#71 Pivoting from Architecture to Tech with Kat Dovjenko

Design Voice Podcast

Kat Dovjenko is the Senior Creative Director at Muse & Company. Inspired by the dynamic energy around architecture and urban planning, Kat believes that the more complex, ambitious, and unsolvable the problem, the better. She drives talented teams to unite and achieve outcomes they would not be able to do individually—at multiple scales and in multiple stages of the design process. She most recently worked at Google's R&D for the Built Environment where she oversaw workplace innovation projects.

Kat loves navigating speculative pockets of the future and weaving together how they might impact our built spaces. She never shies away from ambiguity, and is skilled at using foresight and storytelling to propel leading edge technologies into real products for the built world and beyond. She studied Finance in Vancouver, Canada, before earning her Masters in Architecture from the University of Toronto.

In this episode we talk about:

• Kat’s role as Senior Creative Director at Muse & Company
• Her career journey and pivoting from architecture to tech
• Advice and resources for people who want to work in tech
• Kat’s experience working at Google
• How switching careers can often feel like burning off a piece of your identity
• Why architecture as a profession has such a grip on people’s identities
• On not tying your identity and self worth to your job
• The biggest challenges facing the world, and how the architecture profession needs to evolve in order to address them
• Kat’s predictions for where the future of the architecture profession should head
• Why we need to make the built world more like manufacturing
• How architecture tools need a revamp

Resources Kat mentions:

• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
• Architechie Slack channel
• On Deck Fellowship
• Teal HQ
• Lambda School
• Turning School
• Google UX Design Professional Certificate

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