You know, as I, you know, watch the documentary, and especially as…there were sort of these vignettes of each of the men that were on the trip with you kind of talking about how the have come into this trip. And I don’t know if you might have heard this as a comparison, but it reminded me of…it reminded me of camping episodes that you would see in sitcoms.

Chad Brown:

Interesting!

Chad Brown:

And I mean that in a good way! It was sort of like a common trope of 90s sitcoms, but it was a common trope of sitcoms both Black and white. Like, Martin had a camping episode. Fresh Prince. Living Single. Even if we go back, like, Sanford and Son had a camping episode.

Chad Brown:

That’s right! (laughs)

Chad Brown:

If we go forward, black-ish had a camping episode. But those sort of bottle episodes always kind of serve as a crucible for the characters to step outside of their normal routine and to talk about specific issues or to fellowship in a way that they couldn’t do in their sort of regular setting. So as I was watching it, that sort of comparison, it really stood out to me a lot.

Chad Brown:

I see! Maybe that was the subconscious coming out of me as a director, I don’t know. But you said it well. And you’re right! I mean, the camping pieces in there, it sets the conversations and the tone and the conversations. And I definitely wanted to make sure there were really engaging conversations. I worked with James Mills, he’s one of the…he’s a really awesome, talented writer, you know. And he just recently became part of the National Geographic family as an explorer/writer, which was really…yeah, he’s a badass. And so I worked with James to help create these interesting topics that help create these conversations. Like the behind the scenes, we had the layout of some really awesome topics. And so when we set that scene up, you know, one of the camp scenes, et cetera, we would use that topic as a way to spark the conversations of what we needed to make it more as authentic as possible. It was just to spark it. And then however that lands, it lands and we just go with it and we start to speak into that. But yeah, that sitcom mindset of what you just shared with me, that’s pretty cool. Yeah, I’ll take it. I’ll take it. It’s a compliment, yeah. For sure.

Maurice Cherry:

So what do you want people to kind of get from the documentary? I mean, we’re recording this right now — just so folks know, we’re recording this in July — but by the time this comes out, it’ll be September. There will have been some screenings for the film. There will be some also in the future. What do you want people to get from it once they viewed it?

Chad Brown:

I want people to be able to walk away…so let’s talk about this.

So two points to this is, number one: we’re going to have a mixed audience. We’re going to have Black folks, of course, that’s going to come and check out the film. We’re going to definitely have white folks that will definitely gravitate to checking out the film.

From a Black perspective — BIPOC. Just say BIPOC. We’re already into the outdoors. But what we want…for folks to feel, to find inspiration in what we’re doing and to want to explore more and go deeper into our parks, our wildlife refuge, and just really engage into the outdoors and engage without the fear, right, into this. Now what we’re doing is definitely something that you don’t find a lot of BIPOC going that far beyond into spaces like this. But we want BIPOC communities to really find inspiration into wanting to explore adventure. And however adventure lands on you, that’s your adventure. You don’t have to go above and beyond. But we want folks, BIPOC folks, to be inspired and to want to explore more and feel good about it and know that they belong in that space just as much as everybody else. And this is their freedom to roam, to roam further and bolder and explore the wonders of what nature has to offer.

From a white perspective. We want white folks to be able to walk away and take the time to think about the conversations that we have that could be able to play a role, especially amongst decision makers in the outdoor space, of outdoor brand companies or in decision making positions that has the ability to make change. And making that change is making things much more accessible, helping with creating more bridges to the outdoors. Not to teach BIPOC folks really how to backpack, et cetera, because we’ve been in these spaces, we’ve been around the outdoors for many years, et cetera. It’s really about working together to help create safe spaces in the outdoors for many BIPOC communities to feel comfortable. And when we can feel comfortable, then that comfort opens ourselves up to want to explore more and to experience what nature has to offer without the fear. Understanding the political climate that we are in, which is much more stronger and richer when we’re talking about bigotry, hate, ignorance and racism, collectively, as white folks and Black folks and BIPOC, et cetera, we all come together. It takes a collective effort to be able to take a stand and face that and make spaces much more safe, especially in green spaces, for all of us to be able to have a successful and enlightening experience. And that’s what we want for everybody.

And I think also with this film is to also create spaces for Black men. There’s many initiatives out there in our world, urban world, outdoor world, and there’s really awesome initiatives of giving back and helping for little girls to LGBTQ to cancer, to many, many issues out there, and many great initiatives that are taking that on and people’s creating these nonprofits, et cetera, even in the outdoor world. But you don’t see really a lot of effort in putting initiatives into supporting young Black boys and Black men. And you don’t see the platforms of Black men that are in the outdoor spaces that are thriving. And as we want young Black boys to see that. To make those connections. And that representation. Representation matters, right? When you see Black men that are kayaking, hiking, they’re doing phenomenal things, they are thriving, surviving, maybe flying planes, et cetera, whatever, bush planes, et cetera. That needs to be seen and it needs to be elevated just as much as any other initiative out there. That’s important for young Black boys in [the] urban world to be able to see that. We have the NBA, we have the music, blah, blah, blah, but we have brothers out there that are really doing some phenomenal work in the outdoor world just as much as a Black park ranger that should be on the pedestal. Young boys needs to see those kind of things that makes that connection and to be inspired and know that they can also explore and they can also find a career path in those spaces as well.

I think everything that whole takeaway is a collective effort of coming together. And it’s not just a Black thing; it’s not just a white thing. It’s what I’m hoping, at the end, bigger conversations can take place. Inspiration. Helping to create change and awareness, but coming together and collectively talking about it. As you saw in the film, there’s many different conversations and topics, et cetera, that we are tackling and we’re having conversations about. And as you said, that you wanted more, you wanted to see more. This is the more; it’s the aftermath. It’s like when this film is done, the more is hoping that conversations can still be carried and helping to solve many different problems within our social justice space/environmental justice space when it comes to biking, recreating, and advocacy in the outdoors, et cetera.

Maurice Cherry:

I love that. I mean, and even when you say, like, “the outdoors”, I feel like that can take a couple of different forms.

I mean, of course it can take the form that you’re talking about where it’s like deep in the woods or in a more exotic locale, but it could also be running. It could be bird watching. It could be things like that. Even when I think about…I’m sort of thinking of the intersection of where I’ve seen Black people and nature over the past, like, I don’t know, five or six years. Of course, you had the guy who got called out — or I think some woman tried to call him out for bird watching in Central Park. Christian Cooper. You’ve got…there was this guy, I don’t even know if he’s still big anymore, but there was this dude named Brother Nature that was doing all these sort of interactions with animals and stuff. Someone I’m thinking of now, she’s big on TikTok. I don’t know if she’s big on any other platforms, but this woman, Alexis Nicole, who goes by The Black Forager, who basically talks about native plants and things like that and gives these great history lessons behind how all of this sort of came about and how it shouldn’t be this sort of trapped, secretive sort of knowledge. I feel like…I don’t know, that’s all maybe in the same realm, but sort of attacking a problem from different angles. I don’t know.

Chad Brown:

Absolutely it is in the same angle. You don’t have to go above and beyond to get your adventure on. Your adventure could be right down the road into a park. We just want you to be able to feel inspired to explore, right? And however that lands with you, that becomes your personal exploration. Your walk. And learn and know that nature is for everyone and nature is healing for everyone. Some of us don’t understand how nature can be healing. And the ones who don’t understand, those are really the ones we want to be able to capture and say, “hey, you find an inspiration and get out there and we can help you experience that adventure”. And that adventure can be part of your healing process in nature. Yeah, but many of those avenues that you mentioned, some of those folks you mentioned absolutely. And The Black Forager, she’s amazing. I follow her as well. She’s amazing.

Maurice Cherry:

It’s funny, I don’t know, a sort of popular derisive comment that’s come about in the last couple of years, but I’ve heard it since I was a kid. But telling people to go outside and touch grass, really go outside and touch some grass, disconnect for a minute, get off the computer, spend a little bit of time, even if it’s just like standing in your yard or standing in your apartment complex’s common area or whatever. Just like venture out into nature.

Chad Brown:

Exactly. Here’s one thing which I’m always forgetting a lot, but it’s so simple that we don’t think about it and it’s not even part of our probably lifestyle, I guess. And it’s so simple, is that the next time you go outside, take your shoes off and walk in the grass, period. The grounding of that is phenomenal, and not everybody does that. It’s just the most simplest thing. Take your shoes off and walk through the grass. Walk through the grass, walk through the sand and just feel what that feels like when you’re just connecting to nature. And just that grounding alone can just help greatly with the soul, with the healing clarity to the mind. It’s that grounding piece. It’s just stepping outside, take your shoes off and walk to that grass. Sit there for a second. Sit down and let your feet just settle in that grass.

Maurice Cherry:

But yeah, anyway, one thing that also is coming to mind, as you sort of mentioned, how you want people to, I guess, not only just receive the documentary, but also what to take away from it, I would hope, is also safety. Being safe in these spaces. I mean, I was asking about the locale because I’m like, “oh, this is a pretty far out locale for you all to have shot this”. But then I was thinking, like, could you have done the same thing in rural North Carolina and felt safe? I don’t know. Do you want people to also be safe in these spaces?

Chad Brown:

Absolutely. I don’t know what the outcome would have been if we would have shot this in North Carolina. We could have shot it in North Carolina; we could shot it in any other place. And I think what gravitated me more to the Arctic is just that it’s such a ground zero and it’s a sensitive space to where it’s kind of like the canary in a coal mine. What takes place up there is a domino effect that’s going to be happening down in the lower 48, and understanding under the circumstances of the Willow Project that’s happening, and fighting against the land and knowing how the oil industry is treating the indigenous populations there, et cetera. And it’s such a tangled, complex, argument/fight up there tied in with the Willow Project, but it was also another opportunity of why that we wanted to do it up in the Arctic — why I wanted to do it really up in the Arctic Circle — to help raise that awareness throughout film, which that’s what you have gathered already. But going to North Carolina and any other place, I don’t know.

And the safety, yeah, that’s a question mark because I’ve been in North Carolina a couple of times and I got some family there. But there’s a lot of racism down in North Carolina and it’s almost anywhere you go, regardless. But there’s some resistance type of things that happens down there and I don’t know if we would have faced that or not. I have no idea. But that’s definitely around in that state. Would we have faced that? I don’t know. But the fear of…it’s not animals. The fear is people, and it’s the ignorance that lies in the people. And that’s the fear. That’s where we have to come together collectively to be able to create safe spaces.

And you’re right, safety is king for all of us. It’s important to feel and to know that we are safe. If we’re not safe, then it hinders the opportunity of exploring nature and getting out. And we’re going to want to stay in a probably most safest space and not go nowhere other than our own comfort zone, which is in the neighborhood or at home, period. In order for us to really get out and enjoy nature, especially BIPOC, we need to know that there is safe space there for us. When we understand that safe space is there, then of course the welcome of the invitation to explore is it’s not pulling teeth. It just happens by default, basically. But safety is king and it’s important. But that’s a responsibility for all of us to be able to put in place not just the expectations, if there are expectations for BIPOC to be able to raise that flag and talk about it. But that’s a collective effort from BIPOC and white folks coming together and working together to create these kind of safe spaces.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, absolutely. I’m from rural Alabama, and there are definitely places I will not go to if I go back home. Because I’m like, I know it is not safe because certain people feel a level of dominion, I could say, over the land. And you don’t want to go somewhere, and then all of a sudden you’re hearing gunshots, and it’s like, “okay, this is not safe.” I feel like this is a good experience, so I completely understand that.

Let’s pivot from the documentary and talk more about what else you’ve been working on since 2017. And we’ll have a link to the show notes to that interview because I really want people to hear your story about how you came into being an adventurer, what this means to you. I think that interview does a great job of doing that. You mentioned Love Is King, which is one of your nonprofit organizations. Tell me about that, because you started that during the pandemic, is that right?

Chad Brown:

Yes, I did start that during the pandemic. The organization Love Is King has been growing slowly and doing really well. It’s inspired off of Martin Luther King, of course, and the exercise of love in the community and how we can use love to bring people together, to raise awareness, to create — again, going back to what we’re talking earlier, and tied it to the outdoors — is to create safe spaces. Collectively working with many different races and companies and government companies coming together in the act of love to help support BIPOC communities connecting to nature.

Love Is King has two initiatives. The first initiative is what we call Heritage Events. Heritage Events is centered around creating these really interesting environmental events experiences. I’m calling experiences that creates bridges into nature, understanding that BIPOC community and how culturally and festive that we are and how we all come into nature is very different and very creative and very unique. And so these Heritage Events experiences are just that. And what does this look like? This looks like, on a calendar year, we would highlight various different types of cultural or cultural engagements. That gives us an opportunity to create experiences around holidays that celebrates people’s backgrounds and conceptually that turns into some form of an environmental justice experience.

A good example is we have, say, like, we have the Martin Luther King’s birthday come up, or Black History [Month]. I would basically work on the behind the scenes. And there’s a bridge here in Portland, Oregon called the St. John’s Bridge. And I would work in partnership with Forest Park Conservancy, and we would collectively raise enough money to basically get the permits to basically lock up the entire bridge here in Portland. And we will lock up the entire bridge in Portland and we would basically create a reenactment of the Selma [to Montgomery] March. And so when that day comes, we would make relationships with a couple of the churches here in Portland, Oregon. We’ll send out notices throughout all the communities in Portland, Oregon to come out on this day. And so this day looks like we will have three to four speakers and three to four speakers, including myself. We maybe have a senator, we have a minister, a preacher there, and everybody would speak. And then we have a gospel ensemble that will show up. And it’s just gorgeous because right now we got the whole bridge on lockdown. Everything’s at quietness. And so you got this gospel choir right there on the bridge and they’re singing two to three songs, just beautiful and echoing into a crowd of maybe like five or six hundred people. And then we go to silence. And then after that silence, we’ll all lock up hand to hand, shoulder to shoulder. And we’ll walk this bridge in the spirit of the Selma [to Montgomery] March. And then on the other side of the bridge, this experience leads itself into the trails of Forest Park. And so this bridge will lead you into the trails. And so this march is marching into nature. And so we’re marching into nature and we’re exploring the trails. We got a designated trail that’s been established by Forest Park for that day. We’re calling it, like, the Black History Trail or the Martin Luther King Birthday Trail, et cetera. And you go down this trail and there’s little milestones along the way of markers that will allow people to learn different history, points of Black history or Martin Luther King’s birthday, et cetera. And that whole trail is like maybe it’s like a half a mile long and it holds different history markers all the way through. And so that’s the kind of experience what Heritage Events does is that we look to create really interesting type of environmental experiences that helps create bridges for communities to step into and to engage into the outdoors on a very basic, entry level and to create a good time, good memories with the families, relatives, grandma, et cetera. And to enjoy in a festive way. And we do these Heritage Events throughout the year. And each Heritage Day would be like Martin Luther King, Black History Month, Native American, LGBTQ, Veterans Day, and it goes on throughout the year. And that’s part of Love Is King’s engagement and helping to create safe spaces on the basic entry level of just getting out and just taking a walk down a it, you know?

And the the second initiative is Love Is King: Operation Roam. And that’s centered around focusing around BIPOC leaders that are in different professional spaces that has an interest not just to recreate in the outdoors, but an interest of bringing their voice into congressional spaces because we were never invited into those spaces historically. And so Love Is King works towards creating BIPOC advocates of public lands, freshwater, wildlife and indigenous communities through that initiative program. And when they come out of that initiative program, they are paired with a white conservation group that are looking to move forward into creating more type of working relationship spaces around their campaign, their work. And we collectively work and we bring BIPOC voices to decision making tables as leaders and help have these conversations when it comes to developing or planning rules, regulations, bills passed amongst senators, et cetera, where your voice matters. Because historically, it was always one white voice led to make these decisions, knowing that we live in a world of many diverse communities and they’re making decisions on how we recreate. So today we’re trying to change that through Love Is King by bringing more diverse leaders with their talents and their skill sets and their experiences into these intimate conversations around decision makers to help make these decisions collectively, to where the interest of making these decisions is not just from a white lens, but now it’s from diverse. So that’s the second part of Love Is King’s work is creating BIPOC leaders into environmental justice advocates that help step into these spaces and play a higher role when it comes to our bills being passed, regulations and rules, et cetera, on our parks or our wildlife refuge, et cetera. In a nutshell.

Maurice Cherry:

In a nutshell. (laughs)

Both of those programs together sound fascinating. I mean, I think for the second one, I love that you’re tying it into civic engagement, even like what you have on the website under Let Freedom Roam. You say “we believe that the freedom to roam in nature is a basic human right. And so imbuing people through Operation Roam with that, to know that they can also be advocates for the land, for wherever that they’re at, I think is a really great thing.”

The heritage events also sound dope. I mean, it’s funny, you mentioned the march. I don’t know if you know I’m from Selma.

Chad Brown:

That speaks right to your vein right there.

Maurice Cherry:

So as you mentioned the bridge and closing everything down, I’m like…yeah, it’s funny. I’ve walked across Edmund Pettus Bridge so many times that as a kid…as an adult, I would say I get the meaning of it, but I walked across that bridge so many times as a kid, it had no meaning. It’s just like, oh, we got to get to…there’s a bait and tackle shop. It’s like a convenience shop on the other side. So you go through downtown, walk over the bridge, get to that, whatever. But I’ve walked across that bridge so many times. And knowing the historical aspect of it, of course we know because we live in Selma, so we know about the marches and what that means and the significance. And I’m glad that you’re sort of recreating that with these Heritage Events. Because one thing that sort of struck me, like when I moved out of Selma, when I moved here to Atlanta, is how many people had no idea what that was. This is, of course, prior to Ava DuVernay’s “Selma”, prior to, I think, probably the just increased awareness around it, given movements like Black Lives Matter, et cetera. But I remember touching down here in Atlanta in ’99 and talking to people, and they thought I was from Salem, Oregon. They had never heard of Selma, didn’t know what it was about, had not heard of the bridge. I was like, “how do you not know about this? It’s history.” But I was like, “well, maybe it’s history because I grew up there.” I don’t know. But I love the transference of that into other spaces and how you’re tying in these conservational efforts into civic engagement. I think that is a super powerful thing.

Chad Brown:

Yes, thank you. I really appreciate it. Definitely a lot of work, but it’s beautiful. The outcome is just grand. It’s phenomenal. And seeing the work that we’re doing through Love Is King is pretty awesome. I enjoy what’s happening with the organization and how things are forming. It’s really awesome.

Maurice Cherry:

And I have to say, this is also something that you spoke into being from when you were last on the show. When I had you back on the show in 2017, I asked, “where do you see yourself in the next five years?” And you talked about kind of building this sort of outdoor educational experience. And that’s what it sounds like you’re doing through Love Is King.

Chad Brown:

Absolutely. Wow, that’s interesting. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. I didn’t know it was going to be Love Is King though, but now it is Love Is King. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It’s interesting of, as an entrepreneur, sometimes you don’t know but you can sit back and try to, I guess, allow that creativity and how that speaks to you and be able to follow through with whatever speaks to you soulfully. and there’s a lot of power and energy with that, right? And it manifests itself into something. Only if you can allow it, though. We can very well block it by many different things that comes into our lives, even not just things coming alive, even mentally. We can mentally block it and just turn away from it. But I really believe if you can sit with something and let it manifest itself in the right way, it’s going to turn into a reality.

It’s kind of like in design — you work on concepts and sketches and the concepts and you have your proof of concept and then you go into your execution. It’s similar. It’s only difference is that you’re working with manifestation and how that manifests into something that’s speaking and you may not have an understanding of where it’s going to go and how it’s going to evolve, but allowing it to work through. You will have its own way of creating a proof of concept into an execution and doing what you need to do.

Maurice Cherry:

Over these past six years since you’ve been here on the show, how would you say you’ve evolved as a creative and as a person?

