Fanny Yung Ho

I really love solving problems and creating products, which is what led me towards industrial design. At Nike, I was able to work in a lot of different performance footwear teams - running, women's training, kids, and then innovation. I have a pretty good, broad perspective of what it's like to land something in the market on the inline side, business side, versus thinking of big future concepts on the innovation side. Most recently, when I came back from maternity leave, I wanted to work on innovation concepts for mothers, women, and kids. The last two projects I worked on, one was a nursing bra that is compatible with hands-free breast pumps that enabled athletes that were nursing to return back to sport. Another concept I worked on was a little kid shoe that was designed specifically for a baby's first steps. I like to say I really try to lead and innovate with empathy, thinking about those who don't really get innovation as much, just really trying to solve different problems than most spaces think about. Not a lot of people can have an idea and take it all the way through to the market, and I'm really proud of that because it just takes a ton of resilience to push your own ideas through. The fact that I was able to do that several times with something I was truly passionate about personally, not just professionally, was probably some of the most rewarding work I've ever done. I used my own child as a guinea pig as I was making prototypes for the very first little baby shoes I was working on, and connecting with so many female athletes who are going through such a challenging life stage of motherhood, where a lot of brands sort of forget about them, and being able to connect with them and empower them and build product for them - it's just purely magical to be able to have the ability to do that.