Put Your Squirrel Suit On and Jump Off the Cliff
Ana Arriola Speaking at Tech Inclusion San Francisco
By Jared Karol
Ana Arriola has had a fascinating life journey — both professionally and personally — and you get the sense when you listen to her talk that her journey still has a lot of stops left on it. Speaking at the 2016 Tech Inclusion Conference in San Francisco last fall, Ana summed it up like this: “Every exit is an entrance to somewhere else.”
Indeed it is. To list Ana’s professional experiences would take up the word count permitted for this article, but let’s just say that she has accomplished a lot in the world of tech, specifically around product design — and she has done it by following three core principles: Be human, keep it simple, and be authentic.
Her most recent day job finds her at Facebook as the Director of Product Design. Previously, she was the Global VP of UX and Design at Samsung. Before that, stints at Sony, Apple, and Adobe. Along the way, she also had time to found several hardware and software startups.
“How did I get [to where I am]?” Ana asks. “How did I actually come from traditional design to leading a global organization of user experience designers? What I do in the space is testing experimental concepts and pushing the boundaries of user experience that combine and go beyond hardware and software.”
A self-proclaimed autodidact, Ana attributes her success to flying rodents. “No matter what problem I face in life,” Ana says, “I always have my squirrel suit ready at any moment. From the creative side I use a different squirrel suit as I look about my landscape and the world. I go deep into the ethnography of particular regions. Having been part of a lot of the early interesting laboratories and projects here [in Silicon Valley], I take that approach with my own unique squirrel suit, with my own laboratory.”
Born in in Los Angeles, Ana was always a child of the world: part Mexican, Swedish, and Danish––and she grew up in Japan. Born male, when she was six, she knew for the first time in her life that she was female. She pushed that forward. Ana says, “I learned about how I can apply that uniqueness I have as a person into entrepreneurship. In junior high, I was running a business out of my locker.”
By high school, she had created a successful bootleg anime operation before anyone knew what anime was. This led her back to Japan, and the start of an illustrious and wildly successful career in product, software, and hardware design. She put on her squirrel suit and took off in high G, evoking a term that astronauts who are subject to high levels of acceleration use in training to prevent loss of consciousness.
“Being a woman, being a transwoman,” Ana says, “that’s how I approach myself: High G in a squirrel suit.”
Through all her high-flying professional and personal experiences, Ana is still mindful to apply all her learnings into her three core principles mentioned above: human, simple, and authentic. “I take that approach,” she says. “I question everything I do, and I’m not influenced by anyone.” And she suggests we all do the same. “Don’t be persuaded. Don’t be told how or what you should be doing in your life. You define it yourself.”
In a recent TED Talk in Japan, Ana gave the audience three takeaways, and she repeated them in her talk at the Tech Inclusion conference. “Embrace your fear, have ferocious tenacity, and have unwavering grit,” Ana says. “If you can master these three things, there’s nothing that will scare you, nothing that you can actually not tackle in this world.”
When we are inspired by what’s around us, Ana reminds us, we will find that creative inspiration is everywhere. “Let your journeys be the catalyst,” she says. “Put your squirrel suit on and jump off the cliff.”
Don’t worry that you won’t be able to fly. You will. You just have to trust your gut. And your wings.
Watch Ana’s full talk here.
About Change Catalyst:
Change Catalyst empowers diverse, inclusive and sustainable tech innovation — through events, consulting, research and training.
Our Tech Inclusion programs explore and develop innovative solutions to tech diversity and inclusion.
Our Startup Ecosystem programs help underrepresented entrepreneurs and investors to start, scale and fund worldchanging businesses.
Change Catalyst is a Certified B Corp, winning the “Best for the World” award for community impact in 2014 and “Best in the World” overall in 2015.
The Change Catalyst Team
Follow Us on Twitter | Like Us on Facebook | Subscribe to Our Email Newsletter| Listen to our Podcast
