Transcripts are edited for readability and clarity.

David: Hello, and welcome to the “Racial Equity in Design: It’s about time“ podcast. Today, I am your special host, David Avila. I am a content producer with a design program office at IBM. Normally in this chair is Nigel Prentice, but today I get to turn the mic around and interview Nigel. I wanted to start off by asking Nigel a little bit about his coming-up story, his background, and experience that helped form and shape him into the IBM design executive leader that he is today and on the significance of IBM’s racial equity and design effort.

David: So, it’s my pleasure today to get to chat with and talk to a good friend and mentor, Nigel Prentice. So, Nigel, how did you get here?

Nigel: Well, thanks David. And early days of the design program here at IBM, the revitalized design program, we, we certainly were in the trenches together quite a bit, man. So, I appreciate the friendship for sure.

All right. So, in terms of my background. Born in California, spent a little time out there, mother and father both in graduate school. Dad then was military, so we did a couple of stops. And then I ended up landing in Houston with my mom and sister. And she, and my father, unfortunately, split, and she remarried in Houston. So, when I say where I’m from, I typically say Houston, Texas. Been — been in Texas since then, which was, I guess, seven years old. And here I am now and, and, and really haven’t left the state. And so I went to UT Austin, undergrad, and essentially stumbled across an HTML book. I was studying engineering and business and minoring in sociology, but it wasn’t until I stumbled across a — that HTML book that I really experienced a spark. And — and I’ll never forget that time of my life because technology was so, so interesting and it wasn’t necessarily new, but being able to kind of witness this digital revolution in real-time; we all kind of felt like something was happening back then. And so, this was 1994, ’95, built my first website in 95. For those old-school macOS folks, GraphicConverter, BBEdit, and Fetch, and all these other tools from mosaic if y’all remember that those days. But anyway, so that was the beginning to me when I think about what marks my kind of kickoff into this career. But didn’t really have any professional— I guess in roads or connection points into the design industry till, till really formally much later. But what I did do was start a consulting business here in Austin, building websites for, for, for various local companies.

Now, the, the, how I got to there’s kind of interesting. I was an intern at Apple computer first. I was, I think, a junior in college, and Apple then, at one point, ended its internship program. So, I essentially just walked across the street and went to this other company called Power Computing, which was a cone maker for the macOS.

And there, I got to build web servers with my newfound sort of self-taught skills and built an intranet and became a technical writer. So, I was actually a published macOS as technical writer for several years. And me and my buddies started building websites and configuring web servers. And, and — I would say by the time that company shut down, and this was in those sorts of fast and loose dotcom runup days. The company had shut down, and me and my buddy Shannon decided to start our own agency doing exactly what we had been doing most recently, which was building websites. And a couple of other friends of ours got us introductions, and we ended up building web content for Dell.com. For several years, we were the agency of record for several business units within Dell.com for years running in the late nineties, early two thousand. Technicolor Entertainment was our client out in Los Angeles, and so we grew the business. It was called Stream Studio Web Architects, and we grew that up to — about 30, 40 employees and had an office downtown. We thought we had arrived, David. To be honest, we thought we knew exactly what this entrepreneurship thing was all about.

And, and — but the point of it was that we were building digital experiences. I was hiring designers. I was putting together delivery teams, hiring developers, working with stakeholders, and clients, the whole sort of nine yards. And that’s really, to me, how I start my — counting my 25 years in this field, because even though I might not have known how the formal field of design would fit in this dot-com revolution and later digital revolution, we, in fact, were delivering on digital experiences even back then.

And, and so from there, the economy took a took a nosedive. 2001, went to a state government, kind of for that stable career experience. Got married, bought a house, started a family, and then got, got into design, formerly with Adaptive Path, the user experience consultancy out of San Francisco, California. And then eventually landed at IBM, helping Phil Gilbert and the rest of his leadership team deliver on the first iteration of the re — I guess imagination of design at IBM. And that brings us all the way up to 2014. So, I’m now my seventh year going on eighth of being a leader in the design program at IBM and, for the last year or so, a design executive at the company. So that kind of brings us through this 25-year career.

David: It’s fascinating to see your path. What stood out for you at IBM and the program that was happening at the time? Why come to IBM?

