We’re spotlighting the coaches here to guide and empower you in your bootcamp journey. Read to learn more about each coach and how they got involved with teaching design thinking.

LaToya Jordan has spent time at various organizations across several different industries. After working at both Marquette University and Columbia University, she moved into corporate spending time companies like Pfizer and JetBlue. She currently practices her leadership at Lead by Design, where she enables organizations to develop highly effective teams. 

To learn a little bit more about you before getting into your professional background, tell us what you like to do in your free time?
I have a 2.5-year old and an 11-month old...free time?? Ha! Kidding, in my free time, it’s a total veg-out moment.  So, I binge-watch television shows (This is Us, Bridgerton, House Hunter International, and classic Law & Order) with an adult beverage.

What about the story behind your name?

There was a famous musical family who was on the scene when I was born.  These five brothers had a sister whose name was LaToya. My father saw her name in a magazine and liked how it looked in print.  He said, “my daughter’s name will one day be in print, and I like how this looks.” Thus, I was named after LaToya Jackson.

How did you get involved with the d.school?

In 2012, I was sent to d.school by way of JetBlue to become skilled in design thinking in order to build organizational capability in the company.  After my Bootcamp experience, I made personal efforts to go deeper in my learning and eventually came back to d.school to develop my coaching acumen.  Now, as a coach in the program, they can’t get rid of me.  

What’s kept you continually active with design thinking?

In my consulting practice, I am fortunate to continue working with nonprofits and Fortune 500 companies to support their goals of increasing their organizational capability in design thinking practices through various training programs.  I also coach leaders and teams to help them use the process to identify innovative solutions for their business model. 

What’s been your biggest win?

My biggest win to date has been leveraging design thinking tools to support the creation of new service offerings at JetBlue, including their premium service (Mint) and the redesign of the airport facilities (at JFK Airport). Once these outcomes were live in the market, it was so cool to use them as a customer and recall the insight that led to critical features. 

How have you seen your prior students excel after leaving Bootcamp?

One way I’ve seen prior students excel after leaving Bootcamp is in taking incremental steps to embed the tools and mindsets into their daily work. Some have realigned entire projects to leverage design thinking tools. But when that’s not plausible, incorporating one or two aspects of what they learned during Bootcamp into their work is an excellent step in continuing to build muscle memory for the work.

What’s some advice you’d give to future Bootcampers?

The advice I would give for Bootcampers is to leave skepticism and critiquing behind and just dive in headfirst.  I recall being skeptical when I attended my first session at dSchool. I remember thinking, “this is happening too fast.  There’s no way this will work.”  It worked and continues to work!  So, trust the process and experience each element wholly and without judgment.  By leaning fully into it, you will reap the benefits of these amazing tools and mindsets.

What about the virtual environment have you enjoyed the most?

I have enjoyed having access to connect with a broader array of users and customers.  I’m no longer confined by physical, proximal distance to those I engage with to gather insights. That has opened up the opportunity to even more diverse perspectives.

What are some challenges you have overcome in a virtual environment, and how?

I had to overcome managing multiple technology platforms while still engaging and supporting participants’ learning.  It was tough, but now I love virtual whiteboards and use them in my daily work! 

LaToya’s Bootcamp experience not only led her to becoming a coach herself, where she is able to empower others to integrate design thinking tools and methods into their work, but continues to be an integral part of her own work.  

Website: www.leadbydesignlab.com

IG: @leadbydesignlab 

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With a breadth of experience across multiple industries, the common thread of Yusuke’s professional experiences are product design and design leadership. Before starting on his own at Hunter Studio, Yusuke worked at IDEO, GoPro, Stanford d.school, The North Face and start ups such as OrbitBaby and Fellow. With two children, free time can be hard to come by, but meditation, trail running, and reading are a few of his go - to ‘me time’ activities. 

To start off, tell us the story behind your name? 

I started to introduce my name as “Use-K” over 10 years ago.  Although a very common name in Japan, my correctly spelled first name, Yusuke, is not phonetic at all, which often casts a mysterious but understandable fog of distance in social settings.  Introducing my name as “Use-K” is my human centered attempt to dispel the potential social fog with a curious invitation to connect.  Thank you for asking.  