Chad Brown:

I think I have evolved very…I find myself evolving into more of a creative strategist type of space mindset. And the skill sets is something that evolves over as you’re growing and moving through. But it’s the strategy that’s very important to me. And I think there’s a place when you just first start out and you’re really hungry and you want to create and you want to do this, and you’re just really giddy about it. And that comes with the program, that comes with the whole process.

But the older you get, the wiser you become. And so you start to learn how to tame that giddiness and learning how to sit with that. Going back to what I was talking about, that manifestation and how it comes out, but now my manifestation is really taking deep thoughts and being more and more strategic in how I use my creative talent into what I am embarking on. Instead of me running fast, now I’m running a little bit slower and really taking much more deep, probably a holistic type of approach and thinking a little bit much more deeper how this is going to not just work for me but also to work for others. My roots are definitely into that natural green space of healing and connecting to nature, and so I think it all aligns but my involvement today of who I am today is more of a deeper strategist around the creative process and more intentional in what I’m wanting to embark on and do. And yesterday, six years ago, it was a little bit different of me kind of running and gunning, but now it’s more of me not running and gunning. It’s me more sitting with it and being more strategic and thoughtful, holistic and shooting for something that’s going to be impactful in what I’m doing that’s going to affect people positive and help people.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, I’m sure that throughout the work that you’ve done and the people that you’ve talked to and the places you visited, you probably have picked up a lot of just like advice, life advice, et cetera. What are a couple of pieces of advice that you find yourself kind of continually coming back to?

Chad Brown:

The biggest advice that comes to me a lot, and I had this conversation just recently with a colleague of mine who was actually one of the camera operators with Blackwaters and also the senior editor of Blackwaters, was Dudley Edmondson. And he’s a phenomenal creative himself, a phenomenal photographer. If anyone has not even done research on Dudley, you know, he’s actually one of the sought after African-American wildlife photographers in history. You go into encyclopedia books and different educational books by the government, etc. That’s pretty…you’ll find a Dudley Edmondson photograph of a wildlife bird or animal basically. But he’s phenomenal. He’s been in the business as a wildlife photographer for many years now. He’s a filmmaker as well. And we had these conversations about, well, he’s having conversations with me centered around team and the power of team. And I know this very well with my background in the military.

You can’t do anything just by yourself. It takes a team to be part of that same process to make things work. You can do it by yourself and thinking that you’re doing it and thinking you are the unicorn, but the reality is that you’re really just kind of tapping that surface. But if you open that up to others and create that kind of team, the work that you’re doing is actually much more stronger now than you and it still includes you and it puts you on a different level, but the work is much more powerful. And so he constantly had these conversations with me a lot, and really it’s these conversations around the spaces that we’re in as Black creatives.

And rather, if you’re in the corporate world or the outdoor world, if you are in a space that you are moving and you’re making change and you are a decision maker as a creative, a Black creative, there is a responsibility — if should you choose to take on; it’s by choice — but there’s also a responsibility if you choose to take on that by opening up those opportunities of other Black creatives. That could be part of the process of what you’re trying to accomplish that can make you much more stronger and impactful instead of just being the unicorn. And that’s something that’s coming from a trained mindset. As Dudley would speak to me, he has a lot of wisdom, and he’s much older than me.

I really listen to a lot what Dudley is saying to me, especially being black in outdoor spaces and being creative, which is very little of us. But as he said, you could be that unicorn. But it’s so important. To allow and open that space up for a team and showing those people just as much as showing yourself, because that’s a stronger presentation in many different other eyes beyond the diversity lens. And people need to see and understand and know that it’s not just you. It’s you and many other people that are there that are doing the great work. They are creative and they’re thriving. And that’s the presentation that you want people to see. Having the presentation of one unicorn is a pat on the back, it’s fine. But having a stronger presentation of a team of fellow creatives that are owning different spaces, that’s a powerful movement. That’s a powerful presence that people need to see that’s beyond that diversity lens. He’s constantly drilling that in know, and he says, Chad, you’re in a position, and a great position to where, yes, you got this. Yes, you could do this. Yes, you are the unicorn, but you’re also in that position to show the bigger presentation, the bigger presentation of a force, a force to be dealt with. When you are in that force of others that are creative and that are also owning different spaces, that makes you much more of a powerhouse.

Believe it or not, that does make you a powerhouse, and that makes that team a force to be dealt with. He keeps on bringing that up to me a lot, and so I’m starting to really implement that into a lot of the work that I do. And sharing and trying to share that space as much as I can to spread is that it’s not about me. As a creative, we can easily take that ownership, but as a wise creative or someone who’s lived in a life when I’m looking at Dudley is that ain’t nothing being taken away. What you’re doing is you’re creating a force to be dealt with. You’re creating a stronger presentation that not just we’ve been here, but we are thriving. And it’s great to be able to share that space with fellow creative, especially upcoming folks, to step into that space, especially in the outdoor world. It wasn’t just one lesson to give you. There’s many lessons here, but that’s some of the mentoring that I’ve had from Dudley, and I’ve been in the world for a bit. He’s been in the world longer than me. He’s doing great, and he spreads that way.

And I think in that conversation we do have as black folks. And I definitely experienced, and I’m not for sure about you, but it’s that crab barrel theory. And that crab barrel theory is that when you look at a barrel of crabs and you got that one crab that’s trying to climb up and get out, what happens is another crab comes up and basically pulls you back down. And we do that to ourselves a lot, especially amongst our own communities. We do that a lot where jealousy sets into wherever arrogance and whatever, all this kind of stuff in which it actually ties into mental health and that’s another conversation. But when we can able to operate and align ourselves in the right space, in the right light with our creatives intentions and how we move our creative intentions and creating other spaces for others, et cetera. It does requires us to be unselfish in that space and to allow people to step in and to make things much stronger and better. And we have to be able to celebrate that at the best, highest way. And for others, the more we can learn about how we celebrate one another, the end product becomes much more stronger not just as a community, but also as a professional community and a stronger presentation of legions that we are creating for others to be able to follow and be inspired by. But that takes a lot of work and it starts off, it takes like myself and others who really understand that it’s not about bringing that brother and bringing that sister down, it’s about upholding that brothers and that sister and letting them rise up even higher than you. You can still share that space but rise up higher than you. Because at the end of the day, you’ll look at as a force to be dealt with. And that’s the presence that we want to be able to portray and put out in front of the world of who we are and how we move through this world.

Maurice Cherry:

What does the future look like for you? Like when we last spoke, you spoke Love Is King pretty much into existence. Like what do you want the next chapter of your story to be?

Chad Brown:

I think the next chapter of my story, I’m definitely going to find myself taking deeper dives into storytelling in the outdoors through film. There’s a lot of stories that needs to be told that’s not told. And there’s so many inspiring and moving stories of BIPOC that has yet to be looked underneath the hook and see what’s happening with the stories there. You look at indigenous nations and I find myself spending more time with indigenous nations and especially around the murders and the rapes of Native American women; in all those cases that goes cold all the time. And so I would love to find myself taking deeper dives into documentary work around that and exposing and bringing that further into not just a section of the conservation, but bringing that into a mainstream again, getting people to rally around those kind of topics. And the more we can rally around. The more we can have conversations, the stronger the army that we have to come together as a people to be able to fight that higher power and bring justice to where justice needs to be served. But I definitely see myself in that next chapter of moving through the conservation space, using creativity as a way of not just developing stories, but finding justice and bringing that to a head as it should be, basically. So I think that’s where my next step is. We’ll be taking a deeper dive into filmmaking and going in that direction of bringing BIPOC stories to a stronger stage where people could be able to learn and be engaged and be inspired and then also finding justice where justice needs to be served on the ones that needs justice in their lives and that helps folks find healing. Period. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, just to kind of wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you, about the film, about your nonprofit works? Like, where can they find that online?

Chad Brown:

You can find my personal work of photography and film work is I have my personal site, which is chadocreative.com and my organization soulriverinc.org loveisking.org. And then the film could be found at blackwaters.com and you’ll find a lot of the updates of where the film is going to be seen. And then we’ll have also a release date when that will be available, also online as well. But you’ll be able to find all that information on the Blackwaters film site.

Maurice Cherry:

All right, sounds good. Chad Brown, thank you so much for coming on the Know. When I had you on the first time, I was talking about just how inspiring your story was. And now that you’ve been able to come back and talk about the work that you’re doing, I think it’s such a needed thing in this kind of current time, especially as we sort of emerge from this pandemic. One thing about that period of time is that there was this sort of or at least it felt like there was this call back to nature of some sorts. It felt like it was a big reset in some ways. Cities slowed down, people slowed down, et cetera.

Chad Brown:

Right.

Maurice Cherry:

And I think that the work that you’re doing here around having people get in touch with nature as well as tying that into sort of civic engagement. This is a design podcast, so somebody that uses figma might listen to this episode and think, well, what does this have to do with me? I think what you’re doing illustrates is that designers, as problem solvers can do more than just like electronic visual design problems. There’s bigger problems that you can take your skills and apply to really sort of change communities and change the world.

Chad Brown:

Absolutely.

Maurice Cherry:

Thank you so much for coming on the show, man. I appreciate it.

Chad Brown:

I really appreciate the opportunity again. And thank you. It was definitely a good experience of connecting again and thank you very much for this opportunity. Really appreciate it.

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Vasheena Brisbane

Vasheena Brisbane’s star is on the rise! New Yorkers are no doubt familiar with her work as the associate director of visual design and communications at one of the city’s most prominent places of worship — Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. And now, Vasheena’s just been honored with a coveted spot on GDUSA Magazine‘s “People to Watch” list for 2023. I had to reach out and have her on the podcast so I could learn more about her story!

Our conversation began with a glimpse into the intricacies of Vasheena’s work, and she spoke about the fulfillment she’s gained because of the variety of designs she gets to touch. We also talked about the obstacles of gaining legitimacy for doing faith-based work while also shining a light on the importance of visibility and representation as Black designers.

Vasheena’s story is both inspiring and thought-provoking, reminding us all of the power of design to connect communities and create meaningful impact!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:

All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Vasheena Brisbane:

My name is Vasheena Brisbane. I am currently the associate director of visual design and communications at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. That means I do all things visual and design for the church. People usually ask me, “well, how much could there be for a church?” And typically, a typical church, there’s not as much, I think, as there is for this specific church. Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church is like the cathedral church of Presbyterianism. So like, St. Patrick’s is for Catholicism. So it’s a big historical church in midtown Manhattan, and we do church like everyone else — Sunday services. But we also have a large outreach ministry and we do a lot of work within the community.

Maurice Cherry:

Nice.

Vasheena Brisbane:

And so, yeah, the church basically runs in seasons, right? So this is our off season. Summer is the off season and fall is homecoming. That’s when our senior pastor returns and we start a sermon series and there’s a magazine and there’s the season of Advent, which is from just after Thanksgiving until just after Christmas. And then there’s sort of a quiet season and then there’s Lent up until Easter, and then there’s a season of Pentecost. So we run in like a season, so it’s like a loop every year.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, nice. I think for people that are, you know, for folks that are listening that even have some experience with Christianity — or just, I would say, Judeo-Christian religions, there is that kind of cyclical nature to the year that sort of revolves around that, right?

Vasheena Brisbane:

Those specific events, sure. And we advertise for every single one of them. And so we advertise…I mean, advertise feels crass for religion, I think, but we do get the word out there, right? And so we do for the fall season, it’s a sermon series and it’s just like the topic that the preacher is preaching on for the season. And he’ll pick a subject and we’ll provide visuals for it. And so we do banners. We do a spread in the magazine that comes up for the fall, which has the fall events. Any happenings. We have a robust music program that has five or six concerts throughout the year — some free, some paid — so that needs advertising and visuals. We do banners on the facade of the church on Fifth Avenue. We do posters to talk about any programming that we have going on throughout the year. And to advertise the season, we also do brochures. And then there’s just all the regular stuff. Like every Sunday, we print a bulletin. That’s some of the more day to day stuff.

Maurice Cherry:

So there’s a lot, I mean, there’s a lot that goes into, I think especially of a church of that size. It’s not just regular Sunday service. There’s a lot of media, there’s prints. I mean, there’s a lot.

Vasheena Brisbane:

There’s a lot. And we have an arts in our faith group. They do gallery exhibits — big ones — probably twice a year, maybe three times a year. We sometimes partner with artists and sometimes it’s something that the committee comes up with. The committee is made up of congregation members and they come up with it. And sometimes, it’s a collaboration. Sometimes I’m brought in to sort of make the vision that they’re thinking of come to life. And sometimes we collaborate on a vision. So it really just depends on the season and what people are thinking and what ideas they have. And sometimes they don’t have any ideas! And so we know we have a little small gallery that we do our exhibits in. Sometimes they have to do with the sermon; like this past season, we did…our senior pastor did a series called Tattoo, and so it was about the words of Christianity that are tattooed on your heart. And so we did an exhibit based on that where I made some temporary tattoos, tattooed them on the staff on various body parts, and photographed them, and we made that into an exhibit. And so it really just depends. So when people say, what is there to do? And I’m like…you have no idea. There’s a lot of things you can do in a church, especially a church of this size, I think.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, I think it’s fascinating that…it sounds like there’s probably, even with the regular cyclical nature, like you said, of different holidays and different things in the church, there’s just so much to do. And I would imagine you’re kind of, in a way, working, I guess, against stereotype, I think, because you want the messaging, of course, to appeal to the congregation. But you also want it to appeal to other members or even nonmembers. But there’s probably a way that you have to do it so it doesn’t seem so…I don’t know what’s a good way to sort of describe this. I want to say cheesy, for lack of a better word. I feel like sometimes Christian marketing can be really wholesome, like, very white bread and 1% milk, kind of. Like, you know what I mean?

Vasheena Brisbane:

Right. You do struggle with that a lot as a designer. I struggle with that because you want to be seen as, like, a legitimate designer, right? I went to school for this. I didn’t stumble into it, right? I might have stumbled into this specific job, but I didn’t stumble into the career of design. So I’ve attended conferences, like I’m sure you have. We could be having an amazing design conversation. And then when they’re like, “oh, so where do you work?” And then I’m like, “oh, I work at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.” And then the conversation sort of just dies. Like, “ohhh…okay.” It’s not seen as valid to maybe designers that are working in a design firm or maybe in-house, a big in- house shop. So that’s something that I’ve struggled with, I think. And I think what I’ve learned is that I can’t focus on what you think about what I’m doing. I have to focus on why I do what I do and then just let my work speak for itself. That’s all I can do. And so when those things happen, I don’t take it personal so much. I just move on to the next.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I can see that. I mean, we talked about this a little bit before I started recording, but when I first started out as a designer, and I think probably as others have as well, you’re trying to find clients. And sometimes some of those first clients that you end up finding are churches because they don’t necessarily have design talent in-house or something. But someone’s got to design the regular Sunday service programs or they need to design funeral announcements or things like that. And often what I’ve heard, and even have experienced to some degree, is that they’ve largely kind of been negative experiences because the church doesn’t want to pay. And then when the church doesn’t want to pay, they try to make it seem like you should just be doing it out of the good of your heart for God. And it’s like, “well, I can’t pay my bills with that.” There’s this sort of negative stigma around it.

Vasheena Brisbane:

It’s like a stigma. Yeah. So I have not had that experience at this church, but I have heard that from other designers. And so for smaller churches, there is no budget for design, which I get. Everyone doesn’t have a budget for design. And so if you’re going to do those jobs, I think what you’re doing it for is the love of the work and the practice of it, right? Because these are not easy pieces to design. Like a Sunday bulletin is like a master class in hierarchy. So if you’re going to do this, you have to come to it, especially if you’re going to do it and be underpaid or not paid at all, you have to come to it thinking that you’re going to get something else in pay, right? So your pay is your practice. Your pay is the refinement of your type skills. Because if you want to learn type skills, do a Sunday bulletin every week and make it readable and make it pleasant and make it great, right? And so one of the things that was my first project, really to do with the church, I was hired freelance, and I was just looking for a bridge job, sort of between…I had finished up an internship at a design firm, and then I was like, “well, what am I going to do?” And I was like, “okay, well, I’ll go on this interview as a church,” and I was just like everyone else. Like, it’s a church. It’ll just be something until I get a real job. And so I found this church and they came in. It was a good positive vibe. And they were like, “okay, you’re going to do Sunday bulletins.” I was like, “all right, fine, I’ll do that.” And so that’s how my work with them started. It started on a freelance basis. I was only doing bulletins. Then the person that hired me ended up leaving, and they hired a new director of communications, and he asked me to do something else. He was like, “oh, can you do this brochure?” And I said, “sure.” And then that worked out. And so it sort of just grew into something. It was not something that I had intended on. I didn’t intend on staying, to be honest.

Maurice Cherry:

And now you’ve been there now for almost a little over 13 years now.

Vasheena Brisbane:

I feel like…yeah, I think I started in 2012, to be honest. I have to check the dates, but it’s been a long time and it’s been a progression, right? So I started off freelance, project-based, 1099. Then I worked really well with the director of communications. Actually, he just retired. And so we worked really well together. And as each project came up, we just worked well together and the projects kept getting better and they were more interesting. And so I was like, “okay, well, I’ll do this project.” And then it was like, “we do this newsletter.” It was a newsletter — like an eight page, eight and a half by eleven [inches] newsletter. That wasn’t my favorite thing to do. But then we decided, “okay, let’s own it. We’re going to change it.” We turned it into a magazine. We turned it into a small eight and a half by five and a half [inches] pocket sort of magazine. Sort of like JET size. I mean, I think JET might be a little bit bigger, like that’s JET’s size, I think. Yeah. If any of your listeners know JET Magazine….

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, they know. They know what JET is.

Vasheena Brisbane:

JET is dating me a little bit! Yeah. And so we sort of just evolved the communications of the church to the point where people call and ask us, like, “where do you get your Sunday bulletin done?” And I’m like, “well, it’s in-house. We do it all in-house.” So I think all the way back to the beginning of the question, which is, have I had that experience? The answer is yes. But if you come to the table from a place of, “I’m going to get this experience and I’m going to better my craft through it,” then you don’t lose. Yes. You have to find other things to pay the bills. But if you can perfect something while also getting some experience, even if the experience doesn’t come with pay, I think you still win.

Maurice Cherry:

Right, I get that.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Yeah. I don’t think you have to stay there forever. But if you prove yourself and you’ve perfected it and they still don’t want to pay you, then you can politely decline.

Maurice Cherry:

Makes sense. Yeah. And look, being somewhere for as long as you have, like I said, a little over 13 years, that is impressive for any designer to be somewhere, especially in this modern age of design. If you’re somewhere for, like, five years, that’s great. But 13 years, that is amazing. Which to me is no surprise because you were named one of GDUSA’s 2023 People to Watch.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Thank you. That was surprising to me, so I’m still shocked that it happened. So to be honest, I’ve kind of just been, like, putting my head down, feet to the pavement, moving from project to project, trying to do my best work. In, I think, 2016, 2017, we got this magazine, and my boss, my old boss, he said he was pointing out all these different winners in the GDUSA magazine. And he was like…he said “you should enter this.” He said “you could win these.” And I was like, “yeah.” I was like, “okay.” And so he was like, “let’s just do it.” And so we entered some pieces, and I ended up, the first year I think it was 2017, I ended up winning three awards. And so I was like, oh, I think that after about five years of you sort of just head down doing good work, in my opinion, not getting it judged anywhere, but I’m proud of what I’ve done here. And so it’s just like, it’s been like, five years of that. And then to see someone say, “hey, this is exceptional,” that was really heartening. And I feel like that’s when I said, “okay, this is like a career.” I don’t think in the beginning of people’s career, at least not for me, you don’t feel like, “oh, this is it. This is my career.” Some people are polished right out of college. That was not me. And so I didn’t feel as if I had a career. I feel like until that happened, I knew I was working. I knew that I could get a job somewhere. I knew I could design, but I didn’t feel like I had a career, I don’t think, until that happened. And I don’t think it was the acknowledgment. I just think not that was the wrong thing to say. I don’t think it was the fact that I won something, but it was the fact that people agreed that I was doing good work.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I mean, that kind of validation is incredibly important. I mean, honestly, it’s one of the core tenets behind why I do Revision Path is to validate the fact that there are Black designers out there doing great work and that people actually want to talk with them about it and about their career. And it’s not in the context of a job interview. It’s like, no, we see you. We see the work that you’re doing, and we think that other people should see it too. Just getting that kind of validation is — and this is going to sound corny — but I learned that from Oprah.

