As a kid, did you have dreams of what you wanted to be when you grew up?

I was always interested in the arts and when it came to picking a major for university, I chose interior design. It was a four year undergrad program but I dropped out after the first year. It just wasn’t quite what I expected, a lot more technical than I wanted it to be, and the culture just didn’t resonate with me. It was a really intense program and I thought: if this is an indicator of what life is going to be like as an interior designer, I don’t want it.

I’ve always been very much about work-life balance, never liked the idea of my career taking over everything. I was more interested in designing work around my life and even then, the pace of interior design just didn’t feel right for me.

So “Work to live, not live to work.”

Exactly. So during my first year of interior design, we had to take electives in the liberal studies. I picked sociology and psychology. I didn’t know what sociology formally was, but it just blew my mind that there are social sciences of studying people and society, and I was always drawn to that — trying to understand people and the human condition.

In the end I decided to switch my major to sociology. I did my undergrad and then a master’s in sociology, not really knowing what I wanted to do career wise, only that I enjoyed it. I figured that I’d figure that out eventually, maybe find a job in government as a civil servant, or maybe research… it was very open-ended, I really didn’t know at the time.

Then you completed grad school and eventually went into working in the field after your studies, right?

Towards the end of my undergrad studies, a couple of my professors encouraged me to apply for grad school and eventually, what would become my first “real” job. It was in academic research of gender and labour, as a research project manager at a Toronto university.

I feel like I just kind of fell into it though. I wanted to be an interior designer for so long and I was so sure of that, that when I realised it wasn’t for me, I suddenly had no idea what I wanted to do.

So I just ended up in this job in academia, wondering how I even got here? It felt like what I was supposed to do, but it wasn’t really what I wanted.

After that contract ended, my next gig was at a market research firm: still within the research theme but this time in a private sector agency. But, still, I never thought of it as a career per se. I just saw it as a job while I was figured out what I wanted to do when I “grew up”.

I noticed that your design freelance experience kind of overlaps with some of these early research jobs. When and how did design become part of your life?

Well, I left the market research job, I just quit. I went to travel solo for four months in Southeast Asia and a bit of Australia, which gave me a bit more perspective into what I wanted from life, which was more freedom.

When I came back, still kind of lost, I dabbled in food justice work for a bit. I helped out at a food social enterprise start up and that exposed me to a lot of small food businesses in the city. Through this, I learned about business and entrepreneurship by being behind the scenes and supporting them. I enjoyed the social impact of this work (with my sociology roots), and also briefly considered going into social work at this point.

In the background, I don’t know where I first came across the concept of “virtual assistance”, but I took a few months to learn as much as I could about it, and then shifted to entrepreneurship and being self-employed as a virtual assistant. What really attracted me to it was the flexibility and freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want, wherever I want. I realized were really important to me after travelling. Again, it ties back to regaining some feeling of control over my day-to-day life. For example, being remote allows me to be location-independent if I want to or need to be, and it helps greatly with my disabilities. Being a social worker wouldn’t have granted the possibility of these types of freedoms.

In the beginning, I kept my business quite general: doing administrative work, doing a bit of everything and anything for online entrepreneurs mostly in the wellness space. One of my first clients wanted me to do some graphic design for a coaching book she was doing, and that kind of reignited my interest in graphic and web design, which was something I was into as a hobby back in high school.

At first, I definitely felt like a fraud, but I was pushing myself. Sometimes I did things as experiments, even. With each new project or client, I could try something different and see if it worked or not.

After the first couple of these types of projects, I decided to focus on graphic and web design exclusively for the next couple of years. Over time I started featuring the graphic and web design stuff more and more on my website and portfolio and it gradually became what people sought me out for. I even took advantage of being location-independent and lived (and therefore worked) in Oslo, Norway for 5 months.

What happened next? How did you get from freelancing in design to landing your first role?

I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do at this point. I knew I didn’t want to be self-employed forever, and this was meant to be a transitional thing while I kept exploring. There was a lot of uncertainty being an entrepreneur, it was stressful and as someone who’s anxious by nature, freelancing wasn’t helpful for my nervous system. But beyond the stress, it was even just very practical matters like how do I earn more money? I was really tired of constantly having to watch money and not knowing what the next month will hold.

It was during this time that I first heard about coding bootcamps through a friend of a friend who just completed one. That was the first time I’d ever heard of such a thing and I instantly was attracted to the fact that it was short-term study for a whole career change (because I swore to myself I would never go back to school after six years straight of studying in university – plus another year working at one – which I’ve never fully recovered from).