How did you get involved at the d.school?

I’ve been involved with the d.school since 2005, one year before the d.school officially launched.  Starting as a graduate student in the Product Design program, I have been a part of the Executive Education program teaching Design Thinking for the last 16 years.

What has kept you continually active with design thinking?

Even though my educational and professional experiences were in design and engineering, I didn’t realize that what I had already been doing with passion WAS actually design thinking.  This transformational experience of gaining the voice to explain and teach the process at a meta level was so profound, that I continue to practice as well as teach others. the value of human -  centered design.   

What has been your biggest win?

I’ve worked on all kinds of ‘design’ challenges’, ranging from reimagining potatoes in China, redesigning physical work office spaces that are on-brand, to working on professional athletic gears. However, the most meaningful work that I have done has always been about helping people: designing medical devices that directly help patients and helping others unlock their creative potential through teaching Design Thinking have been the biggest wins.

How have you seen your students excel after leaving Bootcamp?

One of my prior students at Bootcamp took the lessons to heart, led big initiatives at the employer immediately after the Bootcamp, and eventually started his own company.  This company recently exited successfully.

What is like to be a part of the Stanford Community?

The Bootcamp Alum network is one of a kind. I personally still keep in touch with folks from the Bootcamp 5 years ago, and I am always amazed not only by the quality output alum produce after the Bootcamp, but also by the sense of camaraderie, trust, and genuine interest in helping other cohorts.

What about the virtual environment have you enjoyed the most?

Oh, I only need to care about how I am perceived visually on screen: waist up and font side only?  Other sensory perceptions are secondary or not important? Great.

What are some of the opportunities for growth you’ve seen in the virtual environment?

Because of the over - reliance of virtual communication tools, I believe there is an opportunity to pause, reflect, and decide how and when NOT to use virtual communication with intention: Asynchronous collaboration, non-screen time, or not in-front-of-the-same-laptop.

Some takeaways from connecting with Yusuke - design thinking might already exist around you in the work you do, some of our most meaningful professional experiences are often the ones that help others the most, and when you walk away from Bootcamp, you walk away not only with skills and resources to implement what you’ve learned but a community to support you along the way. 

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Anja Svetina Nabergoj (PhD) is Associate Professor at the University of Ljubljana and Lecturer at Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University.

At the d.school Anja has taught Executive Education programs, co-taught graduate classes including:  Collaborating with the future: Launching Large-Scale Sustainable Transformations, Creative Cultures in Organizations and Organizational Psychology of Design Thinking. She also teaches doctoral Research as Design workshops and coaches TLC programs. She is also on the Advisory Board of The Stanford Catalyst for Collaborative Solutions.

Before we dive into your work around design thinking, give us a snapshot of what you like to do in personal time?

In my free time you can find me either on a yoga mat or on a dance floor with my husband enjoying some of our favorite progressive house DJs. If I’m not dancing, I’m in the role of the cable girl, making sure her husband has all the DJ gear ready to play the tunes. For the last 12 years me and my family have been splitting time between Ljubljana, Tokyo and Palo Alto, three of my favorite places in the world.

How did you become passionate about design thinking?

I grew up in a home turned studio space where both my parents were architects and creativity was a way of life. Whether listening to long conversations with clients or building house models from cardboard, design thinking mindsets were imprinted in my mind from an early age. It's no surprise that when I first walked into the d.school, I immediately felt at home.

How do you apply design thinking in the workplace?

As an educator, I use Design Thinking in all my classes and programs. With my team I developed curriculum to apply Design Thinking to scholarly research and have been working with scientists, PhD students and postdocs across Stanford campus. I help young scientists embrace the messy creative process behind finding breakthrough ideas, prototyping their studies and seeking early feedback. My team and I also published new book Creativity in Research with Cambridge University Press.

What’s currently keeping you active with design thinking?