Vasheena Brisbane:

I don’t think anything Oprah says is corny!

Maurice Cherry:

But like, as I asked you before the interview — and people who have been on the show know this too — like, I always ask something that I call my “Oprah question,” and I got that from her, because she has said before, the thing that has made people want to sort of come to her show and come to the mic and everything is the fact that she validates wherever they’re at right now. Oprah doesn’t really do…well maybe now, since she doesn’t have the show…but Oprah’s not really doing shock journalism, you know what mean? Like, she’s not bringing people on to necessarily expose them. She’s like, just giving you the mic and giving you a platform to it. That’s it, you know?

Vasheena Brisbane:

And just be you. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

But that kind of validation in your professional career is super important, especially when, you know, you’ve put in the work to know that other people see that too, and they see you, and they see the fact that you’re putting out this kind of great work? I think that’s what we all want, especially as creative people.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Yeah. And I don’t think I even knew how important it was until it happened. Yeah, and sometimes you don’t, because sometimes you’ve just got your head down. You’re just working, right? You’re just getting up every day, going to work, working, going home. It becomes a real practice. And sometimes in that practice, you can get real, just…yeah, you do. Because once you do something, it’s so repetitive. I mean, the work changes, but the process is still the same, right? You get up, you do it, you do your best, you go to bed, and so you can become numb. And so when you step outside that and then for me, especially to be like…it’s hard for me to say, “hey, I think this is great work to people.” You know what I mean? It’s hard for me to pat myself on my back. For some people, it comes easy. Like for my daughter, it comes easy for her. She thinks she’s great at everything, and I love that about her. We just don’t come from the same…we’re not cut from the same cloth. To even do that felt weird. And so I would encourage people to one, enter a contest just so that you can get a little bit of validation, because you don’t have to win to get validation. But I just think the simple process of editing your work and figuring out what you love and telling people, I did this and I love it, is a great practice for people.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, what’s been the reception for you since the list came out and people have seen you on that?

Vasheena Brisbane:

The reception has been good. Like, the congregation? They congratulate me. They’re some of my biggest supporters, which I really appreciate. I’ve gotten, you know, friends and family. I thanked GDUSA online and on their social via social media. And so I’ve gotten a lot of follows, mainly, I think, on LinkedIn for that, and that’s about it. I don’t think anything major has come about because of it, but you never know. Your email came from it! I never would have thought that here I am listening to great designers on Revision Path, and Maurice Cherry is emailing me. Like, I never would have thought that that would happen. That was…it was so wild when it happened. I couldn’t even believe it. I was just like, “what? This has got to be a joke.” I could not believe it. It was shocking. I even sent it to my boss. I was like, “is this real?” He was like, “I think it is.” I said, “are you sure?” I was like, “are you sure?” I could not believe it. So the biggest thing to happen to me since then is you. You’re at the top of the list.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh! Well, I’m pretty sure that there are going to be bigger and better things after that. I think, one, winning awards, but then two, also being on lists like this, it just puts you in the view of other people to see the work that you’ve done.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Right. And, you know, it’s important to be in the view. But how do you get there? I feel like we go to school to learn our craft and to do our thing, but we don’t learn how to navigate a career. And that’s different. That’s different than just doing good work. You have to really know, like you said, who to get in front of and how do you get there. And I think that a lot of, like you were saying, what Revision Path does is put you in front of the people that need to see, I think. And I think that’s what’s amazing about this platform is that you can get some visibility and whereas you might not be able to be on the other design podcasts. Yeah, because usually it’s like real rock stars. Not that people on here are not rock stars. Please don’t think that. But there is a specific lane that is hard to get in as a Black designer.

Maurice Cherry:

Look, I can tell you from ten years of doing this show…. One, I’ve had a lot of people on who they’ve said, “yeah, this is the first time anyone has ever talked to me about my work outside of maybe like a job interview.” Their family doesn’t even ask them about what they do and how they get inspired. So I’m glad to be able to have the platform for that. And this is not to put down any other show in particular, but even when I was starting out doing the show and trying to network in the sort of, I guess you could say, “design podcast community” — I don’t know if it really existed like ten years ago — but there were other design podcasts out there. And even with me networking with them to let them know about the show and maybe give some ideas for guests, I was met either with complete silence or absolute hatred.

There was only one platform, one podcast that really was like, at that time that was like, “oh, we like what you’re doing. We’d love to have you on our show.” And that was this show called On The Grid. That was with this podcast network called 5by5. And there were three guys that did the show — it was Dan Auer, Matt McInerney, and Andy Mangold. And I was on their show twice. It was like a panel kind of interview thing. And that ended up sort of getting me into the view of other people because they were like, “oh, we didn’t know that Black people did design, let alone talked about it.” Like we haven’t already been in this industry for decades doing this work. But even just that one sort of opportunity to do that put me in the vein where I could be seen by all these other people. But even now, honestly, ten years out, and there’s of course other podcasts out there, and there’s even other Black design podcasts out there, it’s still kind of rare even from some of the larger shows to really hear or see from Black creative voices. And I’m saying this for design media, but Black media does that too. Black media is not really big on showcasing design outside of fashion. I would say, like, you may hear about a fine artist every now and then, but it often has to be in conjunction with something larger. Like, for example, Luna Iris Viktor. I think I’m getting her name right. I think it’s either Luna Iris Viktor or Luna Viktor Iris. But she did a lot of great work in conjunction with Marvel for the first Black Panther movie. But she had been an artist of her own acclaim well before then. It didn’t really start to get out into the community, the Black community, at least until that movie happened. So it’s something where, even now, Black media doesn’t necessarily look at us and the work that we do and sort of give any sort of celebration in that respect. So I think Revision Path kind of occupies an interesting sort of Venn diagram intersection between design media and Black media in that way to at least showcase, like, hey, this is work that we’re doing. Here are our stories in our own words. Here you go. This is what we have to go through. This is what we deal with. And I try to get a good cross section from like across the world.

Vasheena Brisbane:

You’ve done a great job doing that.

Maurice Cherry:

Thank you.

Vasheena Brisbane:

It’s amazing the amount of artists I feel like, like you said, are people looking? You have to look, and you have to talk to people. And it’s like when your head’s down and your pounding on the ground and you’re getting your work done, it’s like you look up and you’re like, “where are all my people?” It’s like, well, I don’t even know where to start.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Vasheena Brisbane:

And you’ve given us an amazing, valid place to start. So if you’re looking, look no further. Or look no further and then look further. Right? Because then at least you can tap into it.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, I like that.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Yeah. You can tap into it. Because even attending…because I’m constantly trying and failing to expand my network, because, one, I’m not a good networker. I don’t have the gift of gab. My husband has that, though. He definitely has the gift of gab, can make friends anywhere. And I am more reserved in that I’m not a wallflower because I can engage in any event, right? But also, I’m a little bit of an extroverted introvert, I think is what they call me. Okay. It’s like I am extroverted when called upon, but I do need that introverted time to recharge and become an extrovert. And so it’s been challenging to expand my network, especially going to conferences. And in the conferences, it’s often a sea of white — which is fine — but I also want to connect with other people, and it’s often hard to find. Or when you find them — I don’t know how to say this diplomatically; I’m going to try to say this as diplomatically as possible — but usually people are concerned with their status in that circle, and that status is often tokenism.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Which is not…I get it. Don’t get me wrong. I get it. I just am resolved not to subscribe. And so, you know, a lot of times, people feel like we can’t talk because you might become the one, but they don’t know that. I don’t even want to be the one.

Maurice Cherry:

Right?

Vasheena Brisbane:

I just want to talk to you and learn. Yeah. That’s where I come from. I am a lover of knowledge and a sharer of knowledge. Ask me anything you want. I will tell you exactly what my experience is. That’s all I can give. This is my experience, and this is where I come from.

Maurice Cherry:

Look, in the early days of doing this show, when I tell you it was like pulling teeth to get guests, because when we first started, it was just an online magazine. I would interview people. I wasn’t recording anything. And I started recording in June of 2013 when Raquel Rodriguez, who was episode one, when she was visiting from Chicago and was like, “yeah, I want to be on the show.” And I was like, “what show? It’s just a magazine.” She’s like, “oh, no, we could record it.” And I didn’t have any recording equipment. All I had was my phone, which is what we recorded it on. And it wasn’t until, like, almost a full year later in March of 2014, when I then sort of took the few recorded interviews I had done and said, “oh, let me just make this a podcast,” because it was just easier to sort of get out week by week. But there were a lot of people in those early days that were like “absolutely not. I don’t want to be on this. Why do you want to talk to me? This is like BET,” which kind of felt a bit like a slap in the face. Like, I understood what they were saying, but it was in such a derogatory way where it’s like, well, I’m not denigrating anyone by having you come on and talk. Why do you think it’s a bad thing that me as a Black media outlet wants to talk to you as a Black person? I think part of that might also just be behind some other Black media outlets that don’t make us look great. I’m not naming any names in particular.

Vasheena Brisbane:

But some of them kind of peddle in…

Maurice Cherry:

They pedal in some, you know…mess, and that unfortunately, gets unfairly sort of branded for the rest of us that aren’t doing that kind of stuff. And yeah, in those early days, it was like a lot of people have said no, which have then come back later and been like, “oh, can I come on the show?” And I’m like, “absolutely not. No.”

Vasheena Brisbane:

No, really? Did you not let them wanna…

Maurice Cherry:

No, I reserve the right to not have you on the show. If you felt like for some reason this was negative against you, then, yeah, we’re not going to do it. There’s one…I’m not going to name this person. But there was one designer in particular. Let’s just say that when I reached out to them, this was a mixed race designer. When I reached out to them, they very much were like, “I don’t want to do this. I don’t really consider myself, like, culturally Black. I don’t want to do it.” And I was like, “okay, fine.”

Vasheena Brisbane:

Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

Fast forward to, I want to say, like, the summer of 2020.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Oh, wow.

Maurice Cherry:

When, you know…murder of George Floyd, protests around this stuff…this same designer was very much like pro-Black Lives Matter. And I’m like…look, I’m not saying that events can’t happen in people’s lives that change them. I get that. I just thought it was really weird that this particular designer was very much like, “yeah, I’m not really Black.” And I’m like, you have a very Black name, and you present phenotypically as a Black person. But now that this sort of thing has happened, that sort of, I guess, shifted you into your own sense of Blackness.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Right. It was very odd.

Maurice Cherry:

And then they asked to come on the show, and I said no. I was like, “no, I don’t think that’s going to be a good look for me at this point. It’s not you, I don’t think, for the show, this is going to work.”

Vasheena Brisbane:

Our props to them.

Maurice Cherry:

But it was very weird.

Vasheena Brisbane:

I would think it would feel less than genuine.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, yeah, it absolutely did.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Yeah, I get it. I agree. And I get that stigma. Right? It’s like, okay, is this a Black thing? Am I only going to be able to do Black things? The people that say that are not realizing that, okay, that may happen. I doubt it. It may happen. But also, are you not pigeonholing yourself into something else that is not genuine?

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Vasheena Brisbane:

And if you are going to be stereotyped, shouldn’t it be as Black? I just feel like it’s a hard road we walk sometimes with trying to balance being legit with being culturally legit.

Maurice Cherry:

It’s complicated. I will 100%.

Vasheena Brisbane:

It’s complicated. And so sometimes when people feel complicated, they just go to what’s easiest. Let me just go with the flow. Right?

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Vasheena Brisbane:

We are not afforded sometimes a lot of times, the opportunity to just go with the flow.

Maurice Cherry:

No, that’s true. That’s very true. I want to bring it back to your work at the church because there’s just some things that I’m really interested in. So you mentioned that a lot of the work is pretty much all the work done that you do with the church in house, or do you work with an agency or with freelance? Because you said you started out freelance.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Yeah, no, it’s all in-house. It’s all in-house. It’s just me and my direct report, which is the director of communications. He does the writing and editing and sort of like this tells the story and I’m involved with the visuals.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow.

Vasheena Brisbane:

So I’m producing everything, I’m sending everything to print. I’m sort of crafting the visual of everything. And so that’s sort of how we work. We are the communications department and we’re a two person team, and I handle all design and production and he handles all story editing, press and stuff like that. And we come together when it’s time to like, okay, we have this story we need to tell and we need visuals for it, we need materials for it, we need digital stuff for it, digital assets. And so we do work with web developers that we contract with, but that’s really the extent of our outside work and print houses. But there’s no I am the designer, it’s just me. It’s a one woman show and we try to make it work.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, I mean, you’re definitely making it work again, you’ve been there for as long as you have, and just the breadth of work that you described earlier I think definitely speaks to your prowess as a designer to be able to navigate between the different types of design that you have to kind of work on.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Yeah, and so a lot of our work is for the senior pastor and he’s shaping the vision of the church. And so a lot of the stuff we do is specifically from him. And sometimes he comes with like, okay, I saw this. One of my favorite projects is he saw this illuminated manuscript letter and was like, “yeah, I’m thinking of the sermon series and I saw this.” It’s like an O. It was like a golden O with like a lot of flowery elements around it. And he was like, “what can you do with it?” That turned into a brochure and banners and posters and we actually won an award for that. And so sometimes he comes with something little, sometimes it’s nothing. Like, this is the theme. We come back, workshop it, and then come back to him and present him with a draft. And it’s a yay or nay. Usually it’s a nay. I mean, usually it’s a yay! Once in a blue, it’s a nay. That’s sort of how we work. We are the team. It’s just us too.

Some of the projects are self-driven. We’ve done history exhibits because we have a pretty robust archive from the church. And so we’ve done a history exhibit where we’ve done a timeline of the church from 1808 up until the present. And so that was more something that I drove because I was interested in it. We have an archivist, and so it seemed ashamed that this stuff wasn’t accessible or visible to the church. I was like, we should do a history exhibit. So we did one, and currently we’re working on doing transforming a larger space in the church into sort of a permanent historical exhibit. So we’re visiting other churches that have archives as well and seeing what they’re doing to exhibit their historical stuff and if they’re doing anything. So I’m not sure if that answered your question.

Maurice Cherry:

No, you did. And we’ll link to your website in the show notes because I really want people to see the breadth of the work that you’ve done and the references, even, that you’re bringing into it. Like, I’m looking at this one campaign not a campaign, but it’s for a sermon series called This Is War, and you’re like, you’re pulling details from, like, Picasso to put all this together so it’s not just put a cross here, put a dove there, and it’s done. It’s real design work going into it.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Yeah. And so our pastor, he loves fine art, and so a lot of times he comes to us with pieces and he’s like,”oh, I just love this piece.” And he just gives him me a JPEG and he’s like, “okay, well, I love this piece.” And I’m like, “okay, well, how can we make this interesting? How can we make this a thing?” All he really wanted was a postcard. And I was like, “no, we need to do”…it’s such a beautiful piece, and it’s very long. And I was like, “I can’t pick one section of this to do one little postcard.” I was like, “we have to do three postcards with different parts of the image on each,” and so that’s what we did. And each postcard had a different part of the image with a different color, with the words This is War. I guess you’re looking at it right now. And on the back, I think the messages were slightly different.

I feel like working in a church is — and working specifically in this environment — is like there are a lot of restrictions, right? You have budgetary restrictions. We don’t have a lot of money to spend on this because this is not a firm, right? We’re not spending all the money on design, right? So we have to make whatever we do impactful. But it also has to be cheap because we’re spending our money outreaching to the community. That’s what we’re doing. We’re spending our money furthering the word of the church and of Presbyterianism and of God. So, yes, the design has to be good, right? But it also has to make sense to the congregation. You can’t come in with this shiny new thing that costs so much money, so many dollars, because people are donating this money. This is money that people have said we’re going to give to you to further the Kingdom of God, right? Not to make shiny things.

Maurice Cherry:

Right.

Vasheena Brisbane:

And so doing it in that way when we did this sermon, because this sermon series, I think it was only three weeks, if I’m not mistaken. And so it’s like he wanted something to be impactful, but also, how do we do it on a budget? And also we have our Lent season coming up right after this, where we do spend a little bit more money. And so those usually are the more fun project, the smaller projects. Like, how can we make this small thing impactful and exciting and interesting and make people that are walking on the streets because it’s a tourist church, too. Like, people are in the city visiting. Across the street is The Peninsula and The St. Regis. You know, major hotels. And so if people are here on a Sunday, you want to make it impactful for them to maybe want to come to service, maybe they want to stop in. So those are the things I think that they’re most exciting to do. Yeah, the small little one off things in addition to the regularly scheduled seasonal stuff.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, I would imagine, even with what you just mentioned around financial considerations, because people are donating to the church to keep it as a community institution, right? But I’m sure there’s other considerations that you have to keep in mind, like, of course, theological and cultural sensitivity, inclusivity, tone and voice. There are a lot of things that you have to put into the design that a designer, say, maybe for a software company or an advertising agency, don’t have to consider.

Vasheena Brisbane:

That’s true. And I’m always thinking, like, “how can I make this a Pepsi thing but keep it church?” Right? I’m always trying to figure out, like, okay, yes, this is church, but how can we make it exciting? So that, one, it’s interesting for me to do. Like, I want to make my work exciting. And two, it gives people pause. Like, oh, I might walk in there because I see this that’s a cool this, or that’s a cool that. My goal is always to generate interest in church by making church things not so churchy, so that it appeals to the audience that we have, but also people that might be walking by that are not necessarily religious or not looking to attend on Sunday, but because maybe because they saw this poster or these banners, maybe they will. Maybe because they saw this magazine, they will.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, it draws you in. And I think with designers being problem solvers, this is such a really unique problem to try to solve. Like, with every design that you have to do, it has to appeal to the congregation. But then also, how do you make it, quote unquote, design, right?

Vasheena Brisbane:

Yes. Because you can’t just appeal to the congregation. Also it won’t grow right. You have to appeal to people outside to bring them inside. Sometimes that’s a hard sort of walk, a hard tightrope to walk because you don’t want to go too far where you get to where it’s not respectful of the institution. But also you want to make it so bland that no one is interested. So you have to sort of walk that tightrope. But I like to err on the side of go wild and then let them rein me back in.

Maurice Cherry:

Right.

Vasheena Brisbane:

And so we can sort of pick and choose elements that are exciting and figure out how to strike the right balance.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. Now, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about your work, and I want to kind of pivot this conversation to learn more about you as a person. You’re originally from New York. You grew up in New York City. Tell me about, like, were you exposed to a lot of art and design growing up?

Vasheena Brisbane:

Not particularly. I’m from Staten Island, New York. I grew up in the neighborhood of Mariners Harbor on Staten Island. And my mom, she worked for the department. — she works, still works, for the Department of Transportation — and she was a single mom. And we went to school. We came home. I didn’t have any emphasis on the arts. I just was always interested in it. I was always interested in architecture and fashion as well. And when I had planned to be an architect, to be honest.

So I started my time at the City University of New York, CUNY I started my time in the architecture program. And that year was transformative for me because I figured out that when I had to take a photography class as part of you have to take electives. And so I said, all right, I’m doing all this technical work. Let me do something that’s less technical. And so I’ll take a photography class as one of my electives. And I took it, and I just fell in love with it. I was just like, I need to be doing design. And so I switched my major. My mom was not happy I did it. And honestly, I was failing physics anyway. I was not a good physics student. And so I switched to design, and I never looked back. That’s it. I was born in San Diego. My mom was in the Navy, and so was my dad. And so they were in San Diego when I was born. And then eventually they split, and then my mom came back to New York because she’s from originally Staten Island as well. So, yeah, I’ve been here my whole life.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, while you were at City College in New York, you had started something there called the Electronic Design and Media Club.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Electronic Design and Multimedia Club.

