Ep. 144: Civic and Service Designer Sarah Brooks

Civic and service designer Sarah Brooks grew up in Manhattan, the daughter of an actress and doctor. With a voracious imagination, she spent her days running around with the neighborhood kids or watching her mom on stage. As a teenager, she found her tribe in the punk rock scene, inspired by the DIY attitude and creative expression. After getting started professionally in TV production, sudden and profound tragedy struck, sending Sarah’s life on a radical detour through grief, healing, and rebuilding herself. The journey led her to a greater appreciation for emotional honesty, human connection and presence - qualities she also brings to her creative work as design executive at IBM, and as an advocate for social impact and regenerative design.

Read the full transcript here.

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Read the Transcript

Sarah Brooks: You have to operationalize it in a way that fits with things that spark their energy, things that they’re excited about, really like any culture change effort you’re going to find those people who are just quietly innovating, finding ways to hack the system.

Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today I’m talking to Civic and Service Designer Sarah Brooks. Sarah is currently serving as a design executive and IBM distinguished designer. She has also been a US Presidential Innovation Fellow under President Obama. Following that, she was the first Chief Design Officer appointed at the department of Veterans Affairs. With a background in life-centered, entrepreneurial and intreprenurial design practices, and the ability to pioneer transformational change, she works at the intersection of research, social impact, and regenerative futures. Just a quick listener note, while her story is ultimately uplifting and empowering, it does include mention of tragedy involving sexual violence and homicide. We don’t go into details but I did want to give you a heads up. And as you listen, her journey through profound grief following thee tragedy is poetically intertwined with her career path and design practice and has informed how she shows up, fully present, with all of her humanity to do the work of creating a world that works for everyone. Here’s Sarah.

SB: My name is Sarah Brooks. I’m based at the eastern most edge of Long Island in Montauk, it’s a small town, it’s very close to the ocean. It’s really quiet, it’s peaceful and I’ve been privileged to be able to work remotely. I’m a service designer and civic designer and an advocate for design decisions and actions that center people and the environment. Currently I’m an IBM distinguished designer, so I’m leading a mission to support product and service teams across IBM business units in delivery excellent experiences through a system of tools and practices. 

Prior to IBM I served in the Obama administration at the US Department of Veterans Affairs as the chief design officer and I worked to improve veterans access to services following a yearlong White House presidential innovation and fellowship. So I’ve worked as a designer for a long time, since graduating art school in the late 90s and have forged a path to work that I really love. 

AD: Well, I am very excited to pick that all apart and learn about all of it, but before we get there to what you’re doing now, I always like to go all the way back to the formative years because I feel like it really sets the stage for the human that you are now. Will you paint the picture of your childhood for me.

SB: Sure. I was a Manhattan kid. I was born in the city and lived in a little apartment on the Upper East Side. My mom was an actress and later she became a producer and then much later she became an executive coach and my dad was a doctor. They both really loved their work, they were super engaged in their professions and outside of that they had a lot of shared interests. They were very connected through progressive politics and they were both avid readers. They came from kind of different cultural backgrounds. 

My mom was raised in California. Her parents had moved before she was born. They came from Missouri where they grew up. And then my dad’s parents fled the pogroms in Ukraine. They made their way to America and they settled in New York. So my mom moved to New York to start her acting career where she met my dad. They had me and then two years later they had my sister, Melissa. So we stayed in the city, in Manhattan until I was six and then we moved out to Chappaqua, it’s about an hour north of the city. 

AD: It sounds very glamorous, the daughter of a doctor and an actress and they’re very progressive. I’m imagining kind of a cosmopolitan, intellectual socialite situation. 

SB: I do feel very privileged to have had a lot of interestingness in my family life. I think that’s right, you know, they were both social and they did love to gather people in our home. 

SB: There was a lot of creative culture in the house, they’re both very curious learners. And I think that all happened amidst this feeling of a very free range childhood. We lived in this neighborhood that had all these kids and we would just play together in this network of woods and streams that you know, were sort of… This network connected by all these different families homes, right? And we made forts and we ice-skated and it was like very wholesome.

And then there was that home life of my parents really bringing us into their world and really treating us like little humans even when we were kids. They were very inclusive I think it really encouraged both my sister and I to explore our imagination and gave us really a huge gift of encouragement to pursue our interests without pushing any particular agenda. 

AD: Wow! And so what were those interests? What were you gravitating towards?

SB: [Laughs] I think I was a dreamy kid and I was always really curious about everything -

SB: I loved stories about pixies and magical beings and flower fairies and I think I was maybe spending all that time outside too, I really felt a sense of that aliveness in nature. And particularly bonded with trees - It’s funny because I still feel, yeah, most grounded when I’m in the woods. And I read like crazy, I drew, I painted, I did ceramics, I made little beaded jewelery, I meticulously decorated my dollhouse, I was just kind of into it all. 

All the materials, all the things, just kind of, I didn’t feel the boundaries around those things, or that there were, you know? 

AD: Right, oh, wow! Okay, I just went there with you for a minute, we’re in the woods together, we’re making a fort, we’ve got dollhouses in there and we’re totally arguing over the color scheme, but we love it! [Laughter]

SB: Exactly, like how do you get the wallpaper to not buckle around those windows and door frames, that’s tough, that requires some skills. 

AD: So what did you mature into in the adolescent years and it sounds like, I mean when you moved to Chappaqua, did you still have access to the city, were you still a Manhattan kid for most of your life? 

SB: Yeah, I think I was - there was a lot of spanning between both of those worlds, so really kind of living in that outdoors world and then heading back into the city. My mom and dad brought us in for a lot of theater. When my mom was in a show we were there and/or we were seeing her friends in theater. 

AD: What was it like to see your mom perform? 

SB: Well, [laughs] the first time I went to see her perform, I think it was a learning moment for my parents. I think I went with my dad to a rehearsal that my mom was having when I was about four and she was playing a role where she was this beleaguered, divorcee, going to the bank to try and get a loan and they wouldn’t give it to her. And apparently I was sitting and I was sitting and I was sitting and watching it and some point I just burst out and said, “Stop being mean to my mommy,” [laughter] and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t think I understood. 