As an educator and scientist, I’m digging deeper into the science behind Bootcamp teaching methods. I’m exploring evolutionary biology, neuroscience, psychology and anthropology to better understand how we learn, what we fear, how we react to failure and how we bond as a team.

What has been most rewarding about coaching Bootcamp?

I started coaching Executive Education programs at the d.school in 2011 and has been involved in most of the programs since then. My coaching style is empathetic and bonding with the participants and building connection comes before new content and processes. I am the happiest when Bootcamp participants send photos and stories of how they are applying design thinking in their organizations around the world. Many of my teams are still in touch, which speaks of deep friendships that get formed over cardboard prototyping and testing ideas on the streets of Palo Alto. 

What would you say to someone considering Bootcamp but still undecided?

Why join a Bootcamp? At Stanford Bootcamp you will walk into a (Zoom) studio filled with similarly minded people who are willing to try new things no matter how scary they seem. People who fail gracefully and learn from failures together. People who are willing to let go of control and invite others to take their initial ideas in unexpected directions. Stanford community is a constant source of inspiration and growth for me,  and each Bootcamp is like family coming together for a week. 

What about the virtual environment have you enjoyed the most?

In the past year, I have replaced my frequent flier status at Lufthansa for endless miles on Zoom and Mural, and mastered how to be jet lagged at home. As much as I loves the smell of sharpies, the sound of tearing butcher paper, and the lively chatter in the busy d.school studios, I have also experienced many benefits of virtual the Bootcamp programs. 

There is a certain comfort of exploring new innovative concepts while in the comfort of your home that allows participants to try new behaviors with less social pressure. The combination of synchronous and asynchronous work on digital whiteboards like Mural brings the best of introverts and extroverts, impulsive and analytical. And being in our own spaces enables us to bond on a deeper emotional level, meet each other’s spouses, kids, pets. The best part is that remote programs allow our participants to immediately apply newly learned skills to their work projects, get immediate feedback and coaching, and such learn-try-apply dynamics definitely increases the chances for a lasting behaviors change and a more solid transformation.

For Anja, Design Thinking Bootcamp is more than a program or workshop, it’s an opportunity for personal reflection, and entry point to transformational growth and a chance to connect with other like - minded people that feel a lot like a kind of family.

Trudy is currently the the Director of Arts + Tech Programs at West Michigan Center for Arts + Technology (WMCAT), a non-profit located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Here she leads a team in creating student-centered learning spaces for students to build their creative confidence and elevate their voice within our community through visual and media arts. 

Trudy also works with WMCAT's design thinking consultancy, Public Agency, to support the practice of human-centered design and its principles for external partners, clients, and within WMCAT. Trudy has been with WMCAT since 2015 and has 20 years of combined experience in education as a K-adult classroom teacher, teacher educator, and education consultant. She first became involved with the d.school as an apprentice coach for a project in Michigan in 2018 and then as an apprentice coach for bootcamp that same year.

In her free time, Trudy enjoys running and baking - she is currently trying to master the art of croissants in the home kitchen.

Before we dive into your background and experience, tell us about the story behind your name?

Trudy, the name I go by, is actually my middle name, and Hoang is my first name. My Vietnamese parents wanted to lead with a name that reflected our culture but thought an English name would make things easier for me in school. No one—even in my family—has ever called me by my first name (except all the teachers who struggled pronouncing it on the first day of school growing up.)

Can you give an example of how you’ve applied design thinking in the workplace?

I was first introduced to design thinking while working with K-12 educators, and when I came to WMCAT, the organization was also exploring how design thinking could be used to develop better experiences for adult and teen students, as well as staff. WMCAT tries to integrate design thinking mindsets in much of the work we do internally, and in 2016 launched Public Agency as a social enterprise to extend these efforts externally in our community. Over the years, we've helped clients and partners leverage design thinking to foster cultures of equity, action, and innovation.

What do you enjoy most about coaching Bootcamp?

What I love most about Bootcamp is the contagious energy of the teaching team of Kathryn, Jeremy, and Perry, which then spreads to the coaches and participants. No two bootcamps are exactly the same, and the team iterates after each one to make the next one even better. 

