I've always been inspired by fashion design, specifically the analog craft, textures, fabrics and process of making these objects. They are wearable and full of utility, yet beautiful and tailored pieces of art. They are also deep reflections of identity and culture.

Over the summer I was able to see two great museum exhibitions that both centered on fashion: At the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I saw “NAOMI,” an exhibit of fashion design and photography from Naomi Campbell’s modeling career and the designers she collaborated with. The other was “Fashioning San Francisco” at the de Young, which offered a gorgeous history of fashion in San Francisco from the 1800s to the present.

As product designers in technology, it can be so inspiring to see fashion’s marriage of function and style and how we relate to these beautiful, useful objects.

I love to knit, especially with big chunky fibers with a lot of color and mixed materials. The repetitive act of knitting is meditative — you have to focus and be present. I’ve been making things like hats, scarves, sweaters, blankets and big, floofy collars for friends and family. I’m slowly working “crazy sparkly knitwear” into my Zoom meeting persona.

I've been at Meta for 14 years. When I started, our design community across product design, UXR, content design and communication design was maybe 40 people. Now we are a global community of thousands of designers and researchers across these disciplines, as well as newer additions to the company like design operations and creative audio.

I started as an individual contributor in content design, and was the first manager, director and VP in the discipline. I eventually took on management roles for other disciplines like sound design (now creative audio), art and animation and product design for teams that span Meta. Throughout that time I’ve supported teams that cut across multiple Meta technologies, like keeping people safe on our platforms, looking after monetization experiences and supporting our cross-Meta design systems team. Most of my time at Meta has had a company-wide or horizontal view, which helps me stay objective across competing business needs and serve the incredible diversity of people who use our technologies.

I work to understand people's needs — like connecting to friends, discovering new ideas or doing business to support their families and communities. Then I try to make it easier for people around the world to do those things.

I also support a community of designers by helping make their jobs more satisfying. I think about questions like, “What does it mean to be a designer at Meta? How can this be a great place to develop skills and grow one’s career? How can designers help shape the future and create better experiences?”

Much of my time will be spent on helping people build a strong, positive relationship with Meta across design and creative experiences. I am also focused on how we maintain a high bar for quality in the work we do, that our design practitioners are supported in doing the best work of their lives and that we imbue equity and responsibility into our approach. I especially want every designer at Meta to feel a responsibility for our work in AI. AI is changing how people interact with technology and touches everyone at Meta in some capacity.

AI can be a useful tool for productivity. It can help designers speed up some of the busywork or overhead, like summarizing notes, sharing decisions and ideating more rapidly. I’m optimistic AI tooling can help free us up to get to the core craft of design faster, so we can focus on the parts of the work that we love the most and that we’re best at. Bigger picture, whenever a new phase of technology sweeps through our industry, it gives designers an opportunity to rethink our approaches and the status quo. It’s an exciting time to drive innovation.

One tool that comes to mind is Origami Studio, which is externally available and open to designers across the industry. Origami Studio was originally created internally in 2014 and has long been a helpful tool for doing high-fidelity design prototyping. Lately we’ve been using it to design AI experiences like Meta AI. We’re exploring ways to make it easier to design prototypes with AI, and I’m excited to see how AI can help us expand access to some of the technical aspects of design work.

First and foremost, we get to work on awesome technologies that are a big part of people’s lives around the world. Even a small design change on a seemingly tiny feature has an impact on so many. The things that we do well and get right have a global impact. We of course have to take this responsibility seriously to keep steering our technologies toward better outcomes for people. The combination of the apps and technologies we get to shape and the scale of our audiences make for incredibly meaningful work.

More broadly, designers play a critical role at Meta. Of course, it’s part of every discipline’s role to think about the people who use our technologies and innovate in responsible ways — but for designers and researchers, this is especially true. Excellent design requires us to deeply understand human needs and challenges and to weave this understanding into our innovations. To make technology more successful we need to help people succeed with technology.

Oh, I have a few! I still love to sketch and write on paper, so for other design-obsessed folks, I love to gift analog materials like special pens, washi tape or neat notebooks. Present & Correct in London (and also a delightful follow on Instagram) has a mix of new and vintage stationery, pencils, erasers and office supplies. On my recent trip to London, I scooped up tiny pencils, mini notebooks, old stickers and mail ephemera to give throughout the year. I also love to buy chunky hand-spun yarns from artisans like Knit Collage — both to knit things with and to incorporate their yarns as nontraditional ribbon for a spark of joy on other gifts.