Then they explained the process to me, so it got to the point where later, I loved it! I think theater is really magical and wonderful and I was always really proud of my mom for being an actor, I thought it was a very brave thing to do. 

AD: It is a very brave thing, I’m glad that that was the vibe that you were picking up on her bravery as well as her talent. And I’m glad that you protected her from that bad banker [laughter]. 

SB: I think I did my part!

AD: So in adolescence, you’re still enjoying the best of the city and the best of outdoors and what are you, what kind of young adult are you maturing into and how are you expressing yourself creatively? 

SB: You know, my parents were also really super grounded in a work ethic. So I started working pretty young, I actually started helping a neighbor organize a mail order business she had when I was in junior high school [laughs] and then in high school I worked at the proverbial, terrible ice cream and burger joint in town. And so I was working and that was, I guess, helping me develop some discipline [laughs]. But I think angsty and awkward are very appropriate terms for how I felt most of my adolescence. 

I definitely went through a rough time and I experienced a lot of exclusion in my school. I think some of it came from other people and some of it came from my own internalized sense of, what I thought about that culture, you know? It was very clique’y and I felt like a lot of the kids were cruel, like newsflash, kids are cruel, right? New to nobody [laughs] but we all know this. But I was so sensitive and it really got to me and I really couldn’t stand those cliques. So all of this it kind of coincided with me bumping into the world of punk rock and the downtown art scene in New York City and the gay culture in New York City. And so I started hanging out in downtown, which was way more fun than the keg parties that were happening in the woods in Chappaqua. 

AD: Hmm-mm, yeah, I’m with you, we know now as adults that kids are cruel, but it’s still new when you’re a kid yourself. I experienced some exclusion myself and I still was like so, I was disappointed. I just didn’t understand how people would want to exclude other people; it just didn’t make sense to me. So I’m sensitive too, and I appreciate where you’re coming from. It’s probably what drove me to the punk rock scene as well, honestly. I felt really accepted there and I’m excited that you found it as well, and were you, was that your tribe and did you feel like angry with the world or rebellious or did you just feel like this is creatively free and really resourceful and it’s more my people than the keg party people? 

SB: [Laughter] Yeah, I understand what you’re saying though about not understanding it. I think that was my fundamental challenge too, like I just did not understand. 

AD: It doesn’t seem right, yeah, it was like -

SB: Exclusion, right?

AD: Yeah, I’m just like, wait, you like these people in certain context, but in other context you don’t? That just doesn’t make any sense. 

SB: Exactly, this moral relativism, it was -

AD: Yeah. 

SB: Very dodgy. 

AD: Yes [laughter]. 

SB: I think I did feel that I found my tribe in punk rock and I think it was a lot of those things that at the time, it’s funny, I would say I was very values aligned with its expression, yes, it was about creative freedom. Also about DIY -

Oh, you don’t like the way these pants look? That’s cool, you know, you just take out this seam, you do that, you put some safety pins here, like cut the sleeves off your t-shirt, it just felt like there was a lot of making energy and expression of all of it with the clothes and with the music and with the art, it was like all the layers, I think, had that very baked in -

AD: Yes! And the entrepreneurialism too, you don’t want us at your venue, fine, we’ll book this other warehouse. You know, or we’ll make our own flyers and we don’t need to be on your record label, we’ll record it ourselves. The DIY ethos was so, just enchanting to me because it was complete creative freedom, you know, F the rules, there are no rules. Everything can be new and everything… And there was also a raw honesty, like emotional honesty that I really resonated with. 

SB: Yes, me too. I wish we had met each other during that time, it would have been really fun [laughter]. 

AD: I know! I know! We would have totally been friends. 

SB: At an Iggy Pop show?

AD: Yes! Yes! At Maxwell’s or like CBGB’s or [laughs] -

SB: Yeah, Mud club or, yeah, I mean there was so much great music going on then and that part was so joyous too. So fun. 

AD: I’m guessing your parents being as progressive as they were, they probably weren’t frightened of your punk rock self?

SB: Interestingly, they weren’t. I think my dad was a little more freaked out, I think my mother, there were probably a lot of discussions that I was not part of. 

AD: Okay. 

SB: Where she was like talking him off a ledge [laughter]. It was like, why is my daughter getting a Mohawk, I’m unclear? Yeah, I think there was a lot of trust, there was trust. You know, and I was like also when I was home, I think I was relating with them and connected enough and there was enough of that trusted relationship and communication, that it went a long way toward them being willing to let me just, at 16, get on a train and just do whatever I was gonna do in New York with my best friend Jennifer. I always came home. 

AD: How did this inform your life choices moving forward?

SB: Yeah, you know, I was also doing a lot of theater at that time, a lot of performance myself, singing and musical theater geek and theater. I think, obviously, influenced by my mom and the fact that that just felt very natural. And it was also really developing a love of film and so I felt as if I wanted to do something in that realm and so I actually applied early decision to college at Denison, which is a small liberal arts college in Ohio, but they had a great theater program. And I went to rural Ohio for a year. It was -

AD: It sounds like a mistake [laughter]. 

SB: You can see where this is going!  Okay yes on the theater program, that was good, did a lot of shows, but no on living in rural Ohio. So I transferred to Boston University and that’s where we would have reconnected, would have met you at the Rat in Boston. 

AD: Yes, the Rathskelter -

SB: Yeah!

AD: And we would have seen the Modern Lovers. 

SB: Exactly! [Laughter] Yes, yes, yes, oh my god. Yeah, Boston was fun, it was fun to live in the middle of the city and then you know, you’re also surrounded by all these other schools and meeting a lot of other people and existing in a city. So I did a double major there, I did English and film and I was able to spend a month in London, seeing theater. I did a semester in Paris. Gradually kind of, yeah, gaining some momentum there with my interests. 