Nigel: That’s a great question. I think that the — the first impressions I remember having after landing and getting my feet wet in the company here at IBM was just the immense scale of everything. That, that was my first— first thoughts were just, wow, how can I do this? Can I help teams be successful? That’s what I was brought in by Phil to do, by the way, was helped manage what we called at the time the hallmark program, which was our answer to how does one scale a competency. And in our case, that design competency across an enterprise, the scale of IBM.

Well, we created this thing called a hallmark program. Business units signed up. We were hiring designers at scale, and then we would match designers with those programs and projects. There were subscribers into the program. And then, they had certain expectations of behavior on how they would implement and adopt IBM design thinking. And later enterprise design thinking around playbacks and sponsor users and our various design thinking activities and methods.

Now —but it wasn’t sort of trivial to make that leap from Adaptive Path. As you mentioned the, the agency was, was quite well known. And the thing about Adaptive Path is that my —our mutual friend, Todd Wilkins used to say that this Adaptive Path really has sort of this rarefied air of very senior and experienced user-centered designers.

And no matter the project, there was never a lack of just amazing cleverness and ingenuity, and obviously, creativity that led to our clients in that agency being absolutely delighted with outcomes we would get to, especially at a strategic human-centered level. IBM was not known for that and was not known for the visual design, you know, sort of aspects either, not just the human centricity and design thinking, but the craft of, of things that ship into the world. And so, I wasn’t the first one that came here. Todd came here first. Todd was my boss. I was, I was — ended up being studio leader for the Austin location of Adaptive Path. Todd left before I did and ended up recruiting me to come over to IBM and, and we were all asking ourselves why IBM?

And it turns out Phil Gilbert’s style of investing in design thinking is what was winning the day. From him being acquired, to his product portfolio doing well; to Ginni and other leaders at the senior executive suite asking Phil to consider. And then, and then, hey, we’ve got some investment, Phil, would you take this investment and help us explore and figure out what design at IBM could be?

Being on that journey is what was interesting. Helping other designers and design leaders, and product leaders define the very practice, the very career, and the very approach to achieving business outcomes using human centricity. That was the challenge that was intriguing to me and, and that — and luckily, I was able to finagle my way into the company and we’ve had some success since then.

So, it’s been an absolute blast me on this journey and, and constantly trying to figure out how do we deliver quality design at scale? How do we help each business unit that we get involved in deliver on their promises to the company through business outcomes and do it in a human-centric way using the designer’s toolkit? And that that’s been such a blast over the last seven years.

David: That’s incredible. And for someone who had a front seat to watching a lot of that, and obviously, I’ve got photos and videos to prove it. It’s, it’s been an incredible —it’s been an incredible front-row seat. When your first came in and some of those early years, what were some of the hardest things you had to deal with that you felt that your experience brought to the table?

What were some of those big — big hurdles, big conflicts that were happening early on?

Nigel: I would say the culture shift. The culture shift that the design program was provoking was difficult and continues to be difficult. If you spend any amount of time and sort of the corporate world, we all know that change management is one of the hardest things ever, and change management, really, in my opinion, pivots on this idea of an organization’s culture.

And my buddy Adam Cutler reminds us that culture can be described as behaviors over time. And so, if you think about it that way, there are behaviors that influence budgets, hiring decisions, career growth, roadmap, definition, release management, everything. Everything is a behavior, in other words. So, if you take all the things that happen in a day, a week, a month, et cetera, at a — in a — in a company, that’s that company’s culture.

And so, all of a sudden, we were saying, it’s not just product management and engineering that are the intellectual leaders that have the craft and ability to form a strategy and a tactical plan to address the market. It now must also consider design. That was a behavior change. And when we went to the marketplace of sort of employment to, to get new designers to bring into the company — they didn’t look — they didn’t talk like — they didn’t — they didn’t behave like maybe the — a lot of what other IBMers you know had come to expect that of new hires. And so, we in design looked and talked and behave differently. We talked about different things than previous IBMers may have. And so, all of those things were changes, and changes are hard.

So that’s all just a preface to my answer, David, to say that sort of bridging the gap between the existing teams at IBM and these newly hired designers and design thinkers. That was the work, really, I think. How, how would they— how should they consider three in a box design, dev, and product? How should they collaborate around playbacks?