What has been most rewarding about coaching Bootcamp?

I know I'm supposed to help support the learning of new design thinkers, but I almost feel guilty for how much my own practice deepens from what I learn through coaching others at Bootcamp. It's an intense week, but I always return to my "regular" job with fresh perspectives on how we might do things differently. 

Any advice you’d give to Bootcampers?

I think with any professional learning opportunity, you will get what you put into it. I would suggest that bootcampers come into it with an open mind to learn from not only the teaching team and coaches, but also from fellow bootcampers. It's a fantastic networking opportunity that will get you plugged into a larger (even global!) community of practice, which can come in handy later on in your design thinking journey

What about the virtual environment have you enjoyed the most?

While I always have a Sharpie and post-its in my bag, I have enjoyed using online collaboration tools like Mural with teams to make our thinking visual and to easily save our work.

I have most appreciated the flexibility that virtual learning and work environments provide. In addition to being able to log into the day wearing my favorite pajama pants, I generally have more control of my daily schedule and feel more balanced between my home and work lives.

Trudy reminds us our mindset going into an experience has a significant impact on the outcome, and that there is plenty teach, learn and exchange within the new community you discover in Design Thinking Bootcamp.

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Meet Jess Kessin. From industrial design to starting her own company, to consulting with companies on design strategy, design for equity and inclusion, and design for sustainability, her design career has been a diverse one. Alongside her breadth of experience, Jess has been teaching at Stanford since 2007 and has recently accepted a role to build out the design practice at Invitae, where she will be helping to democratize healthcare through genetic testing. A role that Jess expressed, she is very excited about.  

Before we learn more about your work, let’s hear a bit more about you personally - what do you like to do in your free time?

Since Covid I have moved up to the mountains...at least for the year.  I have always been outdoorsy, but this has been an amazing opportunity to take it to a new level.  This year I am cross-country skiing in the mornings, teaching my kids to downhill ski, snowshoeing everywhere and generally enjoying all that nature has to offer!  

What about the story behind your name?

My name is boring. There are always a ton of other Jessica’s wherever I go.  For my daughter, I decided to be more original.  Six months before I got pregnant with her, we had the opportunity to go to Norway where I was speaking at a Design Thinking conference.  After the conference ended, we traveled the country and ended up on a remote island way up in the Arctic Circle called Senja. There were fjords, moose, reindeer and northern lights. It was spectacular. When we found out we were having a girl, we decided to name her Senya after that incredible place.

Tell us a little bit more about your background?

After a stint as an industrial designer for Pottery Barn, I decided to address a significant need I was seeing. As a long time practitioner of Universal Design, I started a company designing skill based toys for children of ALL needs and abilities.  We ended up with 14 products on the market and in stores ranging from education stores to end caps at Barnes & Noble.  I was then recruited to start the design function in a business doing product lines ranging from toys to camping gear. After that, I moved onto the strategy side when I was recruited to Capital One to start up their Design Thinking practice for the credit card LOB.  I started and grew that team and then subsequently started a Physical Experience Design practice and a Data Visualization practice.  After leaving Capital One, I had the opportunity to consult with some amazing companies

How did you become passionate about design thinking?

When I was in high school I remember saying to my mom that I wanted to major in Engineering, Art and Psychology.  When I arrived at Stanford as a freshman, I discovered the Product Design major and it felt like it was made for me.  This was before the d.School existed, but David Kelley was my advisor and Product Design was the basis from which design thinking emerged.  

Can you give an example of how you’ve applied design thinking in the workplace?

I have used design thinking in every aspect of what I do. I started a design thinking practice at Capital One and used it for a number of amazing projects.  I have also used it in other teams. Everything from exploring the future of ATM’s and how people interact with cash to redesigning the outdoor space of a children’s hospital.

What’s kept you continually active with design thinking?

My favorite part of design thinking is teaching others. Either in an academic setting or in a corporate setting, seeing people shift when they suddenly understand the impact design can have on their work is my favorite moment.  

What do you enjoy most about coaching Bootcamp?

