“How are you supposed to make a difference in something if you don’t understand it?”

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Design thinking was a concept introduced to Amy later on in her career, but the seeds were planted in her education. She learned that art was about expressing yourself, but design was about having an intended goal. After she started to see the potential of human-centered design, she wanted to work in the field, even though it was nascent at the time. She saw the greater purpose and it spoke to her personally.  

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The process of design thinking she works with now is about understanding all the various systems, people, and parts to a problem and identifying areas or pain points that you can pivot, tweak or entirely change to create something new. Recently her work at Impact Labs with homelessness involves working with government, agencies, and individuals and understanding what people want and need and how those needs can be met by changing the current systems. The key question to ask in this work is, “What is the role of the thing you are trying to create playing in this problem?” and being realistic about it.

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“You start by talking to people.”

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After an insightful fellowship post-college and a short stint of being a founder in her 20s, Amy took a job with Gravity Tank, an innovation consultancy focused on leveraging human-centered design to create new products for their clients, which was later acquired by Salesforce. The teammates she worked with were each excellent in their niche and were very willing to teach her anything she wanted to learn. She sunk her teeth into their work around global health when they submitted a proposal to the Gates Foundation for redesigning the child vaccination record. She learned to design outside of the U.S. context, with limited tools, and within the complexities of stakeholders like WHO, UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, and ministers of health. 

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Once Gravity Tank was acquired by Salesforce, Amy was often approached to do pro bono work on the Innovation team, specifically within the community. This led to the conception of Impact Labs, which led her to a leadership position co-designing solutions within non-profit and educational institutions to de-risk innovation for communities.They create fit-for-purpose versions of Salesforce, the technology product, that is specifically geared for these kinds of institutions. Their goal is to provide safe space for these communities to play around with new ideas that could drive value to their market or sector by delivering pro bono work from the Salesforce Impact Labs team.

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Amy’s hope is that the tools and skills that Impact Labs shares with their clients will become an asset that they can use to problem solve in many areas of their organizations, beyond the work that Labs has done specifically with them. The rubric that Labs uses to identify how they can support their clients includes potential for impact, feasibility, viability, and usability of the Salesforce technology. What the clients take from the Labs experience is much more than they plan on, including a new perspective on how technology can be used on a larger scale around social issues. 

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