Kelly Stouffer

I think from a very young age, I've been very driven, but really, I would have to say my husband. I know that's corny, but we've been together almost 20 years, and he's really the one that opened my eyes to this profession in general. He got me thinking that with my background in psychology, with my background in client-facing roles, maybe UX design was something that I would be good at, so he really pushed me to do a boot camp. Oh, gosh, that was probably 8 years ago now. But yeah, I would have to say it's him.

I can't say enough good things about my mentor at my current company. She's very supportive in my growth and really helping me branch out. I would say her best advice would be that I'm always happy to jump in feet first and learn as I go. I think that's something that's really important that's not talked about a lot in my industry. A lot of people have imposter syndrome - you feel like you have to come in, you have to know all the answers, but I think a lot of that comes from being open to new ideas, ideas from other teammates that aren't in my line, so developers, QA, even associates have given me some really fantastic feedback as far as yes, this is working the way that you're expecting, but maybe what you're expecting isn't exactly what's needed.

I think to enter this industry, you really have to have a strong backbone and be very confident in your skill set, but also open to new ideas. You don't want to come in and be really shut off, closed off to your associates, especially when you're new to a company. I think also continuing in your learning journey and continuing to stay up to date on new articles is important. In the tech industry, things can change overnight, so really making sure you're committing to something that you're really passionate about, because it's not just a 9-to-5 job. It's something that you'll notice throughout your everyday life, like when I go to pay with my credit card, the UX experience on this website's terrible, the form's not right. Things like that really help start to stand out. But I think also, knowing that you are a woman in this industry, knowing that you're gonna oftentimes just be the only woman in the room, but that can almost be more powerful, because we hold different attributes than our male counterparts with empathy, sympathy. We're able to really understand customers and clients in a way, I think, that's very specific to the female insight.

Honesty, I think it's a huge overlooked attribute that you need to have in this industry. Integrity is very big as well. I really enjoy working with the company that I work with because we're really pushing green energy, so I feel like having that underlying positive impact is something that I've really benefited from. I think it's really helped me focus in my work and also take pride in my work.