I met Ceara Crawshaw at a water cooler at Startupfest 2018 in Montreal.  It goes to show the importance of staying open because you never really know when you’re going to happen upon a great conversation!

Ceara and I somehow got to talking about podcasts and planned a follow-up chat for a few weeks later.  I looked into her work freelancing in UX design (user experience, if you’re not familiar with the acronym – and no worries if you’re not, I can barely keep track of the acronyms I need to use on a daily basis!) – UX is something I think a lot about from a systems point-of-view.  Another way of saying that, is – I often think about how people interact / interface with systems – systems like gender. During that chat about podcasting, I invited her to this interview and she thankfully agreed!

Some takeaways from the conversation:

• Recognizing people first, before considering their gender
• How to recover from perfectionism to fully embrace entrepreneurship
• The importance of strong female role models in life should never be understated

And the question I’m left pondering from this episode is:

How do we embrace a diversity of ways to communicate and not necessarily relate it to gender?

I hope you enjoyed the conversation and looking forward to hearing your thoughts!