A meet-and-greet event where designers and engineers are chatting and finding teammates for the hack week competition
Designers and engineers at a meet-and-greet event for the hack week competition

Building community within teams

A healthy company culture isn’t just about collaboration—it’s about fostering an environment where people feel safe sharing ideas, asking questions, and learning from each other. Throughout my career, I’ve helped build this kind of culture by:

  • Identifying opportunities for engineers and designers to collaborate more closely. For example, inviting engineers to participate in conversations and review meetings for our nascent design system. Outside of project work, I tried to foster more informal opportunities, too. For example, I worked with engineering management to host a meet-and-greet event for people to pitch ideas and find teammates for our Hack Week competition.
  • Creating mentorship opportunities for teammates. While at Citrix, I was tasked to teach the design org about inclusive design. Rather than provide a “lunch and learn” style lecture, I established a learning program that included mentors. Participants would practice their new skills and then review their work with a mentor. This provided leadership opportunities, but also space to make new connections with other teammates.
  • Inviting cross-functional partners to provide feedback or to collaborate on solutions. For example, setting up a “town hall” session for the customer success team to provide insight on challenges customers were having.
  • Led DEI and employee resource groups (at zeroheight and Citrix, respectively) to create more inclusive environments and safe spaces for employees.

Many of these simple efforts or gestures created connections that made it much easier to collaborate or problem-solve in the future!

A large group of attendees chatting with each other at an exploreUX event
A meetup event I hosted about "A Day in the Life of a User Researcher"

Building community beyond the workplace

Beyond my internal work, I’m passionate about building spaces where designers can learn from each other, share their experiences, and grow their careers. Some of my external community-building efforts include:

  • Establishing exploreUX—a meetup I started in both Washington, DC and Raleigh, NC (2014-2019) as a way to make connections and learn more about UX. Over the years, we have had hundreds of members and hosted dozens of well-attended events.
  • Serving as Triangle UXPA’s Director of Community Events (2015-2018) and the Director of Mentorship (2018-2019). I took on more formal roles with Triangle UXPA to foster community and connection. A huge part of my motivation was to create a welcoming space for new UXers to launch their careers. I hosted dozens of events with hundreds of attendees over the years and through two mentorship cohorts, facilitated dozens of connections.
  • Providing opportunities for new voices in the community—As a design advocate who hosted several webinars, podcasts, and conferences, I was always looking for guests to participate. It’s convenient to invite your usual industry “go-to’s,” but I made it my charter to find new voices in the community. These practitioners were doing amazing work that deserved to be spotlighted—in some cases, the work was more relevant to the community. I wanted to inspire new speakers and audience members that their work was just as important to leveling up the community.
  • Conference organizing—Finding your “tribe” of people can be so crucial to one's career. It’s impactful to have people who can relate to you professionally. I’ve made several great connections and learned so much from attending the Information Architecture Summit/Conference. So when I was invited to co-chair the IA Conference for 2025, I was beyond excited! While it is quite a bit of work, hosting this in-person opportunity for practitioners to gather is so vital in keeping our community thriving—especially as so many conferences go virtual-only or completely fold.