Interview by Paula Gilovich
I’ve never applied for a job. Instead, what I do – in the Buddhist sense – is tend my garden. What are my seeds? What do I want to grow?
My particular currency is design. To make the distinction immediately, I am a designer – this is who I am, not what I do. It is not a title. I have plenty of those, and I have found that often they are just masks – clothing, if you will. No, design is my seed, it is internal to me. And design for me is the urge to create. The want to innovate. It is to bring something forth. It is the reflection of the original beauty.
So instead of jobs, I’ve had heart-bound interests, one project begetting another – the requisite for my involvement being that my spirit must grow bigger at the prospect of what can be created.
For me this has meant working for Jill Sanders, creating Urban Zen with Donna Karan, co-creating the first TED Women conference, designing a Rolls Royce interior, the Karen Harvey offices, pipes in Geneva, concerts in London, and on and on.
An organic career. And since design must answer to time and place, I am now a woman in technology.
What is a woman in technology? She is a great opportunity to ensure we humanize ourselves with these tools instead of give way to a robotic heart.
I currently partner with 5 different technology companies and in my role as partner, I always begin with three questions. Where is the data going? What are you doing with the money? And what are you doing for humanity?
This year has been a turning point, and all of our giant tech companies are stumbling in various ways. We must make a choice. Technology can be our downfall or our savior – it’s completely up to us. Even more than other types of industry, tech companies need to be crystal clear that they are committed to making lives better. Not hyper-distracted, not addictive, not indulgently easier (although easier can certainly be a byproduct), but better.
When I was first starting out, I was told, “You cannot do that.” I wanted to send something down the runway that had never made its way down a runway. My teacher said, “No.” The greatest word for a creative to hear is the word “No”. The perfect muse.
Needless to say, I sent it down the runway.
This is the starting point for technology too. It begins at, “No, that is impossible.” It is about disruption, as we have heard all too much. I argue – and act on – the premise that we must disrupt the very idea of what technology is disrupting and we should examine how it should be created and why it is being created.
With such scale, comes great responsibility. Let’s zoom out, see ourselves first, and remember that we are in an evolutionary game – one we would like to continue instead of destroy.
Whether it is a platform for returning money to musicians, reversing the flow of capital, optimizing social impact, the companies I am involved in are helping us be better than we were before. This is the test.
In writing classes they will tell you to ‘flesh’ out your story. I see my role in technology as someone who is committed to ‘fleshing’ out our technology. We must add the humanity back into the algorithm. We must leave a technology imprint that always guides us to the experience of being human.
-Sonja Nuttall