I started looking into bootcamps, although I really didn’t feel like being a web developer was quite the answer. Through researching these programmes, I discovered UX Design — I never heard of the term before that. It sounded really interesting and I started heavily researching all I could find about it. What was most useful was that I interviewed a bunch of UX designers who were already working in the field.

You were basically doing those “prototyping conversations” that they mention in the book Designing Your Life!

(Laughs) Honestly it was just that I dumped so many jobs by this point that I really needed to make sure UX was a good fit for me. They’re a big investment, bootcamps! Plus, by now, I had a better and better sense of what I want and need from my work life.

In the end, after doing all these interviews, research and self-learning, UX just felt like the perfect combination for my background and interests in social sciences, web and graphic design, and business, and it offered potential in other lifestyle wants/needs like being able to work remote. I ended up doing a UX boot camp for three months. I also just wanted that piece of paper to legitimise it because I feel like that’s just what employers want before even looking your direction.

One of the reasons why I picked that specific boot camp was because it had applied projects. We got paired with actual organisations, which I feel was crucial. Getting real-life experience is nothing like a course that teaches theory. Theory won’t teach what to do when the client goes “we don’t have time to do research”, or when you’re forced to cut corners, or how to work with developers.

That said, having had actual work experience in web and graphic design helped me in terms of technical knowledge during the course and also afterwards while I looked for jobs.

Shortly after the course I got my first role in tech as an interaction designer at a SaaS company.

How was job hunt? What helped you land that first role?

It luckily didn’t take me too long to land my first role, about two months after I finished bootcamp. At first I got no bites when applying for jobs, which was understandable when I’m competing with others who have more work experience in the field. I honestly kind of lucked out that one of my bootcamp instructors shared a job posting after having met the hiring manager at a conference (I was also there but didn’t directly meet him). The hiring manager was specifically looking for a new grad so they were willing to take on someone junior. We were also able to connect over having attended the same conference.

I had a couple of interviews with them including a whiteboard exercise (which I was certain I bombed!). My curiosity must have been evident in the interview, which the hiring manager (my eventual manager) valued. My portfolio of real-life UX projects from the bootcamp did contribute a lot to landing the role, as well as my technical knowledge from my web design days and freelancing. These things helped demonstrate my knowledge and experience, and ultimately my potential to learn and grow.

What was it like when you then moved into UX roles? Was it what you expected?

I don’t think I knew what to expect so when I got my first job, never having been in tech or on a product development team, it was drastically different than me working for myself in my bubble, building WordPress sites, and wearing all the hats, doing everything from admin to marketing, to sales, to client management.

Not having worked within product development, everything was foreign to me. I didn’t know all the jargon like “backlog grooming”, “story points”, “scrum master”, or any of these team rituals and ceremonies. It was a steep learning curve at first and it took a while for me to get up to speed. I think that built up the impostor syndrome even more. Part of me felt like “what am I doing? I just did a course in it for barely three months” …

But you weren’t starting from scratch! You will have brought loads of transferable skills with you from your past endeavours. What were these?

Some were more specific like research or web design which was a hobby of mine even as a teenager. Other important skills like collaboration, systems thinking, organisation and teamwork were present in all my former jobs.

We bring so much with us from those previous roles. Looking back it all kind of came full circle, every job I’ve had adds to me as a designer and where I am today… but at the time it felt totally chaotic, my whole 20s I had no idea what I was doing.

It may have felt chaotic but it is so much more wholesome than doubling down on your first pick and then hating it for the rest of your life. Imagine if you stayed in interior design!

I definitely learned a lot about myself in terms of what kind of work environment I want, what kind of company, and ultimately what kind of lifestyle I want. Nothing was wasted and I don’t feel like I failed at any point, it all contributed to where I am now. Each thing got me a bit closer. Each thing makes me a better designer.

Was moving into design your last career change, or can you see yourself shifting into another line of work in the future?

I’m pretty content with being in UX design (finally!) and don’t currently feel a drive to explore something else. But never say never, and the world changes so quickly, who knows what’s possible in 10 or 20 years? UX definitely wasn’t even something I could have studied in university at the time I was an undergrad. One of the pluses of UX is how it’s such a big field, and if I ever get bored I can explore other domains, technological mediums, or specialise in a sub-area. There’s still so much to learn and grow even just in UX that I think it’ll keep my curiosity engaged for a long time.▮