Her Story
About Courtney
I started my journey going to college at the Academy of Art University for fine art where I'm a trained oil painter, graduating in 2005. I was hired to work on wine labels and marketing POS for a wine distributor in Southern California, and when they needed a website, I threw myself into it despite only knowing Photoshop and some Dreamweaver. I fell in love with the practice of blending art with technology and continued to propel myself into new technology spaces. I went from designing websites to working for a mobile shop when mobile apps became a thing, then spent 7 years at Amazon where I was their first designer to work on their AAA game engine, built a team of UX designers around that, moved into Kindle education building a reading app for kids, and fell in love with research and participatory design. I blended those skills into mixed reality and was the first designer to get Alexa outside of the home with Alexa Enterprise, really chasing after how new technology and art can change things and how the mediums we use can influence the newest innovations. After Amazon, I worked at DocuSign for a year where I had my son, and they hired me after they acquired a company called Live Oak with Zoom-like technology. During COVID, I proposed creating an online notary service since nobody was going on-site to get things notarized, and we launched that in 8 months. Microsoft then offered me a role in their research department leading the future of healthcare and what we could do with OpenAI and healthcare. I led a team there and built 13 prototypes in 6 months, and the important part was that we got to do the research, validation, build the tech, and sell it off to the right parts of health and life sciences within Microsoft. Working with AI, I realized data is at the center of everything, so I applied for a role in Microsoft Fabric and launched real-time intelligence and data activator within Fabric in another 8 months. I've really been following the trends and what's up and coming, pushing myself to learn more. Then the Salesforce role opened up, which was a step further in strategizing what the future of Salesforce could be. I'm now at the highest level a designer can go at Salesforce, responsible for looking at the platform as a whole and reimagining what Salesforce could be. I launched Agent Force Vibes, their pro-code solution, and I've been working on their Data360 platform, bouncing around to whatever the harder problems are to help the company solve them. What drives me to my role today is that ability and ask to do more with technology, and that's what I chase and try to achieve.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Courtney
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I think being able to be true to yourself and being very confident is so important. I tell designers this all the time, not just women, but we are trained in what we're trained in, and part of what being a good designer is, is human empathy. It's the human side of things. And you can't lose that, and you can't AI your way out of that. You're human. So being true to yourself and staying confident that you know those things and that you care about people, you care about the people you're solving for, and don't be afraid to put yourself out there, apply for those jobs, even if you don't feel like you have all of the skill sets that maybe the job posting says they need. I've hired several people before where their eagerness, their curiosity, their ability to ask questions maybe outshined someone with a stronger job history. Just put yourself out there, be confident, stay true to yourself, and be human. Those are the most important things.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think designers in general in technology right now are asking how is AI going to play a role in our career. We're already starting to see a shift in the ways that we work, the ways that we work with our cross-functional partners, and how this role is adopting. We don't have all of the answers right now. All we can do is continue to learn and to be able to be flexible and adapt to this new way of working and support each other in this transition. I think back to when the internet was invented, and how that completely changed the way people got information and worked and did things and what kind of companies spun up. Same thing right now, although I feel like AI is moving so much faster than when the internet started. Being able to keep up with all of the trends and companies that are spinning up and solving problems with AI is a challenge. Just being able to keep up with the speed at which things are moving, I think, is a little bit of a challenge, but I think the team at Salesforce does a good job of having a pulse and keeping everyone aware of what's going on in the industry and helping upskill the design teams and supporting them as they're continuing to learn. We're at different skill levels - there's some people who haven't really played too much with AI, and there's some people who are complete experts in it, and I think that having that spectrum of talent and knowledge brings us all along in the journey.
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