How should they listen to not just the voice of the user, but really the experiences and sentiments of the human beings who we call users? How do they use that data to make future product and services decisions? These are all new things, and anytime anything is new, it can be stressful or disruptive or downright controversial and full of conflict.

And so those early years, I’m talking about 2014 and ’15, ’16, it was all about how do we build consensus? How do we drive mandate even if we don’t have consensus — consensus? How do we operate even if we don’t have the mandate? How do we show the company a better way to get to product releases and service delivery that helps IBM differentiate in the marketplace? And not just helps but really accelerates and drives differentiation for the IBM company in a way that the modern organization needs to be doing. And as we look across the competitive landscape, we see disruption all the time. We see places or companies like Uber, transportation company that doesn’t own any actual vehicles or Airbnb, amenities and overnight stay company that doesn’t own any hotels or buildings.

Right, and so when we see all of these things happening around us, what’s the IBM response to this idea of the disruption we’ve been seeing in the 2000s and 2010s, and now into the 2020s? That’s where we are making our big bet as a company that designers and design thinkers are part of the missing ingredients that will help bring this, this very storied and historic, and important company into this new world of digital cloud and human centricity.

David: You brought up the idea one of the greatest conflicts was in the kind of bringing together of different cultures to create this design culture. And that for me is kind of a good segue to talk about your work in Racial Equity in Design because as I read it off the website, the initial statement at the top, or at least the first part of it, is that the Racial Equity in Design initiative is committed to ensuring racial equity is instilled in the design culture inside and outside of IBM.

And do you see some parallels in terms of trying to instill into the existing IBM design culture? Now from, from a racial equity standpoint, are there some similarities there? What are your thoughts on that? Because Racial Equity in Design is also about changing culture and merging existing cultures with a perspective that really helps them to see outside that existing culture. Do you see similarities there?

Nigel: I think you’re right. I think there are a ton of similarities there. I hadn’t thought about it so directly that there are sort of these direct analogs between the overall transformation of design at IBM and the racial equity and design transformation. I hadn’t really thought of it in particular like that, but I think it holds true.

I think it’s asking those around us to behave in new ways. So, behavior change. I think there’s a platform or a set of ideas and values that inform specific programs and activities. I think that we’re a smaller program than, than the scale of a lot of other programs at the company. So, the investment is a bit lighter. And so, how do we create sort of outsized outcomes, given the current level of investment that we’re able to bring together? So, all of these traits are super similar. I think when you — when you think about it. So, I think that’s a great observation.

The part that I think that is unique with Racial Equity in Design is that we’re dealing with institutional issues that exist well beyond the IBM company that actually hit at the current and historical nature of race relations in this company, which is — I’m sorry, in this country, which is part and parcel responsible for the very existence of our country. And so, it’s a bigger issue in a lot of ways than simply who has decision rights on a product release. Whereas people’s careers are tied up in a product release for sure, so those battles are intense, don’t get me wrong. But we’ve got 400 years of history that permeates every single corner of the American experiment as sort of the foundational place where Racial Equity in Design stems from.

And so, over time, if you just connect the dots, 50 years ago, hiring practices didn’t look like the inclusive practices of today. 50 years before that, there might not have been any minorities in a lot of these white-collar jobs. That’s just 100 years, right? That’s almost half of our country’s age and almost a quarter of the complete time that Westerners have been on this continent. So, if you just go back that many years, it’s not that long in terms of number of generations. The world or this country, this North American sort of geography was completely influenced by a very specific and strat — and stratified sort of race-based approach to governance, culture, education, economics, et cetera. So, yes, I’m talking about slavery. Yes, I’m talking about the colonial area — era, and then I’m talking about post-civil and even post and pre-civil rights, and even immediately after civil rights.

If you inspect each of those institutions from education, economics, housing, government, there were — we are still seeing effects of every single decision it was made a 100, 200, 300 years ago. And so, that baggage is heavy and, and because it’s so heavy, it’s actually imbued with politics. And once you start connecting big ideas with politics, now people start picking sides. And then we get to this place where people are, are raised saying you never talk about the following topics in polite company. I don’t know, sex, money, and politics, and religion potentially. Right, and so, racial justice, racial equity is on that short list of things not to talk about. And in fact, at the work — in the workplace, many of these topics are illegal to talk about in certain contexts.