Maurice Cherry:

Multimedia Club. Did that come about, sort of after you switched over from architecture?

Vasheena Brisbane:

Yeah, so after I switched from architecture, I believe it was Ina Saltz or Annette Winetraub, which I’m not sure if you know those names or not, but they’re pretty big in design. They asked me to start the club, and I did. And we ran it while I was there. And it was just, you know, we’d meet, we talk about, you know, critique our work. And it was just a way for us to network. Because when you go to a…because CUNY is like a commuter school, no one lives there. So it’s hard to generate community because you’re not sort of forced in a space together all the time. You sort of come, you do your classes, and then you go home. And so it was a way for us to foster community there, and I enjoyed it.

Maurice Cherry:

So it sounds like even with just that little — I mean, not that little — but even starting that club, that kind of was your budding interest in sort of design and how that could possibly be something more than just like a hobby.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Yeah, for sure. When I started doing it, I was just like the first year, I loved the idea of design, but I had no idea I wasn’t one of these kids who went to school for I didn’t apply to be a designer, right? Or I didn’t submit a portfolio or anything like that. And so I sort of transferred over into it. So I had to learn the basics in college, whereas some of these kids knew they wanted to do it from the beginning.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Vasheena Brisbane:

And so that was hard for me because I’d never been like, an average student. I’d always been an above average student. So for me, it was struggling with not having a formula to be good. So I just had to really learn the ropes and just be like, okay, I’m just going to have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Maurice Cherry:

Got you.

Vasheena Brisbane:

And it was…it was uncomfortable for a while. And then I began to…I don’t want to say I got good because I don’t think I was good when I was in college, but I did some internships. I interned with InStyle Magazine, which was huge for me. I interned at Smart Money magazine when that was a thing. It was years ago. That was a big deal. And it also helped me decide how I wanted to work in design, because once I worked at InStyle Magazine, I was like, “I don’t want to do magazines.” Because the experience was just so micro. Everyone has their small little part to play in the magazine. It felt like in order to have any creative sort of agency, you would have to rise so far and be so far in your career. I just couldn’t understand how you could be happy until you got to be the design director and you could do the main spreads of the layout. Interesting, because that’s the only person that was doing those.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Vasheena Brisbane:

That helped me understand, like, okay, magazine is probably not going to be your way. Then. I worked at Smart Money magazine, and it was a lot smaller, and they let me dig into their files, redo some of their layouts. It was just a different experience. So those two opposite experiences helped me decide to go small. I never wanted to go big after that because I was like, big is too restricting.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Vasheena Brisbane:

And you don’t get a lot of freedom once things are established. And I think that’s what’s exciting about doing nonprofit work in general and church work, is that you’re sort of writing the rules as you go. Like, yes, there are some guidelines. Obviously, you have to work within some things, but whatever it turns out to be is up to you. And so I didn’t know that then. Looking back now, I can say that, but I knew I didn’t want to go big when I was younger. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, but I knew it couldn’t be big or else I wouldn’t be satisfied.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, one of your early career experiences, after you graduated, you worked for the Anthology of Recorded Music. Tell me about that.

Vasheena Brisbane:

New World Records. It’s a non-profit record company. Oh, my gosh, so many years ago. Yeah. And so I got that job, I think, right out of college. And what I did was, if I’m remembering correctly, I scanned album covers, helped make little press releases for their work, and there was newer records where they would showcase sort of electronic and I’m having a hard time describing the music because it’s not your typical recordings. But they also had a nonprofit branch that they distributed this music to music schools, music programs across the country, like at colleges.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay.

Vasheena Brisbane:

And that was called DRAM. And…please don’t ask me what DRAM stands for now, because I can’t remember, but I sort of made the look and feel for that website and for their website and just, like, getting all their content up and online. And so that was like, my first job outside of college. It was very production heavy. There was not a ton of design there’s. A little bit, a little bit of design, but mostly production. And so that’s what I did there.

And so that…I think I don’t remember when I left that, but after I left there, I freelanced for a while, and then I did an internship with a design firm. I don’t remember the name of the firm. Now that I think about it, that was my early career. It was my first job, and I learned how to work in an office in that job, which they don’t teach you that in school, you know how to design. But how do you design in an office when you have all this other stuff to do all day and so that was my first experience of designing for work and learning that you’re not going to be doing design all day long. You have many other things that you have to do in addition to your design, especially when you’re the only one. And I feel like in every single job that I’ve had, it’s been just me, right? The lone sort of designer or production artist or I think my title was officially production artist at that job. And so it was eye opening and it was nonprofit and it was small. And I enjoyed parts of it, the parts that had to do with design and sort of production and figuring out the back end of websites, because websites were not new, but they weren’t as advanced as they are now. Right. But there was still a lot to learn, especially right out of school. So I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that process.

Maurice Cherry:

So you were working for this nonprofit, then later you ended up working for the church. I’m curious prior to that, and I think we might have touched on this a little bit earlier, but did you have any skepticism about doing work for a church?

Vasheena Brisbane:

Yes. So this specific job came up on, believe it or not, monster.com. I had a resume on monster.com, which I don’t even know if that still exists — have no idea. But yeah, they just called me off…the current director of communications called me and was like, “hey, we’d like you to come in for an interview.” I went in with the idea like, “oh, this is great. I’ll have something to do. I’ll be able to make some money until I get a real job.” That was my exact words. And so I went in, the interview was fine. They said, “okay, well, we’re going to contract you on a freelance basis.” And I said, “great.” I was doing bulletins. My work was do the weekly bulletin, and that was it at first.

So I would go on site one day a week, I think maybe we’d sort the bulletin out, get it done, I’d send it in, and that’d be it. And then probably two or three months after I started, the director of communications left. So they had an interim and they needed help doing the magazine. So I said, well, magazine, they needed help doing the newsletter. It was an eight and a half by eleven, eight pager, I think, so two sheets. We started doing that. It looked awful, but I was just there to maintain until the new director of communications.

So they hired the new director of communications, Tim Palmer. He just recently retired. My favorite boss ever, I’ll say. And he asked me, “oh, the senior pastor wants to do this brochure. He said, ‘do a brochure for his fall sermon series.'” I said, “sure, I’ll try i”t. So we did that. He loved it. And then it was like, “okay, well, do you want to work on the newsletter?” I said, “all right, let’s do the newsletter.”

And so it sort of just snowballed from there. Went from just doing the bulletins to bulletins and brochures, then the newsletter. Then the newsletter turned into a magazine. The first one we did was a 32-pager written by him, designed by me. And then we moved from there and projects just sort of kept coming up. And so I was skeptical, like, “okay, I’m only going to be here for a little while.” But things just kept happening and the project was like, “oh, I’ll take that project. Oh, that sounds interesting.” And I just kept taking projects. And eventually, like three years later, I’m still here and I freelanced with them for three years and I was freelancing with other people.

Like during that time, I freelanced with a private equity firm called PrivCat, and they were doing sort of private equity reports. And so a designer had already designed the magazine and so I was tasked with producing that. But then they would do these sort of digital, I don’t know, two, four or five page reports. And so I designed those. And so during the church work, I was also doing private equity work, which was a little bit dry, but the designs were a little bit more exciting because they had to make the design exciting so that the content didn’t feel so dry. Yeah, I never intended for this to be a long term job. It was supposed to tie me over to my wonderful design firm job that was going to come along, I’d be working at an amazing design firm. But it just kept growing and the opportunities just kept coming.

And then eventually they asked me to come on full time. And I was like, “well, I don’t know.” I was still skeptical. Like, I don’t know if I want to work for a church full time. Maybe I’ll just come three quarter time so I’ll give you all a set, couple of days, we’ll do that. And so I did that for a year and then eventually the job just became so big we started doing banners and we’re doing exhibits. It just became so big they sort of made a position. There was no position in place for a designer. And so the position that they made was called a communications associate. And so that’s what I was when I finally came on full time. But technically I was a designer.

And so eventually we started doing more work and more exciting work, different things, starting to get a little bit more creative freedom. Because once you build sort of trust with people, I was able to do more. I was able to able to be more creative and suggest more. And when you get that trust, people trust you to take them further than maybe their mind can take them creatively. So that’s how it grew. And so, yeah, the answer to that is yes, I was very skeptical and no, I did not want to work for a church. I will just say that outright because it’s not something that has cachet when you say it in a space. Right. I work at a church, so that was hard for a while. For me, I don’t want to believe that it’s ego, but it probably was ego.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, it’s something that we’ve talked about on this show before as well. I’ve talked to designers maybe that don’t live in a big city, or that do work for an insurance company or something like that. The work that they do is not the flashy stuff that you’ll see in design media or that might win big awards or stuff like that. But when you think about the fact that everything that we interact with as humans has been through some lens of design, that means that you’re still designing for experiences that everyone needs. Everyone can’t work at a software company. Everyone can’t work at Apple or wherever and do kind of mind-blowing design work. Some people have to work at an insurance place or a healthcare brand or something like that. That may not be, quote unquote, sexy work, but the thing is that’s stuff that people still use all the time, and those need to be thoughtfully designed experiences as well.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Right? You have to design for the people. You have to design for someone other than yourself. And I think that makes you a better designer, because your focus can’t be just making it sexy, which is fun. Right. But it has to be like people have to be able to engage with whatever you make and be comfortable doing it. I wouldn’t want to say I guess it’s more of, like, legibility and readability, right? So they have to be able to read the content because it’s content. They need to consume something sexy. You can just enjoy it for the sexiness. Even if you don’t get it at all, you can just enjoy it. And those are fun projects to do, don’t get me wrong. But when you have to design with that sort of thoughtfulness, it brings a certain level of compassion to your work that I think you can miss when it’s just all about the sexy.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, you’ve been, like I said, working at the church now for almost 14 years. When you look back over the span of your career from when you started to now, how would you say that you’ve evolved as a creative?

Vasheena Brisbane:

I feel like my evolution has been yes, technical. Because I think when you do anything for a long period of time, you should get better, right? I don’t want to say you obviously get better, because some people don’t, but you should get better. And I feel like I’ve gotten better, I’ve gotten faster, and I’ve become a much more, I feel like, compassionate designer, and not in the sort of sappy way, but just, like, understanding that people are coming here for a reason. And that reason is not always the reason you set out to design. Sometimes it’s just like they just need this content for whatever they need it for for their lives, right? Like, yes, you want to do your best work, but your best work can’t be the best work unless you have that person in mind from beginning to end. And I don’t think in the beginning, I didn’t know anything about that. I didn’t approach my work thinking about how a person would feel when they opened it. Like, on a more high level, like, yes, will they like it? Will they think it’s pretty fine, but is it thoughtfully done so that they don’t have to work harder to get what they need? I think that evolution for me has been the biggest and it has been the most rewarding thing to do. Like, how do I think about these projects through the lens of who’s going to consume it at the end and how they’re going to consume it?

That’s one thing about working with one community for such a long time is that you can really get to know the people and know what it is they’re looking for when they’re picking up a material, or when they’re picking up a magazine when they’re picking up. Because we also do the pledge campaign brochure, which is every year, the church has a pledge drive to fund the church. And so it’s an ask. It’s basically an ask for money to help us to continue to move forward the vision of the church. And so presenting those materials in a way that is sort of respectfully and thoughtfully done so that people feel connected to the institution, but also are able to get from the piece the value that they bring by giving their money, I think is hard to do. It’s a tricky ask. And when you’re designing materials for that, you really have to be careful about how you’re asking, why you’re asking. And that has a lot to do with the content and the words, but also what images we’re going to show. How are we going to connect the feeling of church to this ask for money? That’s a hard thing to do.

And so I think my favorite piece that we did was it was a few years back now, maybe 2018, 2019. I did some hand sketches of all the favorite things that people always mention about the church. And then some not so, some not so not favorite, but some sort of mundane things that people it’s like your money doesn’t just pay for, like this beautiful I did a sketch of the organ and of the rose window, which is part of the architecture of the church. It’s like, yes, we pay to maintain this, but also we pay for hymnals. We pay for palms on Sunday so that you can wave them for Palm Sunday. And so just connecting those sort of cherished things with the more nuts and bolts of the church is hard to do. And I think if you approach it through a lens of compassion, you can get it done. But I don’t think you can make those connections if you don’t know a community and approach that community and your work with them through compassion and really understand what it is that they love and how you can present it in a way that makes sense to them.

Maurice Cherry:

What are some pieces of advice that you’ve gotten throughout your career, throughout your life that you find yourself coming back to?

Vasheena Brisbane:

I don’t know that I’ve gotten advice on my career, but I feel like I’ve gotten advice on life, and it works for your career. And that is just like, go where they love you. And I don’t want that to come off, like, go where you don’t get any pushback or any flak or anything like that, but just, like, go where you are valued and they see your value and they believe in your value, and then you can, in turn, produce things that are valuable for that community. I think it’s a give and take. You can’t just go somewhere because of the money or because it looks good or for the cachet or because it looks good on your resume. I think that the most valuable advice I’ve been given is, like, go where you’re treated well and you can do work that’s meaningful and to you and hopefully to others.

Maurice Cherry:

What’s something that you kind of are still working on unlearning?

Vasheena Brisbane:

I feel like I’m working on unlearning this idea of a charted path. I feel like everyone wants the charted path. Like everyone wants that “I go to school, I get the beginner job, then I get this rock star job, and then I make a lot of money, and then I retire.” Right? I feel like that’s the path. Whatever. Your thing is fine. But what I’m still trying to unlearn I’m still trying to unlearn that. Right? I’m still trying to be okay with my career path, which is not a sexy career path, but has been really rewarding. And so I’m trying to unlearn thinking of my career in terms of what other people think is valid and trying to think of it more along the lines of what do I think is valid and what can I do to grow myself, regardless of where that may be, because I think you can grow anywhere. It’s just up to you. I don’t think the space determines if you grow or not. I think you and what you bring to it determine what you grow or not, and I’m still learning that.

Maurice Cherry:

Where do you see yourself in the next five years to that point? Where do you see yourself growing into?

Vasheena Brisbane:

I feel like nonprofit is just my calling, even though I didn’t ask for it. When I say nonprofit, it doesn’t have to be like a small nonprofit. I feel like maybe museum work or work where I’m helping to broaden the minds of people. I don’t see myself going in a commercial direction. And maybe that’s how I can speak about this better, is that I know where I don’t see myself. I don’t see myself, like, going to work for Pepsi at Coca-Cola or a big commercial brand. I don’t see that for myself. But I do see more of a sort of philanthropical or sort of path for me because I just feel like it’s been rewarding up until this point. And so at this point in the game, I’m looking for rewarding work. And I feel like that has been very rewarding for me and it’s also been very freeing. I don’t feel like you can get me, I can be wrong. I don’t feel like you can get as much freedom working for those big organizations as you can with small nonprofits or even a little bit larger of a nonprofit. I just feel like they’re more willing to take a chance on your creativity than global established brands are.

Maurice Cherry:

That is very much true. That’s very much true because oftentimes, especially with these larger companies, they don’t value. What I would consider what you’re doing is like you’re kind of a generalist. Like, yes, you work as a designer, but you’re not just doing one specific type of design. Like your work is spanning print and media and visual, et cetera. Whereas if you’re in a larger company, you’re kind of just slotted into doing one thing and you have to do that one thing. You can’t really branch out if you want to. Even if you have those skills. You’re not allowed to kind of do that within that one position.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Right there’s a designer who does this. They do this thing and that’s all they do. I would die slowly if I had to do that every day. And the exciting thing about working for a church is that I can go in one day, I’ll be working on banners the next day. Like right now we are working on that exhibit project that I mentioned earlier and we’re visiting other congregations and figuring out how they do stuff. And so we’re doing field trips and so every day is sort of different. And I didn’t know that I wanted that until I did it. And I was like, this is amazing. Every day is something different. Like, today we work on this, tomorrow we’ll be working on that. The summer is pretty busy for us. We’ll be working on a bunch of fall projects and it’s all different. And some people work in these amazing design firms and they’re doing one thing every day it’s the same. And I can’t. My soul won’t my soul won’t allow it. I would be restless and miserable, I think.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, just to kind of wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you and about your work? Where can they find that information online?

Vasheena Brisbane:

My website vasheena.com. I’m on LinkedIn. I am on social media at @sheenzfix on Instagram. I’m on Facebook for Vasheena Brisbane. But Instagram and Facebook, I’m not a big social media, so if you’re looking for me there, you’re not going to see much. But my website has some work that I’ve done.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, we had this big conversation for people that are listening. We had this big conversation earlier about kind of social media and being on which that’s a whole other thing, but I completely understand that. But Vasheena Brisbane, thank you so much for coming on the show. One just thank you for the breadth of work that you’re doing through the church. I think it is amazing and powerful and impactful to see someone doing this work, particularly a black woman, doing this work. It really means a lot. I mean, to me, it means a lot, but I think it means a lot, of course, to the community that you’re doing this type of work. And to be a creative problem solver and to do this kind of thing in a space that perhaps design is not necessarily looked at or considered or valued in a really impactful way, I think it really means a lot. And I’m super excited to see where you go from here. You’ve been doing great work. You’ve been recognized, you’ve been awarded. So clearly other people see that too. And my hope is that through this show, many others can kind of see the work that you’ve done thus far.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Thank you so much.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Vasheena Brisbane:

Thank you for having me. And thank you for doing what you’re doing here for the community and for our community specifically. It’s needed. And when I found the podcast, I was so excited that it even existed because I had been asking myself, like, where are all the black designers? And now I can connect with people and you can meet them and you can hear from them and hear their stories and to make for a more well rounded experience. And it’s invaluable. So please keep doing it.

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Carmelle Kendall

Carmelle Kendall is a true Atlanta business success story! Not only is she a talented creative director and the co-founder of popular paper goods company Neighborly, but now there’s another title she can add to her list of accolades — children’s book illustrator for “Your Freedom, Your Power: A Kid’s Guide to the First Amendment”!

We talked about how she got involved with the book, and she spoke about getting her start in the advertising industry in NYC, and later in Atlanta with rebranding the well-known hamburger chain Krystal. She also shared how she pivoted her creative interests into her current business, and she gave some great advice for others who are looking to do the same.

Carmelle’s story is one of ambition, determination, and the triumphs of pursuing your passions!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:

All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Carmelle Kendall:

So I’m Carmelle Kendall. I am a creative director, designer, founder of Neighborly Paper, and illustrator for a children’s book called “Your Freedom, Your Power.”

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I saw the book as I was doing my research, came out with Penguin Random House on July 25, and I’ll make sure that we put a link to that in the show notes. I’m curious, are you spending the summer doing a book tour or doing anything with publicizing the book?

Carmelle Kendall:

I’m not doing a book tour, but I have spoken with the authors, and we kind of have our rollout plans on how we plan on getting the word out there. I’m super excited about it. This is my first children’s book ever, so this was a goal of mine for, like, a long term goal. So I was very surprised when they hit me up to do this project. But I’m super excited about it and just trying to get the word out there any way that I can, because this is a book that is very much needed right now with the current climate in the United States.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. How did you get involved with it? Did the author reach out to you directly?

Carmelle Kendall:

Actually, the art director at Random House hit me up, saw my work just on the Internet and on Instagram and kind of traced it back to me, hit me up and just know there’s a new book coming out called “Your Freedom, Your Power” and wanted to know if I was interested in learning more about the project. And of course, you know, I said yes. I was over the moon elated about it. And then she, you know, just went into detail about what the book was going to be about. She showed me who the authors were. Allison Matulli is a lawyer, and then Clelia Castro-Malaspina, I believe is how you say her last name, is a writer. And they kind of paired up to write this book. And it’s really about…it’s a middle school level book, and it’s about how to protest, how to write a letter to your representative, how to write a petition, just everything on how to get your voice out there. I think it’s a super important book that middle schoolers, you know, adults need. LLike everybody needs [it], but it’s super fun. It’s in a way that’s just, you know, really straightforward and plain for the younger audience. It also talks about previous historic cases throughout the United States history that kind of changed the course of America and learning from those cases and how to implement all of that into today’s society. So it’s really important.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I love the idea of a sort of kid / I guess teenager focused book about civics. Cause I mean…I don’t have children. But like, I don’t know if they teach civics in school anymore. That sort of stuff you mentioned with the book, I learned it in civics in seventh grade, but I don’t know if that’s such the case now, especially over the past I would say maybe ten to fifteen years. And we definitely have seen in the news, you know, protests and things where people are really exercising their civic rights. It’s not really taught as to how you go about doing it, because I think it really crops up around elections because we’re like, oh, write your congressperson this, that or the other.