AD: And so then were you thinking actress, theater, film, are you thinking producer, where was this all taking you?

SB: I was thinking film director - Because it incorporated all the other arts, like you have lighting, you have the sets, you have the costume, you’ve got the cinematography, it’s like all those things that I’ve been very hands-on with, as a kid, I felt like film blended those in a really beautiful way, plus the acting. It just felt like a medium that included all of these things that I loved. Except my challenge was, I was never interested in the Hollywood film of my moment, I was really interested in European art house cinema, Japanese, Indian cinema, much more character driven kinds of stories. Still the dreamy nature, perhaps overshadowing, you know, what was going to be possible. So I didn’t know how that was all going to go together, but yeah, that was my vision. 

AD: Well, I mean I like it, it makes sense and not being sure how it’s gonna go together is pretty much everybody at that stage of life right?

SB: Yeah, so true. 

AD: You seem like you have a brain that likes to figure out systems and being a director is sort of the galactic overlord of the system of creating a story and in all of its dimensions. So that kind of makes sense to me. Did you graduate and then start your career in film and television?

SB: Yeah, I got to do an internship at WGBH, the public television station in Boston, I worked on one show when I was in school and then -

SB: The year I graduated, it was like, it was a recession, it was a really hard time to find work. And so I’d gone to Albuquerque, New Mexico with my college boyfriend, that was his hometown. And I just felt drawn to that place, such an extraordinary landscape. It’s just beautiful, beautiful, big sky, incredible light, you know, terrible idea from a career perspective to go to New Mexico, but I felt drawn to it. So that’s what I did. So I got a job there, you know, drove my car full of stuff, it crossed the country and I did find a job at the one decent production company in town. So I was so excited, you can imagine, right? 

AD: Yeah. 

SB: It’s like it’s a job, I don’t know what I’m going to be doing, working, helping the guy do all the things. There was one other woman, it was a very small production company, but they were starting to take on some, a little bit of film work, like feature length film work that was coming to town and then they did a lot of commercial work. I figured, okay, this is a place where I’m going learn chops. The fourth week of work, my boss put a bouquet of roses on my desk and asked me out to dinner. 

AD: Oh no!

SB: So that was the end of that. It was such a bummer, yes, it was so sad, I just, I just didn’t go back, yeah. No, I want to work, this is what I’m here to do [laughs], I do not need a date, I want a career path. Yeah, that was actually really hard, it was really, really disappointing and frustrating and -

AD: And if it’s the one good production company in town, I’m sure you felt like not only did you lose a job, but you lost, like burned a bridge?

SB: Exactly, because he knew everybody else and you know, I was just like -

AD: And now he’s been rejected, so -

SB: Yeah. 

AD: Oh Sarah, that sucks!

SB: Yeah, it did suck. So, I was like hmm, I’m in New Mexico, I’m broke, I have no job, like what can I do? I worked as a horse wrangler, I worked as a waitress, like PS, I was a terrible waitress! So I finally, finally, and it was through the underground arts scene, because Albuquerque has pretty interesting underground art scene. I was starting to meet some people through the other women in that office, that I left. 

She’d been there a long time, so through her I met somebody who was working at the public television station there, it was KNME, so I got another production assistant job, basically, on the crew, and it was a public affairs show, so we were shooting on location every week. And then I was a little bit back in the saddle, like learning how to go on location and how to wind a cable properly and how to [laughs], you know, just kind of observing how that all works and what it means to go shoot on location. 

So that ended up being pretty interesting. But after the end of a year there and then doing that, I got a job offer back east at a theater, it was called the White Barn Theater. It’s a regional equity theater and the opportunity was to be assistant house manager. So I went back to Connecticut to do that job. And then from there I started freelancing a little bit as a production assistant in New York City, just started to find my way through that ecosystem. 

AD: Sorry, I have to ask about the boyfriend that you’ve, did you leave him in Albuquerque or?

SB: Well, he actually became a really famous comic and podcaster, but he and I broke up at the end of college. So he wasn’t even part of the picture when I went to New Mexico after college. I just went. It was just because I’d been there, you know, and as a kid from the East Coast I hadn’t otherwise ever been there or even been to a desert environment that was quite like that. I just got super captivated with it, yeah. 

AD: I’m up to speed now. Now you’re back [laughs] after the Connecticut house manager job, you’re doing freelance in New York City as well and so, right? 

SB: Yeah, yeah. 

AD: Okay. 

SB: I worked a little bit on music video and was, actually I’ve got a, ah, full disclosure, the same damn thing happened to me. Oh a set, it’s sad because it’s obviously still a pattern that continues, right, of just getting hit on, you know, way too early in an unwelcome way, right? And so yeah, I was at a really hip and happening production company and the dude who was married to his wife, who he had the production company with -

AD: Oh my god. 

SB: Also hit on me after a shoot, so I was like, okay, that’s not gonna work either. Just trying, just trying to figure out how to move through the world. 

AD: I’ve found this so frustrating as well because I knew how to sort of politely say no, I’m not interested to somebody who was a friend or a stranger, but when it happens in the work setting, you know, you still have to say politely, “I’m not interested.” But it means that your career opportunities are suddenly detoured, derailed, thwarted in some way. So then… And I don’t know if you ended up doing this too, but I would end up doing everything I could to avoid being in that situation, trying to anticipate it, trying to -

SB: Yes. 

AD: Not encourage it on any level, but over-compensating and it was just too much, it was a layer of stress that was not relevant to what I wanted to be doing and it was, I guess, a learning experience, but it was not a welcome one. 

SB: Yeah, I think that’s really well said, right? Because it’s just all this emotional labor and navigation and stress and yeah, it was a bummer. And it’s just not right, right? Just obviously it’s not right.

AD: It’s always frustrating and disappointing, but at the same time it’s no longer a surprise. 

SB: Yeah, exactly, there is that, and there was always the network too, of women who were always talking to one another and kind of trying to point each other in, away from the predators, if we know them. Not that you can map that territory fully,I definitely felt as if there was some solidarity there, women having each other’s back. 

