Roots

Lacey Sabado is a UX Program Manager at Google, where she helps improve people’s everyday lives through meaningful user experiences. She completed her Master’s in Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Maryland, where she was the Graduate School Commencement Speaker and Most Outstanding Graduate Assistant of 2018. She also co-founded the first student UX organization, UXTerps, at UMD. She interned as a UX Researcher for The New York Times. Before that, she spent most of her 9-year career as an IT Manager at Procter & Gamble. In this episode, we talk about her student career at DLSU, her first UX Design role at P&G, choosing the right graduate school, UX program management at Google, and so much more.

Camille Villanueva is a Brand and Marketing Designer at Square, bringing product marketing campaigns to life through different media, such as illustration and photography. Four years ago, Camille took a leap of faith and left her job as a high school teacher in Los Angeles to become a designer in San Francisco. In her spare time, you'll usually find Camille juggling personal projects like puppetry, printmaking, photography, and cosplay. In this episode, we talk about the fundamentals of critique and feedback, Camille’s journey from teacher-photographer to designer and manager, building an illustration style guide, and so much more.

Andrew Tolentino is a Senior Product Designer at Credit Karma designing experiences that help people make financial progress and buy their first home. His passion lies in mission driven, user-facing products that help people make progress towards their goals. At a young age, he started building his own websites, eventually transitioning to product and UX design through his internships at agencies like MWWPR and fullSIX. In his spare time, you can find him in a pottery class throwing clay on a wheel, hand lettering, or in the kitchen, baking regularly. In this episode, we talk about how Andrew spent 8 years designing at Credit Karma, handling multiple product managers, evolving his design process, why designers should be more vocal, and so much more.

Arvi is Dad, Superman fanboy and Product Designer living in San Francisco. He has over 20 years of product and brand design experience. He is currently a Sr. Product Design Manager at Glassdoor helping people to find a job and a company they love. Previously, he was a Design Lead at Fitbit, leading the Activity and Exercise team to help people lead healthier lives. He was also a former Product Designer at Facebook with the Insights and Measurement team, building products for over a billion users worldwide. In this episode we talk about how Arvi designs for people, his work on preserving the legacy of those who passed away, designing for analytics, prioritizing work-life balance, tips for new design managers, and so much more.

Kylie Timpani is a Product Designer in Silicon Valley working on the way people consume and experience TV. Previously, she was the Senior Designer at Humaan, an Australian digital agency with an aim to make technology and the experiences that come with it more human. Kylie loves to give back whether that’s by mentoring early-stage designers, organising conferences like Mixin, or sharing knowledge freely. When she’s not designing, she’s falling off a skateboard and watching Filipino soap operas as a way to learn Tagalog. In this episode, we talk about how Kylie taught herself design, how to find opportunities through Twitter, why being responsible for your privilege is important, and so much more.

Anj Garong is a developer turned designer, now an Innovation and Creative Entrepreneurship student at Thames International. She loves seeing other people happy and successful, which is why she decided to focus on teaching and workshopping, and thus, started Ang Design Co. Before that, she spent 3+ years at Sprout Solutions, where she grew the Product Design team and spread the design culture. She has also been teaching at iACADEMY for several years now and sharing UX knowledge with communities and private companies since 2016. In this episode, we talk about how Anj found her focus in design, why teaching in an important constant in her life, becoming a creative entrepreneur, and so much more.

Dan Mall is the Founder & CEO of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative that helps in-house teams make better digital products with design systems. Having worked with clients like United Airlines, Harvard Business School, athenahealth, Capital One, Apple, dotdash, Google, Reader's Digest, The New York Times,  ExxonMobil, and more, Dan has a passion for playing matchmaker between surprising art direction and intuitive interaction design and building teams that are finely tuned to the solutions clients are looking for. In this episode, we talk about Dan’s design roots in Philly, how working with Jeffrey Zeldman shaped his career, fostering trust as a design director, his inclusive approach to building teams, and so much more.

Neil Bantoc is a UX Engineer on the Design Systems Engineering team at Facebook where he supports the Facebook Design System by creating standardized UI widgets that conform to the FDS design patterns and guidelines. Before this, he was a software engineer at Venmo — a PayPal company, and Freelancer.com Manila. As a student, he obtained his Bachelors in Computer Science at University of the Philippines at Los Baños and his Masters in Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. In this episode, we talk about Neil’s journey to becoming a UX engineer, his time at Carnegie Mellon, Facebook’s internal tooling for design systems, and so much more.

Archie Riva is an Enterprise UX Designer and Manager at Procter and Gamble.  From being a systems analyst and project manager in the Financial Solutions department, Archie transitioned to be a UX practitioner and became successful in incorporating UX methodologies and techniques tailored fit to the enterprise environment.  As a UX manager and having obtained master certification from Nielsen and Norman group, Archie continues to evangelize UX in his organization and seeks to reapply best practices from outside in. In this episode, we talk about project management for designers, learning to get buy-in from stakeholders, measuring the business impact of UX, and so much more.

Nelson Gomez is a Product Designer at Holotech Studios designing an app called Animaze where people can make fun videos on their phone with avatars that imitate their every expression. Moreover, he has designed lifestyle web and app experiences spanning from weddings (through the Knot) to fitness to name a few. After hustling to start his career and graduating from college in the Philippines, Nelson also volunteers for ethical non-profits and organizations that cater to LGBT, women, and homeless communities. In this episode, we talk about Nelson’s design education through UX Society, building a career in the US, finding community as a non-binary designer, and so much more.