Carmelle Kendall:

Right.

Maurice Cherry:

But how do you start that? How do you even make that happen?

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah. And you can do it on such a small level, you know what I mean? It doesn’t even have to be around presidential elections, but it’s literally just about anything that you want to change. You have the power to do it. You have the voice to do it. And here are the tools to help you. Yeah. Even I learned a lot from reading the book and illustrating the images. I was just like, “wow, this is such a needed book right now.”

Maurice Cherry:

Very cool. We’ve actually had…man, I think we’ve had a few children’s illustrators on the show fairly recently. I know we had Alleanna Harris. We had Akeem Roberts. We’ve had a couple of folks on the show recently that have done like children’s books, illustrations — kid lit, as they called it. Is that sort of a dream of yours to do more books like that?

Carmelle Kendall:

It is. I have so many ideas. I have so many ideas for children’s books that I want to do. So I’m hoping that this kick starts just a new line of employment for me because I had a lot of fun doing it. It was a lot of work. I will say this book, it took over a year and a half, I believe total, to do it. The deadline got pushed back a few times. The manuscript changed a few times. So very much a labor of love, for sure. But I love doing it. And I have so many ideas for other children’s books, so I’m hoping to get started on those now so that I can keep the momentum going and keep this ball rolling. But yeah, I loved it. I definitely want to continue. For sure.

Maurice Cherry:

Nice. Do you have representation yet?

Carmelle Kendall:

I don’t. So I am debating on…I’ve had people reach out to me for representation, but I have another illustrator friend and she was like, “don’t do it.”

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, why is that?

Carmelle Kendall:

From her experience. She said that she had a representator or representative for her illustrations and that it didn’t work out because she felt like they weren’t really pushing her work out there and that they were pretty much just tacking on their percentage for a lot of the work that was coming in. Not from them. Like just people coming in organically to her and then having her representative take a percentage off without really finding the work for her. And so she got into some royalties, like children’s books that have royalties, and now her representative gets a percentage for life.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, wow.

Carmelle Kendall:

She said, so from her experience, she said that she had a representative for her illustrations and that if it didn’t work out because she felt like they weren’t really like pushing her work out there. And that they were just pretty much tacking on their percentage for a lot of the work that was coming in not from them. Like, just people coming in organizally to her and then having her representative take a percentage off without really finding the work for her. And so she got into some royalties like children’s books that have royalties and now her representative gets a percentage for life.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh wow.

Carmelle Kendall:

And they didn’t come to her through the representative, and so she was just telling me, you know, it’s not worth it and you know, just kind of do it on your own. So I don’t know, I’m a little on the fence about that.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow. Yeah. I can understand then why you’d want to kind of give that some more thought. I know some of the folks that I mentioned that we’ve had on the show, they are represented. I think one of them in particular is represented by, like I think it’s either a Black agency or it’s one that is geared towards Black work, or Black or BIPOC work.

Carmelle Kendall:

Oh, interesting.

Maurice Cherry:

I don’t know. I feel kind of like for illustrators, maybe it just makes sense because you don’t have to do that legwork define work. They kind of just come to you. But then if it’s a situation like you mentioned with your friend, that sucks because they’re getting a cut of money for not even really doing the work.

Carmelle Kendall:

So the one that I talked to, I asked that question, I was kind of like, “okay, so if somebody comes to me without you, like, if they see me on Instagram or whatever and hits me up, then do you get that percentage?” And she said, “yes, that’s the way her contracts work.” And so it made me hesitant. So I said no at that time because I was like, “well, let me do some more research because I don’t know about this.”

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, no, that’s fair. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So aside from the book, what else do you have planned for the summer?

Carmelle Kendall:

So, aside from the book, I’m working a lot on Neighborly Paper, which is my paper company, rolling out new products all through the summer and hoping to get into some more stores come fall so that everybody will be able to purchase Neighborly from a store near them.

Maurice Cherry:

I will make sure to link to the segment that I saw you on where you were featured on the TODAY show. That’s big. Talking about Neighborly. I think at the time, it was like, in 2020. Is that, right?

Carmelle Kendall:

Yes, February 2020.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, during Black History Month. I think it mentioned you were in, I think, twenty stores at the time.

Carmelle Kendall:

Was it only twenty? Oh, my gosh.

Maurice Cherry:

Look at you. “Only twenty. Was it only twenty?”

Carmelle Kendall:

Wow. I don’t even remember the number at that point, but wow! Yeah, it might have been twenty at that point, but we’ve definitely grown a lot since being on the TODAY Show, for sure.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, let’s talk about Neighborly. Let’s get into that. How did you sort of come up with the idea to start that?

Carmelle Kendall:

So it was actually my business partner’s idea. So at that point, we started it in 2016 in New York City. We were both living there in Harlem, and my business partner is actually a childhood friend of mine. We grew up as neighbors in Fayetteville, Georgia. We grew up as neighbors. We ended up living in Harlem together as neighbors again. And so she’s a writer, and she had the idea of coming up with a greeting card line at that time and asked me was I interested in doing some illustrations for the line. And so I said, well, let me see first what the lines are and what I can bring with the illustrations. I didn’t say yes immediately because I wanted to just make sure I could actually do this. And she sent me the lines. They were hilarious. I thought it was great, super cute. I spent the weekend just kind of drawing some images to the design, I mean, to the lines. She ended up loving it. And then she said, “well, I think we should call it Neighborly, since we grew up as neighbors and we’re neighbors again.” And I loved that idea, designed the logo and everything.

Initially, we started out our line with holiday starting in 2016. So we had Christmas. We ended up doing some little, at this point it was like October, sSo we did little Halloween postcards that we gave out as freebies so that people could just get our website out there. But yeah, we started out with eight cards for holiday. We completely sold out of those cards. We had a total of 800. We did like 100 each. Completely sold out of those cards. Unexpectedly, we were like, wow, people really love this. And then people were like, “when are the Valentine’s cards coming out? When are you going to have birthday cards?” Initially, I was like, wow. I thought it would just be like a little hobby. Like, I would draw a new card every few months, but now people are like, when are the next cards coming out? Yeah. Then we were like, okay, this is a viable business right now. We actually need to come out with more inventory. So that’s how it started.

Maurice Cherry:

I love the name Neighborly. I love that whole sort of concept of it coming from the fact that you and your business partner were neighbors. That’s really cute.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah, so and now we’re actually both back in Atlanta. Neighbors again.

Maurice Cherry:

Look at that. Yeah, neighbors and business partners — that’s dope. So right now you’re working at an agency now, but before that work, you were at Dagger as an associate creative director and a senior art director. Tell me about that.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah. So started at Dagger in 2020 as a senior art director, worked on Krystal, which is a fast food restaurant in the southeast; worked on Buffalo Wild Wings; and then got promoted to ACD, which is associate creative director, where I worked on Aflac and a brand called Rent. But, yeah, it was fun. Dagger was great. I learned so much. We did a huge rebranding for Krystal at that time, which was amazing. I got to lead that, which leading a rebrand of that size was just amazing. I loved it. That’s one of my favorite projects to date just because the client gave us so much freedom. We pretty much changed everything except for the logo, which is like a dream. Not a lot of brands let you do that; let you change the colors and let you explore typography and things like that. So, so much fun. I loved it.

Maurice Cherry:

There’s a couple of things I sort of know about Dagger. I’ve heard of it here as a local agency. One of the projects, I think it’s either from Dagger or maybe Dagger acquired it, I’m not 100% sure. But ButterATL…is it part of Dagger? Is it like just a project that they do? Do you know what I’m talking about?

Carmelle Kendall:

Yes. It started out as a part of Dagger, and then now they’ve kind of branched out, and Dagger, I think, is just known as, like, an investor at this point, but now it’s its own entity.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay. Yeah. I know about Brandon Butler. Brandon’s been on the show before. He was actually one of the very first people I had on the show way back in 2013. He was working at Edelman at the time, but I had heard of him because…I don’t know if people know that Brandon Butler is kind of something of like an Atlanta like wunderkind. He had a website store in North DeKalb Mall. I want to say it was North DeKalb Mall, where you could literally go into a store in the mall and buy a website. This was well before I think he did Butter, but I remember hearing about Butter, and I know that Brandon was at Dagger, so I wasn’t sure sort of what that relationship was.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah. Mmhmm. Yeah, Dagger, I guess, helped start it. It started at Dagger, but now it’s definitely its own.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, nice. I’m wondering, like…it probably was really cool to work on with Krystal kind of being such a…it’s not an Atlanta, I mean, I guess you could say it’s a known Atlanta brand. It’s founded in Tennessee, but it’s headquartered now here in Atlanta. I bet that was something kind of working on such a well-known Atlanta/Southern brand.

Carmelle Kendall:

When I was interviewing and they said that Krystal wanted to do a rebrand — and they never really done a rebrand, like, ever in history — that is what made me want to take the job, because what brands have been around that have just never done a rebrand and are just kind of like, we want you to lead this project. It’s like, wow, that was a dream come true and something that doesn’t happen very often. And so I definitely took the job for that project because I just was really excited to do a rebrand of that scale.

Maurice Cherry:

Let’s dive a little bit into that project because you said it was such a grand redesign like that. What did that entail? Like, what did the team look like? How did that process even go?

Carmelle Kendall:

The team was so small, it literally was me and another designer. We ended up getting some freelance help because it just was massive. But it didn’t happen all at once. It happened over the course of, like, a year, I would say. So, yeah. It wasn’t crazy where we did it in, like, a month or so. We really did take our time with it. But, yeah, like I said, the only rule was don’t change the logo. So everything else was pretty much sky’s the limit. So they knew they wanted something more modern, more fresh, just more current. I just feel like everything was kind of looking a little outdated just because they hadn’t had a rebrand in forever. So we updated the colors. We made it more just popping. Like, we wanted everything to pop. Redid product photography for all of the menu items, which was one of my favorite parts. We wanted the food to look more realistic, you know. We wanted sauce dripping down, some of the ingredients might have fallen onto the plate, things like that. We thought of every little detail that you could think of. Typography, colors, design elements. We did some illustrations for it. We had all new photography, all new models, just everything from start to finish. We did everything.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow. And like you said, it took over, like, a year to sort of pull it all together.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, when you started out at Dagger, you were an art director, right? And then when you left, you were an associate creative director. Tell me kind of, I guess, one — and I know this because I hear this either from a lot of freelancers or just from a lot of people — they kind of use art director and creative director rather interchangeably. Like, to you, what is the difference between the two, and how did you shift from becoming an art director to a creative director?

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah, I see people using them interchangeably as well, and I definitely don’t think they should be using them interchangeably. For me, art director, you’re way more in the weeds of the work. You’re working under the creative director. So for me, the creative director is more so leading the charge. But the art director is kind of implementing what the creative director sets in motion is kind of how I see it. So when I first started at Dagger as a senior art director, I definitely was more in the weeds. And then when I left as associate creative director, I was more so overseeing, like, you’re managing the teams, you’re managing the day to day of the teams. You’re more so delegating the work. You’re making sure everything is cohesive, of course, and everything kind of fits together. But as art director, you’re definitely doing the day to day, whereas creative director, you’re leading the way.

Maurice Cherry:

I got you. That makes sense. Now that you kind of put it that way, it does seem like something you would sort of organically level up to, because if you’re in the weeds, then of course you’re able to be an effective creative director because you know what it’s like to be at that level where you’re kind of hands on with the work in that way.

Carmelle Kendall:

And you definitely, as a creative director, need to understand what it takes to make the vision come alive. And I feel like understanding what it takes, you have to be as the art director, you have to be as the designer so you can understand, okay, this is going to take this amount of time. This may not be possible, but this is…you kind of need to know those things, and the only way to know those things is to be in the weeds of the work.

Maurice Cherry:

That makes sense. I got you. Now I kind of want to shift gears here a little bit. Of course, we’ve talked a good bit about your work, but I’m curious to kind of know more about your journey leading up to all of this. Now, you are one of the rare Atlanta natives I think I’ve had on this show, which is great, over ten years. Tell me about growing up here.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah. So initially, my family is from the southwest of Atlanta. Like, our first house was on Cascade Road.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay.

Carmelle Kendall:

And then ended up moving to Fayetteville when I was little, and that’s mainly where I grew up. I went to private school. I went to Woodward Academy for a long time before transferring, going to public school and high school, where I transferred to Sandy Creek. So that’s where I graduated from, which is a Fayette County School, and then moved away, where I went to Howard for undergrad.

Maurice Cherry:

How was Howard?

Carmelle Kendall:

Howard was amazing. I mean, best four years of my life. I’m pretty sure that’s what all the Howard grads say from at least the ones I know. But, yeah, Howard was amazing. I mean, I highly suggest everybody go there.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, when you went there, you were studying marketing. Did you kind of already have that in mind when you went? Like when you graduated high school, you knew you wanted to get into marketing?

Carmelle Kendall:

No, absolutely not. I didn’t know what I wanted. I honestly didn’t think about it. I wasn’t the type of person to like…I don’t know. When I was growing up, my goal in life, I wanted to be a background dancer. I didn’t take school and stuff that seriously. And so when I graduated from high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to be at all. I just wanted to go out and party and have a good time. So I just picked it randomly because I just was like, “oh, business, that sounds cool. Let’s do it.”

Maurice Cherry:

I’m laughing not at the choice, but I’m laughing at the fact that there’s so much pressure, I think, especially when you’re in high school and about to graduate on, like, you need to pick the one thing that you’re going to do for the rest of your life. There’s a lot of pressure to have that forward thinking in mind. I 100% get what you’re saying. When I graduated, I wanted to do something with web design, actually, but at the time, it wasn’t, like, in the curriculum. I graduated in 1999, and so the web was still kind of becoming a thing. The Internet was still becoming a thing. And when you went to school, the closest thing that there was was, like, computer science or computer engineering. There wasn’t any sort of, like, UX or anything. I don’t think those terms, at least not in the general knowledge of design, really existed back then. And I took my first semester. It was all this programming stuff. Didn’t like it at all. I was like, “I don’t like this.” Went to my advisor, told him I wanted to do websites and build stuff for the Internet, and he was like, “the Internet’s a fad. You’re not going to stick around if this is what you want to do. You should change your major.” And so I changed my major to Math. And I mean, this is partially true, but it’s also what I tell people. I just changed my major to Math because I liked Math. I didn’t have any sort of idea of, like, I’m going to be a mathematician. I’m going to be a Math teacher. I had no clue what to do with a Math degree. I just liked Math. But also when I did the math on my credits that I had so far, like, stuff I had transferred from high school, I was like, “wait a minute. I could graduate a semester early if I switch over to Math, and I could still stay at my scholarship program.” So that’s what I did.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah, that’s important.

Maurice Cherry:

Because later, as a working designer, I always get people that are just baffled that I have a Math degree. Like, why? I just…I like Math. I didn’t really have any career plans. Also because the scholarship program that I was in was set up where you did two internships at NASA facilities.

Carmelle Kendall:

Oh!

Maurice Cherry:

And so the goal was, like, you do those two internships, and then when you graduate, you have a job at NASA. And I was like, “well, I don’t have to really think about what I have to do. All I have to do is just graduate college, and I got a job waiting for me.”

Carmelle Kendall:

Right.

Maurice Cherry:

But 9/11 happened when I was in my junior year, and they changed stuff with the program where the seniors that were graduating in 2002 would still get to go to their NASA assignment or whatever, but not the ones after that. And so I was working at the High Museum at the time, selling tickets at the High. That was the job I had when I graduated because I had nothing lined up at all. I had no sort of career plans even coming out of college because I thought, like, “oh, I’m set.” So I get it. I completely understand not having an idea of what you really want to do. I sort of fell into design because I had it as a hobby. I was still doing it on the side, and then now it’s what I do. But I had no plan at all. I was just like rolling with the punches.

Carmelle Kendall:

But I mean, it’s absurd to ask somebody that’s 18 years old what is their plan? You know what I mean? Like, you’re 18. If you think about it, in high school, you’re not exploring all these different career paths. You’re taking geometry and English. I don’t know. I just feel like to have your whole career planned out as a freshman in college is wild. That’s bonkers to me.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Carmelle Kendall:

I think everybody should kind of start out undecided, or I think maybe college, your first year, everybody takes classes in all kinds of different things so that sophomore year, maybe you can have some inkling of what you want to do. But freshman year, that’s crazy. So I didn’t know. Basically, I just chose it randomly. I was like, yeah, businesswoman. I can be a businesswoman. Sure.

Maurice Cherry:

Or do, like, a gap year or something. Just something to kind of give yourself at that time frame, like, more of an idea of what it is that you want to do. Because also, look, as a freshman, I was out partying, too.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

The clubs used to send buses to campus to pick us up and take us to the club and then bring us back to campus. I told this story on the show before I almost flunked out freshman year because I was partying, almost lost my scholarship. I had to pull it together. I really did.

Carmelle Kendall:

I mean…but you’re living life. That’s what you’re supposed to do.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, absolutely.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah. So that’s what I picked just at random. I mean, Howard was amazing, though. I wouldn’t change that for the world. But yes, if I could go back now, I would do graphic design or be an art major or something that pertains to what I do now. But at the time, it was random.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. I mean, hindsight is 20/20, right? You can always kind of look back and know, “yeah, this is what I should do, because it will make sense for what I’m doing now.” So I get that.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

So when you graduated, what kind of work were you doing right after you graduated?

Carmelle Kendall:

So, right after I graduated, I had an internship because I knew that I hated marketing, and I knew I didn’t want to do anything in marketing. And at that time, a friend of mine worked at a fashion PR place in L.A. And so she said, you know, “I don’t know what your plans are after graduation, but you can come intern with us if you want.” And at that point, I had no other plans. That was the only thing on the table. So I said, “yes, I will do that.” So I lived in L.A. for, like, nine months, I believe, and I interned there. And during that time, I was kind of like, “okay, I don’t know what I’m working towards. Do I want to do fashion? What am I doing?” Basically, I started realizing that I really like graphic design. I really like art direction. I want to see what this path has to offer. And I remember senior year before graduation, I remember I set up a meeting with my career advisor, and I said, “who are the people that make ads?” And she said, “that’s called an art director.” And I remember going home and googling how to be an art director and came up with these schools where you could get a degree in art direction. And so while I was interning in L.A., I just was applying to all of these art direction programs and ended up getting into SCAD. Or no, I ended up getting into Miami Ad [School] and those ad school type places. But it’s just like a certificate of completion. Like, it’s not a degree in any way.

Maurice Cherry:

Right.

Carmelle Kendall:

And so I realized I wanted to go to SCAD because I could get a degree. And so I applied to SCAD for their grad program, and I ended up not getting in because I didn’t have an advertising portfolio which is needed for the grad program. I ended up moving back to Atlanta and taking classes at SCAD. Not in the grad program, but just as a regular student. And I took, like, Photoshop, Illustrator, I learned all the programs and then got my professors to write me letters of recommendation for the grad program and then ended up reapplying and getting in the second time.

Maurice Cherry:

Nice. I think that’s really something that you still kind of had this vision, but you just sort of found different ways to kind of get to it. I mean, one, taking these courses and getting these certificates, at least you got your feet wet with what it would entail without sort of fully getting in first. But also you use that to help build your portfolio, then you can apply and get into SCAD. Yeah, I like that approach.