So that’s the inheritance, I think David, that makes racial equity work quite a bit different in terms of its — the scale and the complexity, and the — and the legacy that it is dealing with. So, yes, it’s similar in that it’s a culture change, and it’s in his behavior change. I mean, it’s taking on sort of institutions that existed previously and attempting to work with, change them, mold them and make them better. But it’s different in that the institutions at play here are far deeper reaching and far more fundamental to the very existence of the Western society as expressed in the United States.

David: What uniqueness do you think you bring to the table in your role in racial equity design at IBM?

Nigel: Well, this, this question, it makes me chuckle a little bit. Cause my, my background is so — it is unique as is almost an understatement, and so my — my mother was born in Kodiak, Alaska. She was born to a Filipino father and a Native American mother. So, my mother is, is, is biracial with those two ethnicities. And, and so, she married my father, who is a Black man from the — from Alabama.

And so, my sister and I grew up in this sort of United Nations of households where our skin color is not our mother’s skin color. And then, when my mother remarried, and she remarried a man who is — who’s is a white guy, a tall Texan and was, is, — was and is an absolutely fantastic father, so, and my father remarried too.

So, I mean, honestly, we had four very loving and doting parents to, to be raised by who we’re all a part of this interesting thing called our extended family with lots of immigrant families and ethnicities and countries of origin represented. And so, we grew up in that context. So that’s, that’s the household we grew up in, my sister and I, and, and my, and all of our parents did everything they humanly could do to make sure that we had whatever resources they had in order to — to move through childhood and early adulthood and into our own lives and careers. And so, a lot of exploration, David, a lot of exploration has happened in my life.

I remember being the outcast in a lot of situations. Not being dark-skinned enough for certain Black environments or not being light-skinned enough for certain non-Black environments and having this group of friends, as well as this other group of friends, and then those groups don’t connect. And having awkward teenage years. And I going through identity crisis is not unique to me or to, to — I mean, I think we all go through those things, but because mine was around race. My sister didn’t have this experience, I don’t think. But because my sort of exploration sort of was like around my hairstyle and texture and color and skin and vocabulary and ways of dancing and dressing, all those things came to the fore at various times between say 14 and 24. And having to come to grips with those things, find a way to be comfortable with all those things, and then finding a way to be successful in all of those things. I think — I think what that did for me, David, man, is to give me what we now professionally call empathy in our in our design discipline.

But at the — at the time, I didn’t know what it was. I just knew that I was trying to be the best human being I could be because that’s all my parents ever lined up for my sister and I. So having to be a person that could navigate among lots of groups has been the thing in my life for as long as I can remember.

In fact, I didn’t know any other existence even — even existed out in the world. And so, me being able to do that, I think what that has done for me, David, is say, listen, you might be talking to a group of hiring managers that don’t have the lived experience of being a minority. You might be talking to a bunch of college graduates who are applying to be interns from design schools, the SCADs of the world, the Stanford d. school, or you might be talking to undergrads at an HBCU and on and on, on; executives, first-year, hires interns, P-TECH participants. And I think part of what makes me successful, if you — if you agree that I’ve had some success, I feel like I still have a long way to go, but if you, if you want to look at some of the things I’ve been able to do, though— I think that way in which I get there is through the ability to connect and professionally and design designers who are out there.

You’ll — we know that we cannot design for our personas, our users, unless we connect with the ideas that are important to them as users. We know that as parents, we can’t connect with children unless we understand what they’re going through and connect in that way or our spouses on and on and on, and I think I apply that. Honestly, David, wherever I go — I hadn’t really put a finer point on it before, but that’s been something that I’ve intentionally tried to do wherever I go is try to connect dots, connect people, connect concepts. And what better place to do that when we’re talking about racial equity. This place, this domain of sort of inquiry that is so fraught with disconnected, racial justice in America. That that might be my, my thing there is I’m trying to drive connections where otherwise they might not have existed.

David: What’s that dream look like years from now in terms of the work of Racial Equity and Design at IBM and, and beyond that?

