Episode 45: Torrey Podmajersky, Google - Demonstrating value as a UX practitioner

Kara DeFrias has written for Vice Presidents, was part of the California Covid Task Force for the first 100 days of the pandemic and has worked on the Super Bowl, Oscars and Emmys. And that’s not the full list of accomplishments and career milestones. With so much experience, it was inevitable Kristina would invite Kara to the podcast. Plus they first became connected in quite extraordinary circumstances that forged a friendship of mutual respect and a shared love of Broadway.

Katherine Karaus knows what it takes to find your ideal job in content and UX and to know your own worth. Katherine shares lots of practical advice with Kristina Halvorson about competitive differentiation when job hunting, building and maintaining a strong personal brand and content and UX portfolios. They also cover salary negotiation, cover letters and elevator pitches. It’s jam packed with tips to help you and your career.

Ann Rockley is known as the “mother” of content strategy.  She has an international reputation for establishing the field in content strategy. In her chat with Kristina, Ann shared some of her experience and advice from decades of experience in content including creating a methodology for content, ways of effectively communicating with people, content modeling, measuring content and so much more.

Are Halland is the inventor of the core model, a framework for working together to create better content for digital products and services. In this episode, Are shares the origins of the core model and describes the components of the model in detail, along with how it can be used. Along the way, Are and Kristina chat about getting alignment across an organization, how to stop jumping to solutions first and bringing research into content conversations and decision-making.

Noz Urbina has decades of experience in content. He’s especially interested in omnichannel strategies and how the sum of the parts work together to support the user's journey. In his conversation with Kristina Halvorson, Noz covers personalization, delivering effective customer experiences, customer journey mapping, content in the pharma sector and some quick but thought-provoking opinions on content, AI and the Metaverse.

Joanne Ward believes a good content experience is critical to the customer experience. In her chat with Kristina, Jo talks about leading content strategy at scale as part of Salesforce’s evolving content practice. They cover collaborating with other disciplines, advocacy, and the importance of technical writing. Across the entire conversation, there’s a focus on creating task focused and user centered content.

Corey Vilhauer shares with Kristina Halvorson how he moved from being a marketing and ad copywriter into content strategy and leadership. They pack plenty of topics into the chat including how to communicate with clients, driving meaningful conversations about content and aligning around a shared language and understanding. They also reveal their passion projects.

Sarah Winters takes us from the beginnings of her career in content, through to the future plans for Content Design London. Along the way, Sarah and Kristina chat about content strategy, content design and related disciplines. They touch on codifying content design as a practice, industry definitions, ownership and measuring success of content strategy and the hierarchy of content roles within organizations.

David Dylan Thomas is a founder, author and speaker who is an expert on designing for cognitive bias. In his conversation with Kristina, David shares his experience and insights on patterns in representation, assumption audits, designing for bad outcomes and the need for meaningful conversations about bias.

Sarah Etter, Senior Manager of Content Design at Procore offers an abundance of practical advice based on years of experience as a content practitioner. From embedding content designers across an organization and ensuring a design system is content oriented to scaling content design. The chat also touches on writing globally and inclusively, demonstrating ROI for content design and establishing a content operations governance model. That’s not even the full list of topics packed into this episode, all with examples and top tips.