Carmelle Kendall:

And all of the people in my program, they had had art direction as their majors, as undergrads. They all had been working towards this grad program for years, whereas I had just heard about it my senior year right before graduation on what an art director even was. So I was very much behind everybody. Like, I was just now learning Photoshop, whereas these people knew Photoshop all through college and were designers and things like that. So I definitely felt behind. I will say. But yeah, I mean, my goal was to get into this program and kind of just hunkered down and just learned what I needed to learn and reapplied.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I mean, aside from the curriculum focus, like, how was SCAD different from Howard?

Carmelle Kendall:

Oh, it’s different in every way possible, I think. I remember my very first day at SCAD, I walked into the cafeteria, and there was, like, a classic pianist playing classical music on the piano, and I was just like, “oh, my God, where am I?” Because at Howard, you’re like, twerking while you’re eating the lunch with a DJ. You know what I mean? Like, it’s a party, and I go to SCAD, and it was like a person playing classical music on the piano, and everybody kind of eating in silence, and I was just like, “what did I do?” It was very different, very different. And also, I think art school is just way more competitive. Art is so subjective, and so it’s just a way more competitive environment, I think, than Howard was.

Maurice Cherry:

Aside from, I guess that competitivenes, did you find community there? Did you sort of make friends there? Because one thing I’ve heard from folks that are on the show that will go know, like a SCAD or a MICA or something like that, is that it can be a bit difficult sometimes to kind of find community.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah, I can see that for sure. Because it’s so competitive. Like, your classmates are not your friends. You know what I mean? You’re going against them a lot of times at SCAD; you do group projects because I don’t know, you just do a lot of group projects. At least in my major, we did a lot of group projects. And it was so competitive because after graduation, you don’t want the same portfolio as your classmates because you’re all applying to the same jobs, right? So you want to stand out. So I think in that sense of it, I don’t know, you’re just not as friendly, you’re not as welcoming, because you want to distance yourself from your classmates so that you stand out come graduation time. So I can understand how people say it’s hard to make friends. I did make one of my best friends at SCAD, and I think I had a handful of friends that are still really close to me that I see all the time. So for me that wasn’t the case, but I definitely can see how people feel that way. For sure.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. Now did you go to SCAD here in Atlanta or the one in Savannah?

Carmelle Kendall:

I went to the Atlanta campus.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay, all right, well, you’re right there in Midtown then, and you’re from the city, so I think that probably was a big advantage, at least socially, because you didn’t have to stay in that bubble of SCAD. Like, you could go see your parents or whatever. You could break out of that and still be in a city that you’re familiar with.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah, but if I was to do it again, I’d go to Savannah, though.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, really? Why is that?

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah. Because I would have loved to just live in a new city, a different city than one that I was already so familiar with. Like, when I go to visit Savannah, I always think, like, why didn’t I come? Like, it’s such a cool city. If I could do it again, I definitely would go to Savannah rather than Atlanta.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay. Now, with Neighborly that you mentioned earlier, did you start Neighborly while you were at SCAD or was it before then?

Carmelle Kendall:

No, I started Neighborly in New York when I lived in New York. So right after SCAD’s graduation, I got hired in New York.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, nice. Yeah, I know. As I did my research, of course. I see that you’ve worked for quite a few agencies. You did four years at Y&R, which is now as VMLY&R. You did a year at The Integer Group. You did a little over a year at Havas. You were at…when you were in New York, you were at Havas, right?

Carmelle Kendall:

When I was in New York, I was at VMLY&R.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay. VMLY&R. When you look back at those experiences collectively, how do you think they really help prepare you for the kind of work that you do now?

Carmelle Kendall:

I think starting out as a junior art director in New York probably was the most enlightening experience as far as learnings. New York has a different work ethic, in my opinion. Like, starting out my career in New York, I was working till 10:00 p.m. every night, and this was pre-COVID, so there’s no remote working. There’s no “I’m going to take this call from home.” You know what I mean? You’re in the office until ten [or] eleven o’clock at night. I remember there was one time, and this is with hard drives and things like that, so I remember there was one time I had to physically go take a hard drive to one of my boss’s apartment at like two in the morning.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow.

Carmelle Kendall:

Because they needed this hard drive for a client presentation the next day. It was grueling. You just learn so much. You learn how to talk to clients. It was my first time going on set. It was my first time traveling. Like, I traveled to Uruguay for shooting and things like that. It was like a crash course in advertising, pretty much.

Maurice Cherry:

You mentioned the hard drive at 2:00 a.m. That, for some reason, that reminded me of The Devil Wears Prada where Andy has to take the magazine to Miranda’s apartment, and she’s like, “put it on the desk. Don’t talk to anyone, just put it on the desk.”

Carmelle Kendall:

Yes. And as a junior art director, I mean, you’re the one that’s going to have to do it you know? Who else is going to do it? Not a senior person. That was the life for four years in New York. It was grueling, for sure.

Maurice Cherry:

What brought you back down to Atlanta? Just wanted to break out of that.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah. I mean, I was kind of at the point, you know, I love New York. Let me just say that I love New York, but it’s expensive. I was at the point where I was, you know, I’m tired of being broke, I’m tired of not being able to save any money. I’m tired of working to death, basically, like, just working into the night and things like that. And so to the point where I was just like, “you know what, I want to come back to Atlanta.” I put in my notice and I came back to Atlanta, where I freelanced for about a year before moving to Chicago. That year ended up being great. I got to be with my family, be with my friends. But freelance, you have your own struggles with freelance. But at the time, to me, it was better. It was what I needed to do. I needed to just…yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

And I’d say good on you for recognizing that, because I think sometimes, especially when you’re really locked into a particular job or a particular pattern, a lot of the popular advice — I guess you could say it’s popular advice — but a lot of the stuff you’ll hear is that you have to sort of stick with it. You got to pay your dues, et cetera. But if it’s really weighing on you and it’s really affecting your day to day, it takes a lot to break out of that.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah. I also think now is just a totally different climate than back then. Now I think just a lot of things have slowed down since COVID and now it’s like hybrid work models or people working from home, and I just think it’s a lot more laid back than back then.

Maurice Cherry:

Do you think it’s starting to ramp up again?

Carmelle Kendall:

I think it’s starting to ramp up again, but hopefully not to the point where it was then. I was working around the clock.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. It sort of feels like now with companies, we’re at…what’s a good analogy for this? It’s almost like when you’re trying to learn how to drive a stick shift and you can’t sort of get the rhythm between the brake and the clutch and trying to get all that together, and it’s kind of jerky back and forth. I feel that sort of like feeling is happening right now with companies that are still trying to decide how they’re going to operate with employees, quote unquote, post pandemic. The country said the pandemic is over. The government’s like, we’re not funding, you know, whatever, but COVID is still out there. Some places that have went remote are either continuing to go remote or they’re deciding on remote or hybrid. They’re still trying to sort of figure out what the rhythm is. Because before the pandemic, the rhythm kind of was, as you said, kind of just go go go. This is how it is. Now that people see that as another way to work and another way to live and still be able to get work done, companies are like, we still have all this office space. Like, what are we going to do with that? We want people to come in the office two days a week, three days a week. They’re still trying to figure it out, I think.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah, it’s definitely a silent battle right now between the employers and the employees as far as like hybrid versus remote versus two days, three days a week. It’s definitely a back and forth going on right now. Some agencies are like, we’re fully remote or work from anywhere. And then some people are like, no, we’re in the office. Come in the office every day.

Maurice Cherry:

The last place where I worked was fully remote. And I think one of the people who worked there really took advantage of that a lot by just traveling to different countries. I mean, we would meet with her and she’s like, well, this week I’m in London and this other week I’m in Paraguay or whatever. And the company eventually had to say, “okay, you need to stay in one place.”

Carmelle Kendall:

Oh, really? Well was she getting her work done?

Maurice Cherry:

She was getting her work done. But the problem is, or I guess the problem that arose, at least that’s how I heard it was that because she was jumping from country to country with different time zones and stuff, there’s just certain countries that the business can’t do business from. So — and I mean, not like political dissident countries, like she wasn’t in North Korea or anything like that — but there were just certain places she was at where they were like, “OK, we’re not sure that you can work from there. We need you to kind of stay in one place for a while because it’s making paying you difficult” because she’d be in one place one month, one place somewhere else, just kind of jetsetting around. Because in my mind I was like, she can’t be getting paid that much to be doing all this jet setting between countries. Maybe she was, I don’t know. But yeah, eventually they told her, “okay, you need to stay somewhere for a while.” And then I think once she did that, she was somewhere maybe for about a month or so. They laid her off.

Carmelle Kendall:

Oh, no.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, they laid all of us off, so we all were kind of in the same boat. But it was so weird because I know that that’s something that people have done during the pandemic is just take advantage of the fact that you could work remotely. Why not work from anywhere? But the company was like, no, you need to stay somewhere for a while because we can’t keep track of where you’re at. And it’s messing up, I guess, business operations with how we pay you or something like that.

Carmelle Kendall:

Oh, interesting. I wonder if it’s because of like taxes or something.

Maurice Cherry:

I also think they just didn’t like her. I think that could have been part of it too. We’re all working, don’t get me wrong, but if you’re working hard and then someone else is working hard, but this person is like jetsetting between all these places, I think it might have been a little bit of jealousy. They were like, “okay, you need to stay your ass in one place and stop doing all this traveling around because I can’t travel, so why do you get to travel?” That’s what I think it was. But they had a more friendly, corporate friendly excuse.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah, because if she’s getting her work done and she’s…you know what I mean? That should be what counts. And if she’s working the hours of everybody else, I don’t know.

Maurice Cherry:

I don’t know. But again, it’s sort of like what I talked about before. Companies are just trying to figure out how to sort of work now in this new environment because this is such a new thing. Like, before you went to the office, you worked your eight hours or whatever and you went home.

Carmelle Kendall:

Right.

Maurice Cherry:

Work was that sort of “other place.” And now that your work can also be where you live and if you can do that from anywhere, why stay at the place that you’re at?

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

Now with the work that you do with Neighborly, you’ve got a full time gig and the book…how do you balance all of that?

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah, I don’t think I’m good at it, to be honest. The book was a labor of love. There were nights that I stayed up to like two, three in the morning finishing those drawings because you’re on a timeline and that timeline generally isn’t going to move because of you, you know what I mean? Especially if the book comes out on a certain day, that’s it. You can’t just say, “oh, I need another month.” You have to be on somebody else’s timeline. So there were nights that I stayed up to like two, three in the morning and then literally woke up at like seven to start my normal workday. So, yeah, not fun. But I knew that doing the book was a long term goal of mine, and not every day you have this opportunity for something that you basically been dreaming about, and the opportunity presents itself. You kind of have to just buckle down and do it. So, yeah. Not fun, but I did it. Neighborly. Right now, we’re at the point where we fulfill orders, obviously from the orders that come in on our website. But it’s a lot of just negotiating with buyers right now for those larger wholesale orders. So we have Valentine’s cards and Urban Outfitters this past Valentine’s Day. So those orders are the gigantic orders. And if that’s the case, if we have a big order like for TJ Maxx or Marshall’s or whatever. That’s when we hire people to help us out, because those orders could be like, 20,000 cards.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow.

Carmelle Kendall:

And if that’s the case, we hire packagers. We hire people to help us fulfill the order, like put them in boxes and things like that. Ship them out. So those come. Obviously those aren’t, like, every day that we’re fulfilling those large orders. So it’s more manageable. Every once in a while, we get these big orders, and then we hire helpers. So it makes it way more easier for us.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow. I was saying freelance, and not in a pejorative way, but it’s a business.

Carmelle Kendall:

Oh, yeah. Since the TODAY show, we have gotten these huge wholesale orders. We’ve been in paper stores. We’ve been in Urban Outfitters. We’ve been in Marshall’s, TJ Maxx, Home Goods. So, yeah, with those big orders, you definitely need help. It’s way more than just me and my business partner can fulfill because they’re just so large. So, yeah, we have a list of packagers that we hit up that just kind of help out when needed.

Maurice Cherry:

So it sounds like the TODAY show was, like, a really big boost for you.

Carmelle Kendall:

Oh, 100,000% for sure. I don’t remember. If you’re saying that we’re in 20 stores, which could be right. I just don’t remember before the TODAY show. Now we’re in thousands because of these large wholesale orders. Like with Home Goods. That was like 800 stores right there with the Home Goods order. So. Yeah, we’ve got a lot of stores, for sure.

Maurice Cherry:

It’s so interesting how creatives that I’ve had on the show, and it’s usually ones that do some kind of digital, creative work, like full time, in some capacity, tThey always have a side project or a side business or something that is tactile. Like…it’s cards. It’s home goods. It’s ceramics. It’s always something tactile. Is that on purpose, I wonder? I don’t know. I find that to be interesting.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah. I mean, you don’t have clients.

Maurice Cherry:

That’s true.

Carmelle Kendall:

When it’s tactile. Nobody telling me what I need to do with the design or the artwork. It’s no client. You’re doing it for yourself. Yeah. At least that’s what I would think it will be. That’s what it is for me. I knew that if I’m going to do something on the side, I don’t want any clients. I want to do what I want to do, do what I like. Do what my business partner likes and that’s it. We’re doing what we want to do and that’s it. I mean, we do do custom cars, which in that case we’ll have a client, but for the most part it’s what we want for the line, what we envision for the line, what we want to put out, whether it be notepads or journals or calendars or whatever. We’re doing what we want to do, pretty much. I mean, we take into account what our audience likes and what our audience wants to see, but there’s nobody saying “no, make that blue purple,” like no, that’s all me and my business partner.

Maurice Cherry:

I got you. That makes a lot of sense then when you put it that way, I like that.

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

For the retailers, are you normally just shooting for these larger big box stores or are smaller boutiques also a target?

Carmelle Kendall:

Oh yeah, we’re in boutique stores all across the world actually. Now we have some international too, but with the smaller boutique stores, they’re smaller orders just because they’re mom and pop shops. So we definitely do reach out to the big box stores as well because that’s the huge orders that span for 800 stores like in the TJX case or Urban Outfitters and things like that. That’s where the huge orders come from.

Maurice Cherry:

Got you. That makes sense. So with everything that you’re working on, what do you want to try to accomplish for the rest of the year?

Carmelle Kendall:

So, at the beginning of this year I had some goals and I can’t believe it’s already summer and I feel like I haven’t done many of my goals that I set out to do. One of the goals was to learn 3D software. So I actually start my 3D class tomorrow, so I’m really excited about that. I’m going to be learning Cinema 4D which I have been wanting to learn for a while. And then other than that, I want to start working on these other children’s books ideas that I have. I have so many ideas, so I want to start putting those to pen, to paper. And then with Neighborly, we have a lot of ideas for products, new products that we want to roll out so want to start getting those into stores and on the website so that people can start purchasing those and then just doing know with advertising I want to build up my portfolio more and go on some more shoots and productions. Looking forward to that too.

Maurice Cherry:

Now for someone that is listening to what you’ve accomplished, they’re hearing about all your success and they want to kind of follow in that same vein. What kind of advice would you give them?

Carmelle Kendall:

I would say to start freelancing, start doing things on the side. A lot of times if you do what you want to do on the side, a lot of times it can become your full time. So if you’re not getting the work that you want to do in your full time job, just start creating it on the side. I’ve had side hustles and side projects pretty much since I started in advertising. I realized that I just wanted to spread my wings and not have to do everything for a client. I wanted to sometimes just create for myself. And so I’ve always just had things going on on the side, whether it be for freelance or just because I wanted to do it. And that has helped me so much in just growing my portfolio and getting other business. So I would say, always just do things on the side. Just do things for yourself, do things just to stay creative because you want to. And it always lead to something. It always will lead to bigger things.

Maurice Cherry:

If you could go back and give teenage Carmelle that wanted to be in the video, if you could give her some advice, knowing what you know now, what would you tell her?

Carmelle Kendall:

I will probably say, don’t be afraid to explore. Just art, the art world and things that you think are unattainable. Because when I was growing up, I didn’t have artists around me. My mom is a doctor and my dad is a lawyer, and so I wasn’t in the art space. I didn’t know an artist, I didn’t know anybody in advertising. This is all something I found out late in life. I always drew and painted and things like that, but I didn’t think it was attainable. I didn’t think being an artist was you can make a living off of it. So I would tell myself, just explore those things, like explore what makes me happy without having that fear of am I going to make it in the art world? Just be fearless and explore what makes me happy, basically.

Maurice Cherry:

Where do you see yourself in the next five years? Like, what’s the next chapter for Carmelle Kendall?

Carmelle Kendall:

I see myself doing more books, having books on the shelves, in stores everywhere, having Neighborly on the shelves in stores everywhere. I see myself just learning new things. I believe that I’m a student for life, so learning new programs, learning new software. I always just want to stay experimenting with my craft. Hopefully my artwork has evolved in five years. Hopefully it doesn’t look like it does now. I want to always be continuing to evolve and just being a better artist and designer is what I see for myself.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you, about your work, about Neighborly? Where can they find that information online?

Carmelle Kendall:

Yeah, well, they can always go to my website, which is Carmelle.com. The book is called “Your Freedom, Your Power”, which is available everywhere books are sold. And then for Neighborly, they can go to neighborlypaper.com and find a list of all the stores that we are in. Or they can just purchase directly from neighborlypaper.com.

Maurice Cherry:

All right, sounds good. Carmelle Kendall, I want to thank you so, so much for coming on the know. As I was kind of pulling my research together for this, I kind of always have a thought in my mind about who the person is before I talk to them and what the interview might come to be like. And the main thing I’m getting from this is like, hometown hero from the a left, did your own thing, came back, you’ve got this great business, it’s a fun business, but you’re also still kind of working in the advertising world as well. And from what I can tell just from talking with you, you’re keeping it humble. You’re certainly super proud of the work that you’ve done and the success that you’ve accomplished, but you’re also super humble about it. That’s a really good quality to have, especially in this world where there’s just so much like, posturing and clout chasing and all that kind of stuff. I’m like, I get from you that you are like, the genuine real deal, and I’m really excited to see where your work goes in the future. So thank you so much for coming on the show.

Maurice Cherry:

I appreciate it.

Carmelle Kendall:

Thank you so much for having me. Like I said, I’ve been following you since 2020 when I listened to you on a podcast, so I was very honored.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit is a strategy and design firm committed to designing a more inclusive and equitable world. They are always looking to expand their roster of freelance design consultants in the U.S., particularly brand strategists, copywriters, graphic designers and Web developers.

If you know how to deliver excellent creative work reliably, and enjoy the autonomy of a virtual-based, freelance life (with no non-competes), check them out at brevityandwit.com.

Maya Gold Patterson

What a difference a few years makes! When we first had Maya Gold Patterson on the podcast back in 2016, she was a product designer in Chicago. Since then, she’s moved out west and has held down design leadership positions at two of the most well-known tech companies on the planet — Twitter (now X) and Facebook (now Meta). And after a recent stint as VP of Design at Riverside.fm, Maya’s facing one of her biggest challenges yet: quitting her job and embarking on a journey of self-discovery and career exploration.

We caught up and talked about her recent decision, and about how it’s left her feeling about Big Tech and about her future. But we also spent time looking back at her tour of duty at Facebook and Twitter, and she spoke about the lessons she’s learned, the products she’s built, and the importance of making choices that align with her personal goals and values.

Maya is proof that taking a chance on yourself is never a bad idea, so if you’re feeling burnt out or unsure about your career direction, then this episode is a must-listen!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:

All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Hi, Maurice. I am Maya Gold Patterson. I’m a designer and I recently quit my job on a good note. I’m doing good, so it’s good. But what I do traditionally is product design and I’ve worked in big tech companies — Facebook, Twitter — and small tech companies. Riverside, a startup most recently, has filled up most of the time of my career.

Maurice Cherry:

You know, you dropped this on me, like, the day before we were about to…I mean, first of all, I’m always excited when someone decides to quit their job because I just feel like that’s just such a great opening up to new experiences and new opportunities and stuff like that. And we’ll get to that, we’ll talk about that. But I’m just curious so far. Leading up to this, how has the year been going?

