Asking the Right Questions: Life, Hope and Moving Forward During the Pandemic
Summary
Details to come.
Key Insights
-
•
Starting meetings or classes with a simple warm-up increases attentiveness and presence.
-
•
Remote teaching often results in students keeping cameras off, impacting engagement, but this can be navigated with inclusive strategies.
-
•
Peloton taught the speaker practical leadership lessons including compassion, collaboration, and community support.
-
•
Consistency is critical in leadership and personal growth, exemplified by the speaker's 73-week exercise streak.
-
•
Inclusive leadership requires acknowledging where people are physically and emotionally, offering alternatives accordingly.
-
•
Organizations must consistently provide education and enforce policies addressing discrimination, considering intersectional identities.
-
•
Leadership must listen actively and avoid placing the burden of diversity work solely on marginalized groups.
-
•
Recognizing external stressors such as global events is essential to empathetic leadership and inclusive workplaces.
-
•
Language matters; everyday expressions can unintentionally exclude or offend marginalized communities.
-
•
Inclusion and accessibility should be embedded into every designer's responsibilities, not isolated to specialists.
Notable Quotes
"I had you all do a warm-up before we started to help everyone be present and calm."
"Sometimes working with a bunch of boxes and letters on Zoom was the reality of remote classes."
"Be compassionate with yourself and others. Not everyone likes high fives, and that's okay."
"Collaboration is key. I'm never alone in a Peloton class, even at 4:30 in the morning."
"Consistency is key. I'm on a 73-week streak right now, and that's pretty badass."
"Identity is not monolithic; policies should address layered experiences."
"It is not the responsibility of marginalized groups to do all the educating about their experiences."
"Listen is a skill that is not emphasized enough in leadership."
"Watch your language; terms like 'that's so lame' can be exclusionary or offensive."
"Inclusion and accessibility need to be part of every designer's role, even if today it is one person's job."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Operations is a verb. You’ve always been operating — the role just invites you to do it better."
Kate Towsey Jake BurghardtResearchOps AMA with Kate Towsey & Jake Burghardt
October 16, 2025
"Getting accessibility integrated into all company processes is essential because accessibility is a culture change."
Sam ProulxUnderstanding Screen Readers on Mobile: How And Why to Learn from Native Users
June 6, 2023
"Paper prototyping was the original scrappy; low fidelity tools produce different responses than high fidelity."
Steve PortigalLooking Back…to Look Ahead
March 26, 2024
"Tell people the ingredients and instructions—clarify what we’re looking for and support them to do their best."
Mackenzie GuinonM.C. Escher’s UX Research Career Ladder
March 9, 2022
"Choosing a research repository is a big battle in your organization; the right decisions can really help you succeed."
Sofia QuinteroThe Product Philosophy Behind EnjoyHQ
March 10, 2021
"As the delivery driver, I connected the dots, got people briefs, and sometimes said no to lofty leadership requests."
Briana ThomasThe Quiet Force: Uncovering Hidden Leadership in High-Impact Design Teams
September 24, 2024
"Rules and responsibilities documents give people concrete steps they can take towards accessibility."
Laura SchaeferDesignOps: A Conduit for Inclusion
September 9, 2022
"We are not just doing research to find stuff out; we need to show a return on investment on everything."
Jon White Erin MayUnsticking Research for Better Information Flow
March 11, 2026
"Our design ops team was a step behind the growth of our design team, solving the wrong problems at the wrong scale."
John Calhoun Rachel PosmanTwo Sides of the DesignOps Coin: Teams Ops and Product Ops
January 8, 2024