 Just learning to navigate, but I think what happened next though was really the thing that stopped me in my tracks, which was that my younger sister was murdered in an attempted rape in California where she had been living. 

AD: Oh Sarah. 

SB: Yeah, that happened right as this initial navigation through these workplace waters was happening. I can speak about it now and not to say that it’s not beyond the most heart-breaking thing I could have ever imagined because it was and it is and it’s been many, many years and I’ve done a lot of therapy and emotional work and healing around it to the point where I can just talk about it with some equanimity. Although I’m always a little bit cautious of just throwing it out there because I feel like it’s a very heavy thing to say, but it is that reality of what happened at that time. 

AD: Well, I appreciate you sharing that with us. I can imagine it would be hard to talk about your life without sharing that because it’s such a big thing that happened and yet, yeah, when you do share it, it’s like, okay, you don’t know this is coming, but get ready for a wallop, I’m about to tell you something obviously I don’t have the same experience, so it’s impossible for me to fully empathize with that, but it is enormous. And so, I’m sure it changed your life and continues to change your life. 

SB: It does. I think about her every day and mostly it’s happy now, in terms of evoking a memory that’s grounded in love and connection, something that was fun or funny because we’re just two years apart, so we were always so close. 

AD: And you’re the big sister. 

SB: Yeah, that was hard, the survivor guilt is really difficult and I think the post-traumatic stress was really, really intense. I mean that level of grief is extremely dissociative and I was really far outside of my body for a very long time. And really because I just couldn’t do daily life. I found a great therapist. I began going to therapy twice a week and I would do two hour session and my therapist was extremely compassionate and she was really skilled at coping with deep grief. She’d been through many of her own traumas, she’d done her own healing work and she shared, you know, not over-shared, but had great boundaries, but shared in a way that allowed me to feel as if there was somebody who understood, very, very deep grief and had moved through it. 

That was a major part of how I redefined my job. My job at that moment was like, okay, stay alive because I have to stay alive for my parents who were so heartbroken. So my question to myself is how do I do that because it was not easy. So therapy was really important and I had one older friend, I was still living in Westport at this time, she was an actor, my friend Brett Somers, who was actually a hilariously funny person. Did you ever see Match Game when you were growing up? 

AD: I feel like I saw some reruns at some point, it’s not really, it wasn’t really on my -

SB: [Laughs] I just say it because okay, if it wasn’t on your radar, it wasn’t. It was so funny. It was just one of these goofy TV shows with celebrities, but she used to sit next to this guy Charles Nelson Riley and they would just laugh it up. He was just this wonderfully campy guy and she had this deep, deep resonant laugh, so I think a lot of people know her laugh. She would come over to the house and she just got me out for a walk every single day for two years. 

AD: What a good friend. 

SB: She would just be like, come on, we’re going, yeah, we’re going out and we would walk for an hour or two hours because it was just so hard to have casual interaction with people. If someone ever said, “How are you?” I would just go into a complete panic. Life became about me taking care of myself, going to therapy, getting outside with Brett, sticking close to my mom and my dad, a really small handful of friends because a lot of people got very scared away. People don’t know what to say, so they don’t say anything and/or they slink away, right? 

Because they’re freaked out, understandably and I also understand people not knowing what to say. There is no right thing ever to say, for deep grief like as I process it now and think about it now, I often feel that people felt as if they had to have an answer or something, there is no answer. For me what was so helpful was just when people were able to be with me, however I was, however unravelled I was, and who could just hang.

AD: That is, you know, not to bring us to the current situation, but we’re in a global pandemic and there’s a lot of grief going on around us, so I think you saying that is actually really helpful for this moment in time when a lot of people don’t know how to be there or show up for all those people that are grieving. 

SB: Yeah, that’s so true; I think about that a lot. Yes, there’s so much suffering right now and so many levels and types of grief and so many different types of losses, so many different dimensions. So yeah, it’s hard. I feel though, like the best way and the only way for me that I’ve ever had any success with is to be present with the grief. Like it’s just moving through it and feeling it and processing it and composting it, as a way to get through it because all grief lessens with time. 

However, my observation is when we are a little more consciously with it, things work out better, you know? 

AD: So, did you learn that from your therapist, from your healthy upbringing or is that something you had to learn in real time as you were going through it? 

SB: Maybe a little bit of all of that. Yeah, but I really did make an effort to spend time and seek out other people who had been through some kind of trauma and I really learned how to be with myself in that heaviest of things that I could have ever possibly imagined happening and learned how to be with other people and not have it be overwhelmingly scary. And so I do actually feel really grateful for that. 

During this time what else was I doing? I was cleaning houses; I couldn’t really talk to people [laughs] so I cleaned houses. I walked; I developed a Zen meditation practice. Kind of picked this small constellation of things, things that I could do and just sought to be with other people who were also suffering some kind of grief and you know, just be present with each other. But I felt a lot of shame for a long time, like coming out of it, which I did over a period of years and it was really, it was literally years. 

It took many years and I felt so broken for so long and around that time people weren’t speaking as openly about trauma and/or mental health. People didn’t talk about going to a therapist -

AD: When was this, this was in the 90s?

SB: Yeah. I think society is in a much healthier place now around all of this. I’m really heartened by the fact that we’re getting more culturally attuned to mental health ups and downs and just like you said, the pandemic has brought mental health to the fore and I feel like people are sharing. I’m hearing people speaking about methods that are helping them; people are talking about EMR and DBT, different types of talk therapy. There’s all kinds of therapy modalities out there and I’m hearing a lot of people talking about them in different kinds of podcasts and meet-ups and here and there. But out in the public, across all kinds of different kinds of professional communities, not just self-help communities, so I think that’s healthy, we’ve got to get through this together. 

AD: Yeah, I agree. I think it’s been de-stigmatized to a degree where we can all sort of talk about it. It’s been normalized, so we can talk about it and be kind of honest and not have to be ashamed and that’s what I was going to ask you, is like, is that what the shame was about? It’s just like you thinking you should be okay when you weren’t? 