Maya Gold Patterson:

The year has been rough. Oh my gosh. Well, it’s been highs and lows. It’s been yoyos. So just to give a little bit of context, like starting out the year, I’m a new mom, maybe not as new as I was at the start of the year. So my son is eleven months old. But at the start of the year, I was on maternity leave, but supposed to come back and I was supposed to come back to Twitter, where Elon Musk had recently acquired the company while I was on maternity leave. So that was kind of terrible. I was dealing with post weaning depression, which people don’t talk about often. It has to do with breastfeeding and all of that, and then using all those emotions and trying to figure out what was next for me, I was doing job hunting and soul searching, and so that was a rough start to the year. But then I met these two incredible founders, the founders of Riverside, and we had some awesome working sessions, sort of informally, that escalated into a full time role as a VP of Design, in which we all knew it would be kind of an uphill battle. They were based globally, so it was going to be a ten time zone difference between me and them. And yeah, so I was waking up at like 5:00 a.m. to get on calls between 6:00 to 11:00 a.m., essentially. And at first it was really working and I was really excited. And eventually, for a lot of reasons, it wasn’t right. And I’m like, smiling while I’m saying this, not because of what has happened there, but because of the state that I’m in now. I’m so excited for the next half of my year and the six months after that, but the first leading up to now, it has been rough but also amazing and incredible. And to watch my son grow up and I just turned 30, there’s a lot of newness and experience and learning that I’m taking in, and I feel like it all just sort of, like, came to a head in the last six months.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow. Well, congratulations on your son. That’s amazing.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Thank you.

Maurice Cherry:

I’ve done the ten hour time zone thing, too. The last company I worked at was headquartered in San Francisco…or co-headquartered in San Francisco and Paris. So I would sometimes have to meet whatever was happening in the West Coast. But then we had people, I think as far out as, I want to say as far out as India, maybe not that far. I know we had people into Africa, we had people throughout Europe, but it was roughly like a ten time zone kind of gap. And it’s rough, it’s hard. I know remote work has made it so we can work from anywhere, but time zones are time zones. And it’s rough.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, it is. It really is. And the most challenging thing, honestly, wasn’t for me, like, getting up early. I had already learned how to not sleep so much with the baby, so he trained me well for this. But it was the type of impact that I know I want to have on a company and on a product and for customers through my design work was just super challenging with that time zone gap and the nuance of what I was dealing with in comparison to what I had come from. Like at Twitter, we were all remote. That was the nuance. Everyone was remote versus in this scenario, at Riverside, I was the one that was remote and everyone was local and they were locally ten time zones away.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh…wow.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Right. So there just would be a lot happening. A lot happening that I would never just get to pick up on in terms of context and decision making. And it’s a startup, so it moves fast. And so there’s only like that three hour overlap where I’m actually getting to meet with the team and different people at the company. And so if a lot of that time is spent just catching up, when is the time spent to do the work? And it was tough to find that rhythm, honestly, but everyone was really committed to it, so I commend us for that.

Maurice Cherry:

When you were last on the show, this was November 2016. We were talking about this a little bit before recording, but you were a bonus episode because we ended up doing this right after I think it was the week Trump was elected in November 2016. And I went back and revisited that conversation and listened through it. And you mentioned talking about when you’re nervous about something or there’s something that you want to do that you’re not sure is the best thing, you kind of have this knot in your chest of nervousness. Did you have that feeling when you decided “it’s time for me to quit, it’s time for me to move on”?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, I did, but yes, for two reasons. One was because I genuinely really liked working with everyone I was working with at Riverside. So it was hard to come to the decision. Like, I needed to walk away. So just deciding to walk away gave me the ick. It was really difficult. But also the other part of me quitting was me committing to not taking another full time job and to not interview. And that’s something I’m even just exploring within myself, like what I really mean by that. But I really mean it. I’m committing myself right now to a year of not just jumping into another tech role, and that’s a statement to make for myself. I’m always the one to go and figure out what the Plan B is. So if I were to quit and then go to the next thing, I wouldn’t be that scared and that nervous, but I’m quitting and not immediately jumping back into Big Tech or any type of tech. I’m kind of exploring a bunch of different paths. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

When you emailed me yesterday, you told me that you were pulling the plug on Big Tech and that is something that you’ve wanted to do for a few years now. What does pulling the plug on Big Tech mean to you at this moment?

Maya Gold Patterson:

I’m such a drama queen. I am pulling the plug on Big Tech right now because it was taking too much of me, and I’m at a time where I need to invest in myself and explore myself a bit more. So I don’t know if I won’t even be as ignorant to say I’ll never go back into tech. That’s probably unlikely, but right now it’s a no. So that means I am going to start turning down interviews that I was ramping up on and being clear with them and hopefully leaving on really good and open terms with those hiring managers that wanted to take a chance on me. And it’s nerve wracking, right? Because I got into this, and I don’t know if I touched on this in my first interview. I cringe listening back on myself, but I was a self-taught designer, and I was a Midwestern girl. I didn’t have a lot of exposure to what Silicon Valley was. So to decide to walk away from something when you’ve built so much progress and you’ve put in so much work for the last ten years, like putting in so much work to make it to where I’ve made it. To then say “I’m going to walk away.” I don’t know what it looks like, if people will open, receive me again if I want to come back. And I had to decide that that was okay with me. If that ended up being the case, that was okay with me, and I will figure it out.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, yeah…I mean, when you were on the show, you were in Chicago, you were a product designer at Trunk Club, and I think it was maybe about six months after that is when you ended up leaving and then going out to California to work there. And as you mentioned, you’ve worked for two of the most well known tech companies in the world. You were at Facebook, which is now Meta. You were at Twitter, which is now just a single letter X. How was your time at Facebook? Like, we actually met in person in 2017 for the first time. Revision Path did that event here in Atlanta with Facebook.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Oh, that was so fun. I almost forgot. I was like, “I know we’ve met in person,” but I couldn’t remember what was the context.

Maurice Cherry:

You surprised me because you had came up to me over like, “hey Maurice.” And I was like “who is this?” because we had only talked on Skype. And I was like, you didn’t look like your photo. You had short hair then.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

And the photo you sent me, you had like, this long, curly hair. I was like “oh, oh…okay. yeah.”

Maya Gold Patterson:

I know, the hair will really do a number on you. How was my time at Facebook? My time at Facebook was awesome. Oh, my goodness, like, I would not be where I am today without Facebook and the unique experience I had at Facebook. So the way that I transitioned out west, first of all, I wanted to be in Silicon Valley to start with, but I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t get any job offers originally, but I found a really cool company in Chicago, so that was really good for just arming me with the tools to eventually try again for Silicon Valley. It did happen really organically where I was recruited into Facebook. I hadn’t reached out yet. I was preparing to. Dantley Davis, who was a deep mentor of mine, and I’ve worked with him now for many years. he found a piece of writing that I did for AfroTech that went, like, semi-viral at the time. That was “Five reasons why UX design and Black people go together” or something like that.

Maurice Cherry:

I remember that. It was on Blavity.

Maya Gold Patterson:

On Blavity. It’s not Afro Tech. Yeah, this is at the time, you know, when UX was still kind of fresh to people’s minds, like, what that even meant. I guess he saw that. He saw a couple of other pieces that I had done, and he was like, “yo, you interested in, you know, my team?” I was like, “I’m interested in anything. Please. Yes.” And I really wanted to work at a social media company, so I got the experience of working for a Black director, first of all, so that’s already new. A Black director that was really pushing the culture and doing so in an authentic way. Awesome experience. My direct manager was also Black, which is already…it’s a bit abnormal than probably your typical Facebook experience. And then there were not a lot of Black people in product at all at Facebook. But because it was so big, there were tens of thousands of people even just having 1% of us, there was a lot more than what I came from in Chicago, which was like, I knew one person who did UX design that looked like me in Chicago. So now I had access to incredible women and men who came from experiences like mine and cultural contexts like mine that were IC6’s and 7s and 8s and directors. And I’m like, oh, my gosh, and people are getting money and things are happening, and they’re talking in different languages, and you’re immersed in this incredible culture because Facebook Design, I really feel like, was leading a lot of the sort of education on what design organizations could look like and best practices. They were putting out a lot of content on Medium. Julie Zhou was, like, doing a ton on Medium and, like, I would religiously read everything that she put out. Like, I just felt blessed to get to work within this in the space that I had dreamt about.

I learned a lot, technically. Like, I was up against and working with some of the top prototypers who became good friends of mine, top visual designers, top strategic thinkers and storytellers. And I got to sort of see through their own craft, okay, what of this do I like to do? What could I be good at doing? And then they also sort of taught me how to implement that at scale through working with cross functional partners like PMs well, PMs and engineers I was already used to working with. It was working with people even bigger than that that really impacted the full customer experience that I first got to immerse myself with. So that was like, product marketing managers and data scientists and a formal user research team, like all of those people that are so important to the product you put out that I got to be introduced to at Facebook. So that was super cool. The offices were super fly. First of all, this is when Facebook, they were giving money, so they relocated me from Chicago to theBay. So they moved my car. I remember these movers came into my apartment, packed up my house, and set me all up.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, really nice stuff. I don’t know how else I would have moved to California or afforded it. I mean, the offices were just super luxurious. They had seven, ten, I don’t know, fifteen different cafeterias and vending machines filled with Apple products and just ridiculous type of stuff. And then you were expected to travel around the world to sort of meet the customers that you were building for. So you’re flying like first class, essentially, to these different countries that I probably would have never been able to visit. So you’re having all expenses paid by Facebook to go learn and do research, do the thing that you like to do. It just…it was a really fast and fun time. That also was really challenging too, because, again, not a lot of people that looked like us. Sometimes the decisions that the company made was not vibing with, and it was a huge ship, and you’re ultimately like a cog in a bigger ship. And I definitely made impacts in the way that I wanted to, but not as fast always as I wanted to, or in the way that I wanted to do it. And that ultimately led me to start looking elsewhere.

Maurice Cherry:

Were you working out of MPK 20 out of Menlo Park?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yes. So I started there right when they opened MPK 20, I think like a year or two prior to me joining. It was really new.

Maurice Cherry:

I was out there, oh, I remember it was October 2016 because Facebook was doing their design lecture series and they were supporting Revision Path. And so I was like, “well, I would love to do some interviews on Facebook’s campus.” I was like, joking, like, “ha ha”, you know, “we could do it. And they were like, “okay.” And they paid for a first class ticket, flew me out, flew my equipment out and everything. And I remember going to the building and just…it’s kind of hard to describe how tremendous the scale of just that one office was.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yes.

Maurice Cherry:

Because it has like this…it’s almost like an indoor track or like a loop where you can sort of walk around the whole building and yeah, they have all of these different cafeteria stations or food stations or whatever, and people’s desks are just kind of out. Like, it didn’t feel like a cube farm at all. It just felt like almost like a department store. But people worked here in a way because it was just that big and massive.

Maya Gold Patterson:

I had a love/hate relationship with it because to actually do work in that office was terrible, but like, there’s so much going on and there were so many people, and open floor plans are just really ridiculous for the creative process sometimes, because everyone just comes up to you and they’re just looking at…you know, it’s just obnoxious. But yeah, the lifestyle of Facebook at that time was…I don’t know what it’s like now, but it was really cool, at least for someone who was like 23. I think I joined when I was 23. 23, I had no responsibilities…

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, yeah, you were living it up.

Maya Gold Patterson:

I was living it up! I was like, “yeah, I’ll be here all day, all night, whatever.” You’re taking the shuttle. Because I lived in Oakland, you would take the shuttle with the WiFi. The shuttles for Facebook are like the most beautiful Greyhounds you’ve ever seen in your life. Like, not actual Greyhounds. And oh my, you do all your work, get in at 11:00 [a.m.]. I remember the first day I showed up like 9:00 [a.m.] and no one was there, which is the opposite of Chicago, where if you were there at 9:05 [a.m.], you were in fucking trouble. Sorry, you’re in trouble. This was not the case. People were showing up late in their flip flops and sweats, which I didn’t love, but whatever. And then they leave on their shuttle at like 3:00 [p.m.], and they’re just living it up. Yeah, it was good. And we did some really…I got to work on some really cool stuff. The best projects were working on like a Fenty Beauty AR project and working on Facebook Music, which included some AR stuff and really cool effects, and just the whole vibe of it was, like, really fun, honestly.

Maurice Cherry:

We’re talking about one building when we say MPK 20, but it’s almost like a town. It’s almost like Facebookville in terms of the scale, and there’s even an internal transit system to get you to different buildings and stuff.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Free Uber.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I was so blown away. That was also, I remember, because you know Tory Hargro, We know Tory Hargro.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

Tory was giving me a tour and we had went to the Instagram building and he’s like, “Oh yeah, you know, this is the Instagram building where we do Instagram,” and they had these little stages as soon as you walk in the building where you gold take pictures for Instagram, he’s like, “oh, yeah, give me your phone and I’ll take some pictures for Revision Path’s Instagram.” And I didn’t have an Instagram for Revision Path. I was like, “oh, yeah, I don’t have Instagram.” And I’m saying that in the Instagram building. And it was like you could hear a pin drop. Needless to say, I was on Instagram by the time the day ended. But the scale of that place is just so massive to think about. And yeah, I could see how you were saying you felt like just a cog in the whole ship of everything, because it’s huge.

Maya Gold Patterson:

It’s huge. And Facebook was definitely a place driven by data, and it was pretty top down. Like, they say it’s bottoms up. Yeah, you could decide your roadmaps with the PMs and such, and that’s a skill that you learn. And there are certain initiatives that I got to be part of that definitely influenced what we worked on. But your impact, which translated to, okay, your performance review, which happens every six months, which is tied to your bonuses, whether you’re going to get promoted or not, your impact is tied to data, like, what metrics did you move? And so that kind of started to incentivize not kind of it incentivized everyone to work in a way that was really not necessarily what I defined for myself as building the best user experience always, or even the way in which I like to go about product development. And so the promotions felt real good, the raises felt really good, the equity refreshes felt really good. But over time, it’s like, I want to try something else. I want to try something else just for now.

Maurice Cherry:

So you made the jump over to Twitter, and that was right before the pandemic began, is that right?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, my timing is just really interesting, so I coincide everything that I do in my career with major stuff happening out in the world. Dantley had moved to Twitter maybe like two years — I can’t remember — prior to me joining. He was pitching me on a team, or rather an opportunity area that he thought I might be good at. Now I’m fresh off of what was like the Facebook Sharing team and then the Facebook Watch team. So Sharing is a really ruthless team to be on at times at Facebook because it’s always the most impactful to the bottom line, but it’s really hard to get the metrics up. And again, Facebook was oriented around metrics, so if you can’t move the needle there, it just was really stressful. So I was really burnt out by consumer facing sharing products, like Creation products. So that’s like creating things on a newsfeed, creative things in any sort of social media app. And this opportunity that he was describing sounded like Sharing to me. It wasn’t Sharing, but it sounded like some of that same sort of stuff, but it was vaguely like, okay…”we want to build something in audio, we don’t really know what it is. The team needs that sort of design vision and design strategy and some of the velocity that you probably would bring…if you’re down.”

I was like thinking about it, and Twitter I loved as a consumer. Twitter was my social media of choice. I had always loved Twitter, and I built a really strong design network on Twitter and found a home there. I never was interested in joining the company because I had heard through the valley, it’s just very white. The way things were run. Didn’t feel really fresh and innovative and they weren’t shipping a lot of products. I pride myself a bit on being able to ship products. That always was my sort of thing as a designer. I don’t get stuck in la la land. Like, I really will deliver something by the end of it. And with Dantley moving over there, he was changing the culture along with some other bigger cultural changes too, happening at Twitter. He’s like, “no, things are changing, and we’re hiring talent too, to help with those changes.”

I ended up taking that role.

It was incredible. Twitter was really incredible. I joined Twitter in January 2020. I went to their One Team. It’s called One Team, which was a time where everyone across the globe gets together in person to have this big conference that was in Houston. It was like the first week of January, or second, and it was lit. Oh, my God. Oh, it was so lit because Twitter was just that sort of more hippie tech company, you think Jack Dorsey versus Mark Zuckerberg. It just had that sort of vibe. And then they really leaned into, quote unquote, “the culture.” There was like Black people doing stuff. It just was cool. We were there partying and hanging, and the vibes were just right from start. And it was a much smaller company than Facebook. So I’m going from I think when I left Facebook, it was like 40 or 50K, at the time, employees, and Twitter was like 7,000. So it already felt much smaller, easier to navigate. We get back from One Team. I’m working with my team, which is three guys that were jamming on a very ambiguous scope of audio. And then we are about to head to a user research session in, I think, Houston actually, again, and I get a call to say to cancel my flights because Twitter is going to shut down, probably. Twitter was the first company, I think, in tech to shut down and go remote when 2020 happened. So I get that call. I had to cancel my flight. And I remember asking, I was like, “it’s not going to be that long, right? We’re not going to be locked up for that long, right?” And they’re like, “I think it’s going to be a bit” and I’m thinking to myself, okay, three weeks to say I never went back into the office again. Like, three years later, and only three months in was, yeah, I just wouldn’t have expected that. So from there on, it was like a fully remote position. And we were all working remotely, everyone in the globe, obviously. But yeah, my entire time at Twitter was remote, which was interesting. It was really important to have that one team experience. So I think that made me feel much better about the situation.

Maurice Cherry:

And now one of the products you were working on while you were at Twitter ended up becoming Twitter Spaces. We won’t go into that. You actually did a whole episode with this podcast I produced called Happy Paths. I’ll put a link to that if people want to hear about your journey with sort of helping to build that product. But there were some other features that you worked on as well. You worked on voice tweets, is that right? Some other things as well?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, I worked on voice tweets, the first commerce/sort of beta approach which turned into a whole organization. And then I transitioned from Spaces because I was just ready for something new. And I was working on our crypto — sort of like very ambiguous crypto space — I was second trimester pregnant at the time. A couple of months prior to that, Jack Dorsey left. They let go of Dantley and a couple of other really important leaders, Kayvon, and those two really were the ones that were driving a lot of the positive change on the product side. So Twitter was quickly corroding from my point of view. And I also just didn’t care about work like that because I cared about my baby and myself and whether I was going to be able to deliver. There were bigger questions I had for myself, right? Yeah. But I did get to work on a couple of interesting things by the end of it, like some interesting concepts for crypto, but those didn’t really get to see the light so much. And then a couple months after that, Elon bought the company and the rest, I guess, is in the news.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like with all these sort of things changing as quickly as they were, it sort of kind of put that idea in your mind that it might be time for you to go then as well, right?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, for sure. And I think Spaces was such an incredible experience. voice tweets and Spaces really were like a one-two punch together. I loved the team I was working with and I loved how we built that product and even how we approached it. Everything just felt so good. But it was really hard too. There was some really not cool stuff that went down as well. And we went from a team of three, four to a hundred, and I realized I just didn’t like that part of the job so much. Maybe in the future I will, but the scaling to an org, I did not like it. Well, I didn’t know why fully I didn’t like it, but I knew I didn’t like it in the context of this bigger tech company where you have the KPIs and the roadmaps and the vision planning, like all that stuff. And it just was a lot of politics. And so I was really burnt out after Spaces and needed a break. And honestly, with all the drama that like, I got that, like people really weren’t checking for me after Jack Dorsey and them left because no one knew what their job was. Everyone was running around with their heads cut off. And I was like, “well, I’m pregnant. I’m just going to lay up.”