Nigel: You know, I think that one of the easy to identify disconnects that, that we are investing in resolving as this sort of quantitative gap that exists in our profession.

So, if so, simply representing at a level that’s commiserate with the — the population percentage in the United States. That has to happen, and it’s not just an altruistic statement. And let me, let me, let me be clear about that. We need more diverse and empowered teams because those are the types of teams that deliver better results into the marketplace. We are living in a global society, obviously, with folks from every type of background; you can imagine just a couple clicks away from either renewing their SaaS subscription or digital subscription or making a purchase or not. And so, no longer can we be blind to our unintentional biases no matter what our ethnicity is. So as a first step, let’s simply get the numbers up. Let’s bring in the right number of Black designers into our profession, such that we create more diverse as kind of step one, but ultimately more efficient and better tooled at getting towards that — those market outcomes that our businesses and corporations need.

And I think that’s not necessarily low-hanging fruit, but it’s very obvious just to see a stark number, right. Number of, of represented minorities on a team or not on a team. I think that’s step one. I think then beyond that is culture change. So, once we get people into the business working, now, we can say, hey, you’re 16 years old or 15 years old, and you’re contemplating what major you’ll pursue and what college you’ll pursue, which university you’ll tend to have to pursue that major. We want to be able to authentically say that not just IBM as a corporation, but every company that does stuff like us, right. And these other large companies and even medium or small size companies, we in design have a career for you. It’s not just about being a doctor or lawyer, architect, researcher, scientist. Yes, all those matter. Go do those things. Also, add design to your mix. Add design to the bundle of careers that’s both high paying and rewarding. And we would like — I would like to see, talk about vision. I would like to see it not be abnormal for there to be 2, 3, 4, 5 Black folks and really all minorities on a design team that’s delivering patented patentable, innovative, interesting work into the marketplace, through our services, through our products. That there be some Black designer who creates the next big thing here and there and, and it not be a surprise if that person happens to be a minority in North America or specifically be Black.

And so, I think that’s that to me will have encompassed so many things because, by the time we get to see teams at scale that are diverse and empowered, we will have head to a recruited the right number of folks with these particular experiences. We will have had to seen them traverse through undergraduate and maybe graduate school. We would have had to have seen them make decisions in elementary, middle, and high school that — oh, I like to sketch things, or I like to solve problems or like to understand how the same thing affects different people.

All of those things might lead to a career in design. They might also lead to a career in engineering or a career in psychology, sociology, anthropology. A lot of these raw skills are the same exact, not just raw, but academic disciplines that can power very rewarding design careers. So, we will have had to have convinced that 12-year-old, 13-year-old, 14-year-old that they can do that and that they can design the next company that takes on Airbnb or Uber, or IBM even.

And essentially, we can inspire the next designer or design thinker to come take my job as a design executive. I think the person who comes to take my job is probably in middle school right now. Give them four or five years — not four or five, maybe. Yeah, I mean, four or five years to get into college, and then four years after that. I’m ready to — I’m ready to ride off into the sunset with my kids and all that good stuff. And then they’re coming in and saying, “Hey, this is the new transformation for 2030,“ and if that person happens to be somebody that got influenced by our appearances on television shows, “America by Design,” for example, on this podcast, or one of our speaking opportunities or one of our college tours, or just by going to [www.ibm.com/design/racial-equity-in-design/] where we publish all of our work. If they’re inspired by something like that or some other program that we’re going to continue to announce, be involved in; that’s how I’ll know that we were successful way back, way back then. So, let’s get our numbers up, first step, and then the culture must come right behind that, and then let’s create new entrance. And then because all those other aspects that are in place, those new entrance to our field, we’ll see that there’s a path for them.

So, David, that’s really what wh — where I think that the power is and where the opportunity is in this is that we were connecting hopefully with that, that younger generation. And, and when we end up doing that, what we, what we result in is bringing in the right numbers of people to be on these diverse, empowered teams. We hire them into roles knowing that we’ve got a pipeline of progression through their career. And once we can start young and once, we can bring those folks in and open up their eyes and inspire them into our profession, not just at IBM, but outside the walls of IBM, then we’re — then we’re actually connecting those dots we talked about at the beginning. We’re connecting these dots between the opportunities and design, and the people that we think can make design a better profession. And it’s with that connection that we actually have a chance to get to the good society where we are driving teams that matter and teams that look different than they did 50 years ago.