The people! The d.school and coaching teams are incredible. I feel so honored to be around each and every person. There is such diversity, passion and creativity that I grow as a person and a designer every time I am around them.

The participants in the bootcamps are also amazing. I am in touch with so many of my old bootcampers. In the last two weeks alone, I have had three separate individuals reach out to me to run ideas past me and catch up. Seeing them move the work forward is the best gift I could ask for. I love seeing what they are up to!

How have you seen your prior students excel after leaving Bootcamp?

They have done everything from setting up customer experience labs in huge companies to facilitating human-centered work for global change!

What about the virtual environment have you enjoyed the most?

Definitely more time with my family and less frenzied overcommitment.  I am loving the slower paced and calmer life that this world has brought.  I am really hoping that after we return to ‘normal’ we keep some of these learnings and don’t let the pendulum swing back to where we were before Covid.

What are some challenges you have overcome in a virtual environment and how?

If you had asked me a year ago I would have said that design thinking (or any collaborative design) could not be done virtually...at least not well.  I am so happy to say that I was completely wrong. The innovation that has come out of this year has been extraordinary.  In some ways, it works even better than in person. I am blown away by how far we have come.

As Jess has shown us, design thinking can take us many places and when we open the door to gathering these new tools, through a program like Bootcamp, it’s only a matter of how far we can go.

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Let’s start with some of the fun stuff - what do you like to do in your free time?

My favorite activity in free time is no activity at all. By doing nothing at times, it of course, allows me to relax from a higher paced job. But, more importantly, it creates space for deeper conversations, new learnings, and stronger relationships. With my kids, our “do nothing” activities can result in interesting discussions, teaching moments, and learning moments. Hanging out with friends or colleagues allow us all to get to know each other better, but also enables us to enter more “thinking time” where we can view projects and priorities in different ways, that allow us to unlock. I’ve found this “no activity” activity can be a huge help for the multitude of activities we have in our normal lives.

What about the story behind your name?

My name is Jeffrey Scott Sanchez and my parents always called me Scott. It’s what they intended to, as my mom always loved the names F. Scott Fitzgerald and J Pierpont Morgan. Put those together and end up with J. Scott. But, when she went to submit the information for my birth certificate, the woman she gave the form to said that she shouldn’t use the initial “J” and should come up with a name, so a last minute scramble led to Jeffrey.  While I really do love my name, two unintended consequences happened: First, it has wreaked havoc in every HR system at every company I’ve worked at. Secondly, it’s given me this other identity as Jeffrey. Mind you, this isn’t an evil twin thing. Where Scott has had a great career in innovation, helps teach at the d.school, and has a lot of good friends, Jeffrey has bought a house (my wife struggled to realize she bought a house with Jeffrey), has a decent social security statement, and, perhaps most importantly, has given me a heads up if people reach out but don’t really know me.

Tell us a little bit more about your professional background and where you’ve worked?

I think of my career in three phases...I started as an engineer in technology, majoring in electrical engineering. I moved to business, doing consulting at Deloitte and getting my MBA. I then headed out to Silicon Valley to work as a customer driven leader doing product management at Intuit. After that, I chose to bring this combination of customer, business, and technology to other companies, having product and innovation stints at Visa, First Data, Nationwide, and now Deluxe Corporation.

How did you become passionate about design thinking? 

I became passionate about it, even before I knew what it was called. My career journey (above) is a progression from Technology to Business to Customer. I realized you can have the best technology and the best business in the world, but if you don’t really understand customers, you fail. 

That came from a specific moment, where I was reading a case study in business school about a financial company that followed people home from the computer store (with their permission!) and watched them install their personal financial software. The product was Quicken and the company was Intuit. That realization pivoted my career in a big way. 

Fortunately, that company gave me a job and I’ve been on this path of user or customer driven innovation ever since. As design thinking as a term took off, I realized that I’d learned it and had been doing it already. While I didn’t have language in those early days, it was this moment in business school that pushed me down the path I still walk today.

What’s kept you continually active with design thinking?

