Leading with Purpose

In the spring of 2024, during my final semester in the Masters in Design Innovation program at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, I and my peers had the opportunity to meet several inspiring leaders in the design industry who were invited by professor José Manuel dos Santos for the Leadership Chat events we organized and hosted in our college.

Danica (Komal) Shettigar (myself), Dhanshree Patil, Sha Liu, Professor José Manuel dos Santos, Yijia Lei and Emily Karafelis

The speakers shared compelling stories about their journeys, highlighting the lessons they learned and experiences they gained along the way. What struck me most was that nearly all of them never imagined they would lead teams someday. Instead, it was their passion for delivering meaningful work, collaborating with people, and finding purpose in what they did that led them to where they are today.

I particularly resonated with those who spoke about working in various industries before finding their way into the design world. Their transition into the design industry wasn’t just about creating visually appealing work, but rather designing to bring meaningful change to people’s lives through human-centered design and empathy. As I pivot in my career from business to design, I would like to share some of my learnings during the last semester of my masters program in the Spring of 2024.

During one of the Leadership Chat events, Julie Casanave, the VP of User Experience and Digital Product Owner at Fidelity Investments, shared insights into her leadership motivations, referencing Daniel Pink’s book “Drive,” which emphasizes the key elements people need to feel motivated: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. I was deeply impressed by her interpretation of these concepts and how she incorporates them into her leadership approach to inspire her team. She explained that these principles have allowed her to better understand her team’s dynamics. Julie particularly highlighted the importance of “purpose,” emphasizing that understanding the problems her team solves, the people they serve, and the measures of success they establish, forms the cornerstone of her leadership.

“Purpose” is a weighty term, often leaving people grappling with its meaning. Yet, amidst the conversations at Leadership Chat events, speakers exuded a clear sense of purpose, navigating their paths with ease.

Discovering my own purpose felt like a daunting task until I encountered someone who changed my perspective. It became evident that having a mentor-like figure can make all the difference, guiding us with the right questions to uncover what truly drives us.

My experience working in corporate environments has given me an appreciation for values like scalability and pragmatism. However, the empathy that comes naturally to me as a designer helps balance these values, allowing me to consider the often-overlooked factors that can remain in our blind spots in a corporate setting.

In my first role as a Risk Analyst in Internal Audit, I worked with a diverse range of people across various departments, each with distinct perspectives and work styles, from white-collar to blue-collar employees. Each individual had their own unique style, behavior, and level of empathy, which required me to tailor my approach to collect the information and data I needed for my work. In the end, it was simply identifying problems and deriving meaningful solutions.

After getting into the MDES program, I realized that my approach to my work has always been like that of a designer: seeking creative ways to achieve goals while being driven by a passion to deliver meaningful results. I have always enjoyed the process of conducting research to identify problems and solve for them. I was simply unaware that embedding the values of a designer like empathy and creativity would make my passion and interests clearer to myself and help me find my way into the design world sooner. It was a purpose that I wasn’t consciously aware of.

I hadn’t found a mentor who could recognize my potential and help me find my desired path — until I met my life partner. The senior leadership and managers I have worked with in these corporate business settings were focused solely on managing people, not leading them. Today, I can confidently say that my husband has been the one who not only believed in me but also guided me to ask myself the right questions to discover my purpose. He might not hold a formal leadership position in the professional world, but he exhibits traits that reflect true leadership. One such trait that I appreciate is his ability to encourage those around him to excel and shine — a leadership quality highlighted by the guest speakers at the Leadership Chat events. As we have discussed throughout the semester, a leader does not always hold a formal leadership position but rather displays it in their behavior, attitudes and approach.

Who are you? What makes you different? What do you do to exist? What are you willing and not willing to do to achieve it?

When people are asked the right questions, it has a profound impact on their career journey just like how it did in mine when I decided to fearlessly pivot my career into design.

My husband and I

I believe every leader should strive to make a difference in at least one person’s life, as this has the potential to create a ripple effect. Like Julie Casanave, I hope the leaders of today are able to help their teams and people find purpose and meaning in what they do and guide them towards the direction that suits them best. I think leaders today must aim to drive their employees with purpose if they want to truly achieve valuable outcomes in their organization.

Since purpose is something that is realized over a period of time, at this point in my life-my purpose is to sustainably design meaningful experiences for people by being authentic to myself and them.

Here are the Medium articles to the first two Leadership Chat events!

• Leadership Chat 1 by myself
• Leadership Chat 2 by Emily Karafelis