By Marissa Louie · 3 min read

Welcome to my design leadership blog! It turns out that I've been working in Silicon Valley since 2002. My, oh my, how time flies.

When I was in high school, I wanted to be a fashion designer, and designed a few pieces of clothing. Then I took an economics class that made me realize that the volatility of the fashion design industry was probably not for me.

Then in my freshman year at UC Berkeley in 2001, I took a computer science class where I coded a website in HTML and JavaScript as my final project. The coding part was pretty straightforward for me, but I was determined to make the aesthetic and usability aspect of my website the best it could be. This is when I discovered a passion for web design, even though I was only able to find a few dozen online resources about the subject at the time. This passion was fueled by the desire to make the world a more friendly, appealing place, and ended up helping me get an A on my website project.

A fun fact: During my time as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, I read the majority of the books used at UC Berkeley's MBA program because I was determined to bring together business, engineering, and design together in my career.

I'm also a self-taught designer: I didn't have the opportunity to study design formally at UC Berkeley. I taught myself design by tinkering around with Photoshop and code, and reading many of the books used in top design undergraduate and graduate programs including Carnegie Mellon University, CalArts, Stanford, MICA, and RISD. I also read blog posts, took online classes, and gave myself design challenges in order to learn everything from icon design to typography, grids, mobile app design, and design thinking. A few professional designer friends gave me helpful feedback and encouragement along the way.

I began my career in Silicon Valley in 2002 as an intern at Accenture, then interned at a tech startup called Number Networks. After I graduated in 2005, I worked for Deloitte Consulting, Ness, Apple, and Yahoo, and co-founded a few startups including HeroEx, Dilemma, Ad Village, and Animoodles. You can view and download my resume here or connect with me on LinkedIn.

My diverse career includes entrepreneurship, product management, and engineering, though it is rooted in design.

This is my "T" as a designer:

Here on my design leadership blog, I will share some of the best lessons, tips, and tricks I've learned in my career as a designer in Silicon Valley. I hope you find the content useful!