SB: Yes and I think I probably had a pretty tough edge [laughter] -

AD: Yeah. 

SB: Coming at it -

AD: Punk rock. 

SB: The school college years, yeah [laughs]. Pretty sure that was true. And it just, just feeling so flattened really took that edge off and I felt so vulnerable without it and I felt like, you know in New York, a lot of people are look, argh, it’s touch-feely stuff, blah-blah-blah, don’t want to talk necessarily, didn’t want to talk about feelings. And so I felt, yeah, the shame was like, well, I do want to talk about feelings, I need to talk about feelings. I’m just learning how to function again as a re put back together person. 

I couldn’t pretend everything was all like calm, cool and collected, there was just no way I could even create a veneer or a façade of that, so I just felt very exposed all the time and I think that was part of the source of that shame too. 

AD: What an intense journey. I feel like in the searching for positives, kind of way, you probably learned so many practical and deep and valuable life lessons that have made you a stronger individual, not tougher, but more resilient. I hate that people think you can’t be tough and sensitive at the same time. Yes, you can, it’s just toughness means that I’m able to endure a lot. It doesn’t mean I’m not feeling it while I’m enduring it. 

SB: Yeah, totally. One of my favorite co-workers from my San Francisco days had a daughter who was about nine at the time my friend and I were working together. Her daughter met me and said to her mom, “I like Sarah, she’s tough and cuddly.” [Laughter] 

AD: Perfect, right, yeah? 

SB: I think that’s kind of what you’re speaking about [laughter]. 

AD: To experience being so flattened, as you said, and putting yourself back together, I’m sure you gained wisdom and a perspective that informs your creative career, but also informs just the very way you navigate the world and other people. 

SB: It does, it really does and I’ve been in this mode now for so long and I’m so grateful for what I did learn along the way. You know, I tell my friends and my family that I love them, a lot. I do have some sense of, like today is the day, we have now, I don’t know about later, this is it, for all intents and purposes, this is it. This moment. 

AD: Yeah.

SB: So I feel that it’s a gift to be more grounded in the moment, as an orientation to life, which is something that that time really gave me in addition to wanting to just be more emotionally honest with people and express, you know, express love. I feel more love and more joy now and more excited to share it because I’ve known such sadness and grief, so it’s all kind of like the high corresponds to the low. 

AD: Are you better able to cultivate joy?

SB: I think I find joy in very simple things and always to make connections with people are still the more important thing. I mean I’d like to say that I never get hooked by the BS in life, it’s about just getting the most toys and the status and all this kind of stuff, but I’m not immune. [Laughs] However, I definitely have more of a perspective on people, connections, human connection being the most important thing, authentic human connection and emotion. And so I work in business now and I just feel like it’s really important to be a full human and not be a business robot. 

AD: So this is making sense then, that full, honest, human connection is one of the reasons you, forged a path in design for social impact? 

SB: Yes, I think that’s exactly right.

AD: Can you trace the path for us from putting yourself back together to working in business now and not being a business robot?

SB: [Laughs] Not a business robot. 

AD: I’m sure there still are a lot of business robots you work with and so you have -

AD: To almost teach them how to let their circuits [laughter] fray into becoming a real human. 

SB: Or else they’re giving me side-eye, I don’t know, one or the other. Well, so I think after I felt strong enough, coming out of those years of grief, I went back to school and I chose to go west, I went to California College of the Arts and I put together a degree that was digital media, it was printmaking, it was sculpture, textiles and so when I graduated that, it was ’96 and really you just couldn’t walk two feet down the street without stumbling over a tech start-up. And that industry was just attracting people from every different discipline and so I fell into that work. And I started as a producer, kind of went back to drawing on that film background and then I started to slowly move into the field of user experience as it was coalescing and developing. 

And I worked across a bunch of different industries and media, healthcare, financial services, education. And worked at a lot of start-ups and it felt a lot like film. It’s like a very ensemble nature of the work when you’re like, hey, we’re gonna make a product. We’re gonna put it out into the world. A lot of that work was fun in those early days of the web and I loved that things were constantly evolving and it was very DIY [laughs]. It really helped to be super curious and there was always  more to learn. 

Even in that rev, the next rev of work, it was still super male dominated. There were very few women leaders. The aggressive style of leadership was the thing, you know? So it was a struggle in that way and it was kind of a bummer. I didn’t see very many models, but I just kind of kept going. I kept going because I was building chops and it was like in this take two of my career. I just would find that every workplace gave me a different perspective. 

And as I was saying, going through all those industries was interesting but about a dozen years into that I did get pretty burned out on that venture backed start-up scene and I really wanted to connect with people who were interested in shifting those kind of social, economic, ecological conditions and moving toward greater equity. But I had no earthly idea how to do it. So I began researching, I just figured that I had to figure it out, so I was researching people were doing projects that I thought were interesting and I found my way to this network of impact investors and foundations and social entrepreneurs who their work was super enlivening to me. So I just started reaching out to people basically and building relationships and -

AD: This is fully gutsy from somebody who had a hard time being around people just a few years earlier. 

SB: You know, I think there was a little bit also of that kind of like, what is there to lose? I don’t have anything to lose -

SB: I’ve just lost the most important thing and I lived, you know -

AD: Yeah. 

SB: This is not a big deal. So it give me a different bar, I guess for that too -

SB: For my original base level of chutzpah. 

SB: Yeah, so I started making my way and just forging a path. One of the people that I had crossed paths with made a really strong impression on me, was Maria Giudice, she was the founder of a design firm that’s called Hot Studio and she and I are about the same age, she grew up in Staten Island. She also loved Rocky Horror [laughs] you know, she was a pioneer in digital design and she grew this studio into a real powerhouse in San Francisco. And I had done a couple of consulting gigs along the way there and in 2012 I pitched her on this idea of establishing a design practice that was gonna be specifically focused on social impact. 