It’s a combination of “the work” and “who I work with.” There’s just something that fits with the work and how I think. To truly listen and engage someone, getting to know them even better than they know themselves, and identify and then solve a need just fits with how I think. 

Life is hard, technology is hard, and so many of the best products and experiences I use have made my life better, so I love the idea of helping others with that. But, while the work has been great, who I’ve actually been able to work with has made it easy to sustain. 

Design thinkers and innovators I work with are passionate people. They believe wholeheartedly in making the world a better place and their energy and attitude is infectious. So, while the actual work really brought me to design thinking, it’s the people I get to work with that rejuvenate my energy.

What’s been your biggest ‘failure’ and the implications of it?

As important as the steps to design thinking are, where I really see people get to the next level is when they’re using the mindsets and philosophies of design thinking in unexpected ways that aren’t linear, pulling on the right tools in the right moment, as opposed to following what can sometimes feel like a formula. 

It’s not a formula and the best design thinkers look more like mad scientists than process people. That being said, my biggest regret, and something I keep working on, is to push more and more people to that level of mastery. It’s not easy and I’ve tried to teach those mindsets directly, but it’s just something you have to go through, get more and more experiences in, and then start to make your own. I wish there was another way, but I haven’t found it...yet! But, I’ll keep prototyping!

What do you most enjoy about coaching Bootcamp?

There are two opposing forces I feel every time I’m at bootcamp. On the one hand, it’s one of the most exhausting (mentally and physically) weeks where students are learning new things, coaches are nurturing the team while ensuring the right things are learned, and everyone is being pushed out of their comfort zone. I feel like I sleep for 3 days at the end. 

On the other hand, and this is the contradiction, is that it’s inherently reenergizing for me and helps me come back to my day job with more energy, more passion, and more focus. Said another way, it’s the most exhausting, re-energizing experience ever and I can’t get enough of it!

How have you seen your prior students excel after leaving Bootcamp? 

The most successful students do two things in the days after bootcamp: First, they do something. Really, that’s it. Something, anything. They take some action, however small, that disrupts their re-entry back to their job enough that they open themselves up to learning and applying what they learned in their own situation. 

Second, they take one thing that they learned at Bootcamp and apply it in a few ways. It’s not about going big, it’s about going small. One might use empathy as a tool to learn more than they have before. Or, they might introduce “yes, and” to a conversation in a meeting. Or, they might sketch an idea instead of describe it. 

We try everything we can to help boot campers do a lap of design thinking when they’re back in their context, but the ones I’ve seen be most successful build on that, take that “one thing” that really resonated, and use it a few more times to make it their own. And then, they’re off and running!

What about the virtual environment have you enjoyed the most?

While there are innumerable things that I’ve missed, I’ve very much enjoyed how I use and manage my time in the virtual world. I don’t have to spend time I’d rather not spend commuting - I was given great advice at one point, which is you want to spend time at home or at work, but very little moving between them. 

And, perhaps the best part of how I use my time is finding interstitial moments during the day to take a quick walk or step outside for a few minutes and even eat lunch at our dining room table. The use of time feels not only more efficient, but a better fit for how I like to spend my time. While I’m definitely looking forward to adding back a bunch of physical time with colleagues from virtual, I believe that some of the postures and routines I’ve created in the virtual world will continue. 

What are some challenges you have overcome in a virtual environment and how?

I’m in that cohort of people who have interviewed for a new job, gotten a new job, and started working at the new job - all virtually. To do all of that, was incredibly challenging. It was challenging to make sure the folks I interviewed really knew me. It was challenging to get a feel of the new company. It’s been a challenge to find my place. It’s been a challenge to get to know people outside of meetings with specific objectives. 

The way I overcame all of those is to always have my video on and to almost always ask a question about something I see in someone’s background. I’ve tried to view these virtual meetings as providing a window into people’s personal lives that we don’t get when we’re in person at work. That’s helped, but I still look forward to getting together with people soon!

We’ve learned a few things from Scott already - you might already be using design thinking without yet knowing what to call it, implementing design thinking can start with taking small steps that build on each other, and there are still ways we can authentically connect in our virtual world.