And these teams now can take this corporation and others and the individuals within it to new places.

And that’s why I feel privileged, again, to have a front-row seat. One, to work with individuals like yourself and I think those kinds of things, and even this very podcast, the kind of work you’re doing now will be the kind of things that now get in front of these design students who, who, who may be the future design execs, but because they got to hear a Nigel podcast or watch Nigel on a TV series and things like that. And I think that’s such an important thing that’s happening now. And I think that racial equity in design is helping to bring. And that’s what I get excited about.

Nigel: David, that’s a hundred — a hundred percent, right? We say this a few times. I mean, ”a rising tide raises all boats.” And so, a lot of the work we’re doing might specifically be initiated through our deep user-centered research and the experience of Black designers. But in reality, the outcomes of the research lead us to design new experiences for the — for the career that transcend all of design. And so, we’re simply making a statement here that by being instigated by these issues, that stem from a racist past, we are now coming to a place where our solutions help everyone. And whether or not the person is in a specific lived experience based on ethnicity or not, to be honest. And we think we’re making IBM a better place. And the feedback from recent hires as a result of our work is confirming that it doesn’t matter what ethnicity they come from but especially those who come from marginalized populations, which typically are brown folks here in North America and maybe around the world to, to be clear, but, but certainly here in North America where we have data and where we’re doing our research, we know that representation matters. We know that achievement matters, and it’s very clear that we’re not making a statement that IBM has to be more altruistic, and the society needs to be. We’re saying that there’s a business case paired with altruism, for sure. But there’s a business case that says we are not reducing the bar on quality.

We’re simply saying the quality exists out in the world for people from these experiences, and it just takes some slight behavior change to go find them and bring them into our hiring pipeline, bring them on board. And once they’re on board, now they’re participating in our system. Now they’re participating with enterprise design thinking, three in a box or career plan, et cetera. And, and, and we’re showing that they can deliver the outcomes that are needed at the enterprise of our size and complexity. And, and if I’m part of the leadership team that brings us in and teaches not just IBM and a few business units but, but dozens of business units and maybe even dozens of companies at our scale. Now we’re talking about thousands of lives impacted per year, potentially. And over time, hopefully, that just multiplies David; that’s the future that, that I’m working for.

That’s what keeps me up at night. That that’s what wakes me up in the morning around this topic is driving a future reality that we could not conceive of even 10 years ago. But now, because we’re investing in this way and we — you and I, and others are representing the IBM investment. That investment means something. And it’s a signal to the world that we can create a better society going forward, sort of just by taking a look at who we hire, how we hire, how we promote, and how we are authentic to the very value of equity. And when we can do that, and I’m happy to use the designer sort of toolkit and embued with empathy and, and other values, like the learner’s mindset.

And once we do that and apply those skill sets to the societal problem, even if we’re doing it from an economic perspective, the business perspective, we all know that as soon as we clock out for the day, we go home to our families. We take that paycheck home. We reinvest in our communities. We raise our families, multiply that by thousands of people, by hundreds of new entrances into this profession. Now, now we’re talking about making a difference, and that’s what I’m immensely proud of.

David: I just got to say, hashtag fire emoji. I don’t even have words. I just have emojis right now.

Nigel: Nigel, thank you so much, man. Appreciate your time.

Like likewise, my man. I appreciate you, David, and listen, man. You’ve been an instrumental member of this team, and our friendship, David, transcends all, honestly. And, and not just with you, but for the entire Racial Equity in Design team, the design program, our — our stakeholders, our team members, collaborators, co-conspirators. It’s really all about that full. Community bringing their energy and passion.

And I’m lucky. I’m lucky to be in a position to be the initiative leader, to bring it all together. But it’s certainly the story is not about Nigel. The story is about the work that these talented IBMers are bringing to the forefront. And hopefully, we can make a difference both at IBM and beyond.

Nigel: Thank you for listening to It’s about time. I’d like to thank Alisha Moore, our producer and David Avila, our audio engineer. Thanks to the entire Racial Equity and Design work stream here at IBM for making this possible. Everyone, be safe and be well.