That studio was already working with a lot of nonprofits, it was already in her DNA to do that kind of work and she thought it sounded interesting and she was game, she was really gutsy too. She was like, yeah, let’s figure it out, the economic models are weird and difficult, we don’t really know how to do it, but let’s try and figure out what we can do. 

So we supported a bunch of nonprofits, it was so fun, it was really, really fun. I loved the culture, the creative culture that she created. It was very supportive, very embracing of risk taking. So we got to work with a lot of nonprofits who were doing product design. We held office hours with social venture accelerators, we mentored the second class of Code for America Fellows and networked with groups of networks, like the pop tech organization, if you know them, are in Shareable magazine and people who were convening communities, people who wanted to do this work. 

And we would tag in and connect with them. So it was really action packed two years, was like, yay, this is so great, okay, we’re figuring stuff out. And other stuff is really hard and then Hot Studio got acquired by Facebook. 

AD: Oh! I didn’t see that coming, okay. 

SB: [Laughs] I didn’t either! And Facebook and I were mutually disinterested in each other, so it was really interesting. I’d done a guest lecture at the Stanford d.school and got invited to teach a class, like right at the same time. It was like this Facebook thing happened; it was like in one millisecond. I was like, argh, you know, this practice is gonna get stopped short and yet all these other doors opened. A lot of… It was like an aqua hire, so a lot of the people went to Facebook. Not everybody, but a lot, most. 

I got invited to teach a class at this Stanford d.school, I got invited to teach living systems dynamics at Centro Diseño, it’s an art school in Mexico City, a very vibrant place. Got invited to write a book chapter about living systems dynamics that I was teaching at Centro and that we were working through it at the d.school. A lot of these great opportunities happened in very rapid succession. I give a lot of kudos and gratitude to Maria for being open to that experimentation because I think a lot of those great things came from her support. I love her. 

AD: I love too that it sounds like just as you were getting going on this thing, it could have felt like it got derailed, but it really didn’t, you just leapt over to some of these other opportunities that were coming in rapidly and cobbled together more work for yourself - the piecemeal nature of it, did it coalesce at some point? 

SB: Yeah, I think, yeah, between all of those teaching gigs and project work it was, I was doing that for about a year and then a designer friend that I’d known from those Hot days, he joined the second cohort of the US Presidential Innovation Fellows. So it’s a one year fellowship that President Obama started to bring private sector innovators into the public sector. So my friend and I were catching up after he’d been in that work for a few months and he was so enthusiastic about it and he was raving about it. I just thought, oh, that sounds really interesting, I’ve never worked in government. 

Don’t know anything about that system, but I’m really curious and so I applied to that program and much to my surprise, got invited to join the third class of fellows. So I quickly -

AD: Hot damn!

SB: Transitioned, yeah, into this, now I’m going to learn what work in the federal government is like in this whole sort of civic tech space. 

AD: What a cool thing to suddenly be working for the government and being able to sort of use your social design lens on the civic space. What did that look like? You were with the Department of Veterans, correct? 

SB: Yes, that’s right. There were a group of 20 something fellows at that time and each one was at a different federal agency, or maybe, in our case actually, the Department of Veterans Affairs, there were four of us innovation fellows. It’s a huge organization; we were all doing slightly different things. It was a big culture shock to enter the federal government, on so many levels and get to understand enough about the way things worked to see where design approaches could be helpful. The fellows program was really good at doing onboarding though, I think, into the culture of government. 

AD: That would be important!

SB: [Laughs] It’s really important.. And I think in the work that I was doing, my team was really lucky because we got volun-told about, from the secretary of the VA, the CEO equivalent, at that time basically told us where he wanted us to focus efforts. So it was nice to feel like what we were working on, lined up with what his priorities were. 

AD: Yeah. 

SB: And it was nice, just to have access to that kind of alignment. 

AD: From this perspective, from out here, never having worked for government, it seems to me like an organization like that would have been around for long enough that it would be kind of baked in place. Just in the systems and protocols in place would be hard to change. So how was design able to help?

SB: You’re right, change is hard. I think what I’ve since learned is it’s in every large organization. It’s probably just hard for people period. 

AD: Oh, it’s totally hard! [Laughter] 

SB: Right, but somehow maybe we could forget these organizational cultures [are made of?] people, right? 

AD: Right. 

SB: The same people who don’t want to do the thing, as you’re describing, so yeah, why would we think it’s gonna be easy? So I think in that kind of environment, having support from senior leadership is critical, but it’s insufficient to imbed change that’s gonna last. So it’s really important to partner with people who are the career civil servants. It has to be about partnering with people who are gonna take the work forward, after the people who are just there for a short time, step out. 

 So you have to operationalize it in a way that fits with people’s incentives, their roles, things that spark their energy, things that they’re excited about and really like any culture change effort, you’re gonna find these people who have been just quietly innovating, finding ways to hack the system anyway, you know? 

Kind of just doing their thing quietly. It’s like definitely partner with those people, lift those people wherever and however possible. And that really helps to generate enthusiasm for people who may be a little skeptical, but interested. And then there’s some people who we used to joke, they just had the word ‘blocker’ invisibly written on their forehead and it’s just best to go around them because life is too short and it takes too long, right? It’s just go where the momentum already is and how did design end up being, making enduring change. I think some of it was just, did optimization of digital design efforts, embedding modern technology and modern process. 

So there’s the technology angle. And then there’s the people and process angle which is we did a lot of teaching of human centered design and design facilitation and workshopping and visualizing ideas. So the visualization and sense making that happens when you can facilitate a great in person experience amongst people who don’t maybe necessarily talk to each other in person all that often -

 That was a very effective form of design and then design artifacts can be really important too. We did a lot of ethnographic research, trying to understand, gathering stories from veterans from all branches and areas of service and understanding what their wants and needs were and then packaging up that qualitative data into those compelling stories that would point to possible design solution spaces. 

AD: Oh my god, this sounds so great and fascinating.