Maurice Cherry:

Well, it sounds like it was also just a big career shift in a way, because you had went from being an IC as a product designer. It sounds like you were mostly an IC while you were at Facebook and then at Twitter, you’re now, like, managing a team. You’re on management. How did you approach that shift?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, that’s good context. Just to be super transparent, when I joined Facebook, I was IC 4, got promoted, was about to get promoted, left before that and went to Twitter, and I still was on the IC track. I went from staff to senior staff. So that’s just like going up the IC sort of career ladder. And during that senior staff transition, which I think translates to an [IC] 8 at most companies, that was at the same time that Spaces had gone live as a beta, the company decided, “okay, it’s our number one priority. Maya, Alex, Remy, all the people that were like, the leads of the team, what do you need to make this make product market fit?” And that included bringing on a lot more designers. And so there was a point where I was getting coaching from Dantley, where I was telling him, I was like, “I don’t know how to do this.” Like, I’m not a manager, and I never went into management at Twitter. It wasn’t my goal. But he wanted me to essentially move into a design lead role, which was undefined at Twitter at the time, even though they were starting to try that out with me and a couple other designers. And he was like, “you’re essentially like the mass editor of Spaces, and you need to orient the team, the design team, to be able to create the product that we all see could happen.” So I internalized that, and I also knew for myself what type of culture and environment I wanted to work within, and that mattered to me. So while it wasn’t my actual manager, I wasn’t a manager. I also paid a lot of attention to the team culture, and I worked with my direct manager, and he was awesome. He gave me a lot of support in doing this. I worked with him to sort of set a culture and different activities, put those in place so that the team could not only create the best product, but it felt good getting there, ideally, even though the pressure was high. So, yeah, going from being the sole designer to leading seven designers — super talented designers, too — that was an incredible learning experience. But, man, that was really fun. Really fun, really hard.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, it’s good that they sort of were also kind of giving you the sort of support to support that team. Like, they didn’t just say, “okay, now you’re leading. Good luck.” It sounds like you sort of had help and support along the way, as you were kind of navigating all of this.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yes and no. So I got the support and I definitely got help. But it usually happened at a major junction point where I just completely was burnt out. One of the ways in which we even realized I needed so many more designers than I originally thought. I remember a new design director leader in the industry, Halli, had just joined. I had never met him. Big fan of his Twitter presence and everything he did with Ueno, they had just been acquired. He and I were going to sit down and have a conversation. Spaces was like…oh, my God. I was just so stressed out by it. And I couldn’t figure out how to essentially meet the leadership team’s ask, which was like, “okay, figure out how to do all of these things and what resources you need.” I just didn’t know. And he and I get on a call — and he’s so good at reading people; he and I had never met — and he was like, “how are you?” And the most embarrassing thing happened. I just started bursting out crying to this man that I’d never met before. It was, oh, my God, it goes against everything that I want to be. I’ve cried twice in front of people at work, and I always hate myself afterwards, but I could not help myself. I was so distraught. And through that, that’s when we really got to the essence of what I needed, and that was more support, more designers, and then also the sort of go ahead from design leadership. Sometimes people are really…I find that managers and leaders sometimes are really nervous about saying, “no, this designer is who you need to listen to.” Usually they’re like, “oh, everyone’s opinion is sort of like, equal, and the best one will come out.” But that’s not always true. Sometimes you need a decision maker. And so it was a combination of getting those resources and being everyone explicitly knowing, like, Maya is the decision maker. That empowered me to really lean into that role and then sort of transition in that situation.

Maurice Cherry:

And so now, after Twitter, you joined Riverside as their VP of design, which is where you were most recently. I know you were only there for a short amount of time, but can you just sort of sum up what it was like there for you?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, yeah, yeah…and even why I chose it.

So after leaving Twitter, I was curious still. I had some questions about my career. Like I mentioned, I had gotten to a pretty senior level of IC path, but I had been leading a team of designers. Several managers of mine had pitched the idea of me going into management. I knew that I wasn’t really that interested in doing it at a big tech company, just based off of what I was witnessing was the role of a manager. But I was curious about it, and I kind of thought that at a startup maybe that would be the way that I could both still keep my hands in the product making and product strategy and all of that while also getting to trial management. So I thought that this VP role would be like the sort of best of both worlds and I probably downplayed the challenges.

I knew it was going to be challenging to work in the ten time zone difference and I knew even just the cultural differences might be a challenge but I wasn’t too concerned about that type of stuff. But yeah, that ten time zones and even just the nuances of the startup world, right? Like I’m coming from big tech into startup world. It is different. Even though Spaces liked to brand itself as a startup within a big company, no, it’s still different. It’s really different.

What I really loved about Riverside is that they just moved really fast, but from a place of curiosity they would always be observing what’s happening out in the world and where their competitors are moving. And they weren’t afraid of scrapping a roadmap and just redesigning one or reprioritizing it. Sometimes we did that probably a little bit too much and I think honestly through our work together we started to get a little bit more consistent with our priorities, and that was great. But some of that even was a bit of a headache to just navigate just how rapidly things could change in terms of priorities.

What I found with Riverside was people were really just genuinely down to create and hopefully create a really solid product for customers. And I know everyone says that, but I don’t know…people just seem to be really curious to do that and really open to receiving wherever that idea gold come from. So they’re all taking a bet on me too. I’m in L.A. and they now have this new leader who’s all the way over here and they kind of have to listen to, like, they kind of embraced that with open arms and that was cool. And I think the startup world in general, I really am still fascinated by. But one thing I learned was I probably want to be…to create it myself. I have so many skills at this point and I have a way of working where actually startups aren’t that different from big tech companies. If you have a boss, the boss is still the boss and what their vision is and how they want to do work. That is the way in which you have to do work. That’s not a bad thing. And it wasn’t even bad how Riverside did it. It just at this time in my life, I was realizing that’s not what I’m looking for. Like, I was actually trying to get away from that sort of, I don’t know, like company-first mindset. I want to build something. I want to build something. I don’t want to push forward something that’s already been built.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a natural progression, though. I mean, going from these larger companies to smaller companies, but you’re gaining more and more experience just as a designer, as a person, you’re just gaining more experience. So I feel like that’s a natural progression.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, I hope so. It’s a messy journey. I think it’s even messier now that I’ve pulled the plug on big tech, apparently. But I think it’s going to shake out to something really beautiful, hopefully.

Maurice Cherry:

I think it will. I mean, one of the beautiful things about this show and having done it for so long with these conversations, it can kind of show people that your career path isn’t always a linear thing. Like, it can have ups and downs and highs and lows, et cetera, as long as you kind of at least have a sense of what it is you want to do and where you’re going. And it sounds like you’ve kind of weathered that in your own career.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, 100%. Oh, man, you hear it when you first start out. One of my best friends who originally was just a colleague of mine, she just would always tell me, “your path and your journey is your path. In your journey, you make the decisions that are right for your career.” And at first you’re like, “oh, yeah, of course.” And you kind of can get taken away in the career paths that these companies have sort of set out. Like IC 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, then you go into VP and then you go into C-suite, or you can start your own. There’s these very set paths of what success, quote unquote, should look like. And they’re attached to money and they’re attached to potentially notoriety and all those things. And what I found myself doing was going through that path, making a couple of choices that were uniquely Maya, but not enough. Not enough of those uniquely Maya choices and ones that only I could answer.

I think, you know, you really have to put in the hours and the effort. Like, the last decade of work was really important to get me to where I am today, where I feel comfortable being comfortable and confident being like, “actually, it’s a no right now. Right now I need to go do something different.” And I believe in what that difference is. And I have the skills to go approach that difference and turn left on this path instead of turning right, even though right is maybe what everyone else would naturally say I should go. And I think when people are able to do that — and what you and I were talking about a little bit earlier — was just like, I think a lot of us, a lot of millennials, and definitely people, you know, and other generations, too, are just kind of waking up and realizing, like, “oh, I don’t know if I want to do this path in the way in which it’s been laid out for me. I don’t actually know if I believe in this work for 30 years and then get to go do the thing that I love to do or that I want to explore within myself. I don’t even know if I love to do it because I haven’t been able to do it.” Do I want to wait until I’m 60 to do that? Do I need X amount of money to be able to go do that? I think what I’ve been doing, what I decide to do, is figure out what those constraints are that I’ve applied to myself; what I’m missing to be able to go and do that self-exploration through my career path. I don’t know. And then see, I guess, where the cards land after it. I’m now not willing to wait until I’m 40, 50, 60, I guess, to go figure it out. Like it needed to happen now. That’s what I learned.

Maurice Cherry:

So when you look back at kind of the experiences that you’ve had, you look back at your career, and I would say even, like, looking at what the current landscape is now in tech and design — I should say we’ll put tech and design together — what do you think it means to be a designer these days?

Maya Gold Patterson:

What does it mean to be a designer these days? I feel like designers are typically multidisciplinary, like the best designers are, but there is a singular part of their design skills that they can get paid to do or paid really well to do. And so we kind of lean into that. But I’ve seen people, whether they’re product designers or really honestly, outside of product designers, like interior designers, stylists, just creators in other ways. I’ve seen when they leave their corporate structure, and they just take that bet on themselves because they’ve put in the time and the work and gotten the network and gotten the resources that they need to go do that, amazing stuff blossoms.

So what does that mean for design? I think design is still messy. As messy as it was back in the day, it’s still messy now. Yes. We have more understanding as an industry of maybe the different types of designers, like what exists and what types of design work we need. But we’re not yet good at helping designers blossom in a variety of design skills. Like, are you going to be a tech designer? Are you going to be a graphic designer? Are you going to be an agency designer? Are you going to be a fashion designer? It’s very limiting. There are people that push outside that box, and what I assume is happening is they’re finding some interesting happiness and making stuff that can be really impactful on the world in a unique way. I’m kind of hopeful that that same thing happens to me. I don’t know if it’s actually their reality or not, but that’s what I’m interpreting.

Maurice Cherry:

Are you where you kind of want to be at this stage in your life? Maybe that’s an easy question. I don’t know.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, I am, actually. That’s why I think I was comfortable walking away, right? And what does that mean?

So for me, honestly, since I was a little girl, I knew that I wanted to be successful and that meant money and being able to do whatever I wanted to do. So having the financial means to be able to do whatever I wanted to do, have a loving partner, have a family, probably. And so by choosing this career path and then going all in on it and having a lot of luck along the way, I was able to sort of achieve enough to be able to check the boxes on a lot of my childhood dreams. And I think because that happened, I’m now in this state where I’m like, “so then why am I still doing that? Why am I still in the rat race in that way?” One good answer is I need healthcare. My family needs healthcare. But honestly, again, we tucked away a good amount of money and it’s not enough for us to just retire retire, but it is probably enough to stop, get out of the rat race, look at it from a different vantage point and maybe go invest in ourselves or myself. Me and my husband are both on our self-employment journey now, and kind of see where it shakes out.

And corporate America is always going to be there. That’s like the backbone of this. You know, I don’t know if I’ll be able to enter back into big tech shiny roles when I’m done with this self-exploration, but I’ll be able to feed my family. And I think being able to distance myself from the keeping up with the Joneses mentality enabled me to sort of make that call. And a good example of this is like, me and my husband bought a house and that was like a really proud moment for us. And I remember one of the things that happened after we bought this house was like, a lot of people were like, “oh, this is your starter home. You’re going to move into a bigger house immediately.”

Maurice Cherry:

Wow.

Maya Gold Patterson:

I know! And they didn’t even say it coming from a bad place at all. At all. I understand why they said that, but I just was like, “wow, shouldn’t we just be satisfied with what we have?” Because I immediately started thinking like, “okay, yeah, I need to go get like, a bigger tech bag so then I can go get the bigger house.” And I’m like, “I don’t want the bigger house.” Like, I have enough house problems. I have enough house problems with what I have. And I like my home. I like designing my home. Like, I don’t need more. So because I’m in this space, I’m like, okay, so then I don’t need a job that has these super high dollar signs attached to it and benefits and stuff. Like, maybe I will in the future. Maybe my son or myself or our health will require it. Okay, then we’ll saddle up and go do that. But if right now my family doesn’t need it and it doesn’t bring us ultimate joy, then I’m not doing it. I’m not going to do it.

Maurice Cherry:

I’d be interested, like even, you know, I think you’ve sort of alluded that you were kind of taking a year off in a way — I’m using air quotes here — but you may not even want to go back into big tech after that. I’d be interested just to kind of see what your priorities are at that point.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Me too. Yeah, I leave the door open on big tech just because I know myself and I know also how beneficial big tech can be when you need it, and maybe there’ll be a right time and right place for it. But this year for me is definitely not going to be a sabbatical. I actually don’t want that right now. I think I’ve done a lot of resting and rebirthing and actual birthing over the last two years. I’m just, like, ready to go after it. Me and my husband talked about it actually yesterday. I want to balance my time really well, where we’re explicitly saying, “okay, if no money comes in, that’s scary, but okay, we’re just going to do that. That’s fine.” If you’re spending your time investing in your passions, that maybe could lead to making money. And then so, like, the first six months, I’m hoping is just investigating what I like to do, how far I can go with that sort of sorting out can it make me any money, and if so, how much? Okay, out of those five things that I might want to do and could maybe make me money, let me pick one that actually, like, is drawing me. And now if I really invest all my time there, what would happen? That would be maybe the next six months. Can you tell, like we’re type A, so we’re planning already. Very structured, in a very structured way, but that’s kind of how I see it going, is like, I want to go and I want to maybe reopen up my vintage shop. I want to maybe go and start some stuff with my husband. I’m going to do some design advising on the side because I’m interested in that and I have friends building cool stuff and I know a lot now, so maybe I can be helpful, explore all of that, see what feels good or not. I can say no at any time because I’m not beholden to anyone but myself and my family. And then hopefully success to me would be like, by the end of the year. I’m not rich or anything at all, but maybe I found a business that just speaks to me or is mine and I’m loving and also could earn enough for us to continue letting me walk this path. That would be incredible if that happens, but I don’t know if it will.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, there’s one project that you started recently called Recshop, is that right? Tell me about that.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Oh, man, that was a really cool project with my brother. So I love all things vintage, so I love vintage clothes, vintage cars. My dad was and still is as a DJ. He was, like, a DJ in the 80s. So he spun vinyl and we always grew up with a ton of vinyl in our house. And recently me and my brother have been getting into it and we decided to open up a record shop. Honestly, it was just like a creative passion project to have. And I think after shutting down my clothing shop, I was looking for that again. Quickly we realized the used record shop business is just not a business and it just wasn’t sustainable. And I had just had a baby and it was just like too much. So I think I want to do more of that type of stuff, though, because it teaches you so much. I learned about that business and there’s unique problems for the customer in that business. That was a learning, and even just what I enjoyed about it or didn’t. And it was a cool outlet. Like, we got to design a brand and a customer experience that was all about music and curating these really important pieces of artwork to the American music landscape. We got to curate that sort of stuff for people; that was really cool. And so maybe I do a couple more things like that that sort of get me closer to understanding what my actual purpose is.

Maurice Cherry:

What do you want your legacy to be? And again, I feel like asking this now is maybe a bit premature because you’re right off the heels of quitting. You’ve got this freedom. The rest of the year has opened up to you. But have you thought about that?

Maya Gold Patterson:

I had not thought about that until you asked it a little bit before the podcast. But it’s such an important question. I do know from a gut sense what legacy for me, and I think my husband shares this, but one of the drivers of me quitting and quitting tech for a little bit was just I want my legacy to be the imprint that I have on my son in the type of woman I’m proud of and he’s proud of me for being. So I want him to see that he can make radical choices that are okay and can be honored and enable you to be your best self. And best self means like, showing up as a better partner, a better mommy, a better…just individual in general, making choices that go against the grain if it means it’s right for you is okay. That’s the type of legacy; like him approaching those intersections of life head on and not being scared of that and really having that sort of gut sense of like, “no, this is right for me. I’m going to try that. I’m going to work hard. I’m going to go try that. I’m going to go do something kind of crazy and feel good about that because I know it makes me a better man.” That’s the type of legacy that I think about. And if I leave some cool projects in my wake as I do that, that’d be awesome too.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, I feel like that’s a good place to wrap up, but I guess before we do that, is there anything that you wanted to talk about that I didn’t ask you about?

Maya Gold Patterson:

No. I think though, if anyone’s doing some cool work in any cool work, honestly, I’m obviously open. I have some free time, believe it or not. So I guess I would just share that. Maybe I’ll leave my email for people to reach out directly if they’re working on anything cool, especially any cool collaborations in the vintage space, any cool design product startup stuff. I’m just here to sort of understand what people are trying to do and see if there’s some synergy, and if not with me, then maybe with somebody else. So I am open and more accessible than ever, I would say, right now. And yeah, just leave that.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay. Where can people find you online?

Maya Gold Patterson:

I know that’s a good question because I kind of am off socials, but my accounts exist. So I’m on Twitter @mayagpatterson, and then I’m on Instagram @mayapatterson. I’m not super active there. Maybe I’ll become more active. I don’t know. We gotta see, but usually there.

Maurice Cherry:

I feel like we’re sort of at this time where people are maybe trying to wean themselves off of social media.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

I don’t know if it’s…well, I think what it is, honestly, is that Twitter has lost its damn mind. And then all these other Twitter clones kind of popped up, and folks are like, “oh, well, now I’m on Threads, now I’m on Spill, now I’m on Spoutible,” and I’m like, I’m not going to be in six different places. I’m going to wait like a year and see if any of these still exist. And then maybe I’ll see like, okay, if I decide to migrate to somethin, because people have asked that about Revision Path. They’re like, “well, why isn’t Revision Path on Threads?” I’m like, “well, I’m squatting on an account, but I don’t think I’m going to ever really use it.” But we’ll see how things work out.

Maya Gold Patterson:

I know. It’s interesting. It’s in a really interesting space. I don’t know where it’s going to net out. I think because I’ve worked in social media now for a bit, I know that it’s not good for us. I know mentally it’s not good for us. And so that’s why I had to make the call for myself to quit smoking, which is like quit social media. Realistically, when you have a small business like you do, or any sort of project, using social media is really one of the best tools you have to get your work out there and make connections and stuff. So I think now I’m going to have to probably re-investigate my Instagram or something like that. But yeah, it’s just yuckily…I don’t know, it’s just not good for us to be consuming people’s lives in that sort of way that frequently. And I know I feel much better since I’ve been off. And when I do go on, it’s like through my desktop for like five minutes. I don’t think that I’m going to be on Twitter for much longer, which is so sad because like I said, I loved Twitter, but I don’t believe in anything that’s going on there. So I probably got to delete that, I guess Threads is kind of left or Spill.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I’m going to just wait and see. I mean, I talked about this on another episode, but I was like back in 2006, 2007, a bunch of Twitter clones popped up and there was like Yammer, there was Pownce, there was Jaiku… there were a bunch of them. And then within like a year or two’s time, they all either looked at other markets — like Plurk is, I think, huge in Taiwan — or they got bought out by a bigger company and then got closed down, or they just shut down. I don’t wanna…I think the way I said it in the last interview, I said, if Elon Musk is the problem, I don’t know if Mark Zuckerberg is the answer.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Oh, I know that’s right.

Maurice Cherry:

So maybe there might be just an option to divest altogether.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Maybe I think that there should be. I actually have thought about this as like a potential project, but more on that later. But yeah, get ourselves out of it. You know what I’ve been doing though, instead of scrolling? You know what I’ve been spending my time doing recently?

Maurice Cherry:

What’s that?

Maya Gold Patterson:

I’ve been going to the public library.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay!

Maya Gold Patterson:

I’ve been going to the public library, which is an incredible resource that is actually inspiring and gives you a lot of content for free that is not destructive to your mental wellness and health. And it’s been so…I like go there regularly and check out books and I spend so much time reading now, it feels really nice. I would encourage people to do that.

Maurice Cherry:

You heard it folks; support your local library. Maya Gold Patterson, thank you so, so much for coming on the show. One. It’s just great to have you back on the show, but then also just to have seen your glow up over the years, to see how you have grown as a person, as a designer, I mean, I’m going to be really excited to see what is next for you. And I’m so glad that you were able to come on the show, especially on the heels of such a big life change, to talk about sort of what that means in the greater context of your career and everything. So thank you so much for coming on the show.

Maya Gold Patterson:

I appreciate oh, thank you, Maurice. And thank you for creating this safe space. I mean, I am so happy. Like, you’re essentially the first place that I get to even share this news with. So just thank you for that and being always so warm and open, keep doing what you’re like. Your type of energy is what this world needs.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

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