For Jessie, art is not the opposite of science but instead a necessary storytelling device that she’s used to problem solve throughout her career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and now as Microsoft’s Director of Design for Sustainability. As the first industrial designer at NASA, Jessie unabashedly used cheap, available materials to encourage play and help her colleagues prototype and understand the hands-on nature of design thinking. She created the first design team and upended the company’s approach to creative strategy saving them time and money and diversifying the way the group could tackle new mission proposals. A self described eco-geek, part of the focus on outer space also intensified her concern for our planet. She now works to ensure that sustainability is more than just a checkmark companies can tick off. To her, designers have a crucial role to play in making companies sustainable as we are early enough in the product innovation cycle to set parameters that matter and insist on them as constraints. Listen to hear Jessie’s advice on making design span the micro to macro, why NASA has an extra terrestrial building, and how you can do an at home science experiment that will forever justify your love of the color black.

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