SB: I really loved it. It was very, very hard work because it felt so important. I mean veterans were struggling to get access to services, to understand, the organization is so vast, it’s a huge healthcare system, it’s a huge benefit system, you can get money for a GI bill, you can get a home loan, you can get hundreds of different things, but it was very hard for people to understand what were they eligible for, how did they go through that application process and then once they started any particular application process, how did they know where they were in that journey? 

So a lot of it was trying to add some transparency and clarity to processes that were very opaque to people and that engendered distrust -

 People who work at VA, they were very mission driven, they’re not there to get rich and famous in government service. They’re there because they loved the mission and were dedicated to the mission. So people who want to do the right thing -

And yet, like you were saying at the beginning, may just feel risk averse or a little more rule bound by nature, sometimes there are very real reasons why change can’t happen quickly and must be very small and very incremental. Sometimes there are real blockers that are policy blockers and then sometimes they’re just imagined made-up blockers of somebody didn’t want to do something some way once and then that persisted and to the point where people think it’s a rule, but it’s not. 

SB: I think there were a lot of people who had been there a long time who had a very nuanced understanding of the history of decisions that had been taken. Programs that had been formed and I’ll say, the year that I came was the second year that an innovation fellow team had done design research in kind of the same way. And a couple of years before that there were people in the organization that were really starting to bring that human centered design way of working and the mindsets and ways of working into the organization. So it was not, it definitely was not new, right; we were building on ground that had been laid. 

SB: Some foundation, but I mean in relation to the totality of the 350,000 people that worked in that organization and [laughs] a couple hundred people whose kind of express job was that kind of change. 

AD: Yeah, that’s a big mountain to move. 

SB: It is, it is. 

AD: So, what does your work at IBM look, sorry, what does your work at, now, what does your work at IBM look and feel like, and taste like for you?

SB: [Laughs] Yeah, working in the federal government was actually a great training ground for IBM; the organizations are about the same size, almost the same age. And IBM is very much in transformation with design, playing a major role. So I’ve been there, coming up on four years and as I mentioned at the top, I’m leading a team that’s inside a design program office, so we’re a center of competency that supports IBMs network of designers. It’s about 2,500 people, we’re working on developing and diffusing standards and practices that help IBM create better products and services. 

So we work really closely in partnership with functional leaders, with teams, all teams across the business, themselves in very different aspects of the business, and then also in our services organization. It’s complex, it’s a lot to navigate, it’s all the people stuff [laughs], it’s all the how do we operationalize something because you can’t make impact on IBM just doing little, like curated tiny little projects one at a time, you’d be there for 300 years. So you have to figure out how you could do something that can scale across this large organization. So I feel like I’m still learning so much about all of that domain, organizational change from that design-led lens. I love it. I’d say right now, there’s a racial equity and design work stream that is one of the things that is most inspiring me. 

It’s led by a group of our black designers and they have just been rocking it. They released a site last week, its a call to action, there’s a field guide, they’ve done a podcast and they’re really looking to give practical steps that designers can take toward creating cultures of equity. And we’re working on it within IBM -

AD: Did you say it’s called Call to Action or there just is a call to action? 

SB: Oh, there is a call to action; they have a sort of manifesto about racial inequity. So it’s called Racial Equity and Design. 

AD: And this is available to the public, we can all -

SB: Hmm-mm. 

AD: And we can all learn from this in terms of building those cultures?

SB: Yes.. 

AD: And is this something that you’re witnessing or that you’re actively involved in? 

SB: I’m actively involved in it. The Black designers are leading it and there’s a group of us that were called the Second Pillar [laughs] - Nigel Prentice, he’s kind of orchestrating, he’s the leader orchestrating the other people in that core group. He chose the word ‘pillar’ because he’s like, you know, we stand alongside each other, it’s not hierarchical and I’m like, yeah, but you guys are leading, totally. He’s like, yeah, but you know, there’s a group of other designers within the organization who are supporting that group in their efforts. It feels like one of the most important things to me. I mean I want to see design cultures in every organization where people look like the world. It’s so critically important and we’re so behind the ball. It’s just desperately needed. So I feel really, really happy to be a part of it. 

AD: Well, I 100% agree, and I’m happy that you’re a part of it too and I’d love to learn more about the nitty-gritty of how something like that or another one of these projects that you’ve talked about that need to scale across this enormous organization. What I’m getting at, is I’d like to know about your creative process and what that might look like, like how do you start to assemble the ideas, the thoughts, the tools, the work, the education, the research that you need in order to start to affect this kind of change and build a plan and get others on board with it? 

SB: Yeah, that’s a huge one. Go with momentum, align with partners, find a shared language, shared language is so hugely important. What are we talking about, what words are we using to describe and what do we mean by those words? So that’s really important. 

AD: So does that happen in organic conversation where somebody says a word and you’re just like, oh, what do you mean by that, because here’s when I use that word, I typically mean this, but I think you mean something different. Or do you have workshops on language? I’m sorry, I’ve never held a corporate job. [Laughter]

SB: I think a lot of it is developing flexible frameworks and the frameworks themselves are a visual, conceptual model that shows the relationship of the parts of this system, of change, to one another and names them explicitly and specifically. 

So for example, when the IBM design, one of the first things IBM design office did was to scale, what they call ‘enterprise design thinking.’ So they looked at the hundreds of methods of design thinking that are out there in the world, picked a small handful that felt like they would be very appropriate for helping teams understand customer needs, like put the customer first, make, learn, iterate. And they called that list, that group of exercises, they taught that group of exercises, they packaged it up, they created a little badging system that had multiple levels of like I’m a beginner, I’m intermediate, those weren’t the words, but beginner, intermediate, advanced. 

And they had a badging system, so that you could do asynchronous learning, like there were a lot of those kinds of parts and pieces so that the work had a model that was simple enough, understandable enough and then kind of diffused through that sort of mechanism. That’s one example. 

AD: Okay, that was really helpful, thank you for spelling that out for me. Another follow-up question to your creative process is in the beginning you said that you advocate for people and the environment, so there’s clearly a sustainability angle in your values. How does that factor in? 

