Designed Minds

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Andrea Nguyen: Andrea went from full-time employee to founder of Koi Studios, with both a bold leap and a deliberate, risk-aware plan. In this podcast, she pulls back the curtain on the real story: what pushed her to leave, what she focused on in year one, and how the business has evolved since. Along the way, she maps the honest tradeoffs betwee...

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Sadhana Pakala: Sadhana is a New York-based designer and creative project manager passionate about visual storytelling and building brand experiences that feel intentional and human. Her work spans branding, visual identity, and systems that help ideas scale. Coming out of corporate, she's now deep in a career transition — taking the skills she h...

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Ariella St. Rose. Ariella St. Rose is a Senior Product Designer at TKO, leading design for all enterprise and internal products for the Milan 2026 and LA 2028 Olympic Games. She holds a degree in Communication Studies and Interactive Media from the University of Miami. Ariella has lived in Mexico, Korea, Spain, and Portugal, and loves learning la...

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Parys Khazaie: Parys is a UX Designer and Researcher based in Los Angeles with a background in human rights and political science from NYU. They bring a systems-thinking approach to product design, focusing on how thoughtful design can reduce friction between people and the institutions they interact with. Currently, they're working on projects s...

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Blake Lemons:Blake Lemons is a product designer with a unique background in animation direction. After 15+ years writing and directing cartoons for Netflix, DreamWorks, and Nickelodeon, he recognized that user-centered design was the core of everything he had done. Now he's in the vulnerable middle of a career transition, applying the skills he u...

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Jong Lee:Jong is a freelance product designer and UX designer for the UXR Guild. With a background in journalism, sports radio, education, and management experience, Jong's journey into design has been a long and rewarding one. He considers himself a career nomad, cycling through different careers but one thing always remained the same; he has a...

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Eunji Jeong: Eunji is a design leader, mentor, and community builder driven by a passion for fostering inspiration and human connection. She calls herself a “community-raised designer” after, one day, realizing that everything that she knows and practices came from the leaders, mentors, and colleagues around her. She believes in slow, authentic g...

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Mirrie Choi: Mirrie Choi is a Product Designer I at CrowdStrike. With a unique background in art education, she brings her passion for creativity, learning, and community into her work as a designer. After making a big career leap into tech, Mirrie learned firsthand how daunting it can feel to step into the unfamiliar. She also discovered what be...

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Chelsea Choquette. Chelsea is a product designer with a background in public relations and communications, who made the natural pivot into UX after leading marketing and design teams for nearly 10 years. With a deep love for storytelling and a strategic mindset, Chelsea has spent the last several years designing enterprise-level products for comp...

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Jin Han. Jin is a product design lead and co-founder at Nearville, a peer-to-peer platform helping communities share and connect in new ways. With 6+ years of experience in UX and product strategy, she’s passionate about designing products that foster trust, joy, and meaningful connection. About the hosts: Sara Barber is a UX Designer at Arizona...

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Marlinda Galapon. Marlinda is an Automations & AI Specialist at Figma, with a background leading CX, AI, and automation strategy at Zendesk, Adobe, and Salesforce. She brings a strategic lens to AI adoption, systems design, and customer experience, helping teams operationalize LLMs, improve support efficiency, and design workflows that scale....

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Luany Leone. Luany is a Senior UX Designer at Adobe, community organizer at Designed Minds, UX mentor, and advocate for using design thinking to craft intentional, purpose-driven careers. After overcoming the hurdles of a career change and navigating the grind of the job search process, Luany is now dedicated to empowering designers to approach t...

For our next episode, we have a very special guest, Juan Rodriguez. Juan is a User Experience Designer who brings a rare fusion of artistic creativity, leadership, and strategic problem-solving to every project. With a foundation in retail management, sales, and community leadership across multiple industries and countries, he approaches UX with a deeply human-centered lens. His passion lies in tr...

For our 4th episode, we have a very special guest, Muna Abdulkader. Muna is a Product Designer who’s navigated this journey firsthand. After spending 5 years in her dream job in the arts, she embarked on a non-linear transition to dream job 2 in UX design. With experience across SaaS companies and nonprofit organizations, Muna brings a thoughtful perspective on mental blockers, mindset shifts, and...

For our third episode, we have a very special guest, Matt Paek.  Matt is a Senior UX Designer with a background in psychology and web development currently working as a consultant at Slalom. For close to 8 years, Matt has contributed to or led 10 different product teams both as a consultant and in-house designer, and he's enjoyed working in 6 unique industries. With such a wide breadth of experien...

For the second episode, we have a very special guest Karun Mukhi. Karun is a product designer based in NYC who grew up in Bombay, India and has worked in many industries including automotive, healthcare, jewelry, home decor and most recently, fintech. He loves solving problems and finding creative solutions for complicated situations. When not being a designer, he writes for an aviation magazine a...

For the first episode, we have  very special guests, Komal Rao and Devon Bray: Komal is a Product Designer at a Healthcare AI startup where she’s shaping the future of intelligent, user friendly healthcare experiences. She’s passionate about conversation design, making AI interactions feel less robotic and more human. An advocate for design communities, she thrives on collaboration, believing the...