SB: I often think of this thought from Buckminster Fuller, this is what I consider to be the best design brief ever written, it’s that: ‘Our challenge is to make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.’ Pretty intense, right? 

AD: Yeah. 

SB: [Laughs] Kind of says it all. 

AD: It does. 

SB: So I hold that in my mind’s eye as this, yes, it’s the people systems and as people we live within a biosphere, we’re on a planet, let’s look through that lens as well and let’s understand our power structure, our use of resources, our resiliency, how much are we regenerating, designing in ways that regenerate a physical environment and/or social system. Or are we not doing that? Are we perpetuating structures of inequity? Or designing inequitable structures through not considering deeply enough. 

AD: That sounds to me like [cross talking], that sounds to me like you’re constantly learning, but that also sounds, I mean not to be a pessimist, but it sounds almost impossible. So, how do you weigh the lesser of certain evils or still guide the whole project towards the greater good, but having to work with some trade-offs? 

SB: I actually think it is possible -

AD: Oh good! That’s optimistic. 

SB: [Laughter] I mean - these are choices, we could do this, but will we and how can we and what are the things we need to learn in order to do it? I said I’m learning because I feel like, I’m learning all the time from people who are cutting across discipline streams to put together programs to help people see systems of power and systems of inequity better. How to understand them; understand how we perpetuate them, so that we can see how to do better. And it’s just, I think of it as always a work in progress. 

AD: I see now how being in the present moment really helps you do that. I don’t know why, I just got this vision of you being at the energetic center of a mushroom cloud and directing all of the energy, and the mushroom cloud not being a nuclear explosion, but being this expansion of the universe towards the greater good. And you sort of funneling in that really present moment, energetic way, funneling all that you’re learning and all of the energy and all of the social interaction in your life toward that. 

SB: Yeah, that’s the practice. 

AD: Well, thank you for doing that. And thank you for kind of breaking it down in a digestible way so that I think a lot of us can also wrap our heads around how we can believe that that’s also possible and then also, get clearer on the ways that we can move in that direction. 

SB: This phrase, like ‘move at the speed of trust,’ it should be attributed and forgive me, because I don’t know who said it in my mind right now, I can’t think of who it is, but I think it’s just, my experience has been that that’s true. That that is the way forward and that is what works, is to move at the speed of trust. 

AD: That makes so much sense. 

SB: Doesn’t it? It’s so relatable, right, I mean we could just relate it to our own, like every interaction. Things don’t move forward if there’s no trust. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if we weren’t in a trust flow with each other.  It just wouldn’t go anywhere. Useful, you know. So it’s like it fractals out, it’s like, this is how we do it, you know? One-to-one, connecting until we get to many-to-many. 

AD: Yeah, that’s it, that’s the way forward. I’m surprisingly moved here at the end of this interview and I just am so grateful that you shared so much of your intellect, but also so much of your humanity with me. Wow, this is, this has been really wonderful, thank you so much. 

SB: Thank you. It’s been great to talk with you. 

AD: Thank you for listening! To see images and learn more about Sarah’s work, click the link in the details of this episode on your podcast app, or go to Cleverpodcast.com where you can also sign up for our newsletter. Subscribe to Clever on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you would please do us a favor and rate and review, it really does help us out. We also love chatting with you on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, you can find us at Clever Podcast and you can find me at Amy Devers. Clever is produced by 2VDE Media with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is proudly distributed by Design Milk.

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What is your earliest memory?

Standing at a large sink in my pre-nursery school at 3 years old with my hands submerged in warm soapy water learning how to make bubbles with a plastic wand with my friends is right up there with the earliest things that made a big impression. It was fun, creative, and DIY. 

How do you feel about democratic design? 

The principles are solid, and yet we need to go further. Besides, to form, function, quality, sustainability, and low price, I’d suggest design seek to be regenerative, equitable, inclusive, ethical, and de-colonized. 

What’s the best advice that you’ve ever gotten?

Trust your intuition. 

How do you record your ideas?

A black .038 black Muji pen and a grid dot notebook is my well-worn habit for recording ideas, typically early morning or the end of the day when my mind feels most free. 

What’s your current favorite tool or material to work with?

Adobe fresco is my favorite drawing tool at the moment because I can switch from pen drawing to watercolor to oil painting, all while sitting in a comfy chair. The speed and flexibility are working for me. My favorite material is the mind. 

What book is on your nightstand?

I’m savoring Black Futures, by Jenna Wortham & Kimberly Drew, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism by Nadya Tolokonnikova. And I am nearly finished with Barack Obama’s A Promised Land .

Why is authenticity in design important?

Authenticity is everything is important. What does authenticity in design mean to you? 

Favorite restaurant in your city?

John's Drive-In, Montauk. Excellent fish and chips Friendly people. Great pandemic protocols.

What might we find on your desk right now?

A great pencil collection in rotation during daily use + my trusty Koh-I-Noor hexagon eraser. 

Who do you look up to and why?

In my daily life, the first person besides my parents I grew to admire was my Grandma Janet – not a blood relative, but my soul Grandma. She was a Manhattan-based psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who was deeply interested in understanding human motivation and human complexity. She was wise, kind, principled, cultured, politically engaged in her time that affected society, and she asked great questions. 

What’s your favorite project that you’ve done and why?

Each project has taught me, stretched me, been a vehicle for experiencing the highs and lows of the creative process, strengthened relationships with colleagues, and helped me grow. I’m grateful for all the experiences I’ve been blessed to have.

What are the last five songs you listened to?

People Have The Power - Patti Smith
I’m Afraid of Americans - David Bowie
The Star-Spangled Banner - Lady Gaga
The Ride - Amanda Palmer
Black Parade - Beyoncé

Where can our listeners find you on the web and on social media?
@sarahbbrooks
Sarahbbrooks.com
https://sarahbbrooks.substack.com/p/coming-soon

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Clever is produced by 2VDE Media. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Production assistance from Ilana Nevins and music by El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.

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