The UX Teacher Prep Podcast

Ep 6. From Teacher to Design Program Manager with Tisha Woods

• Zee Arnold • Season 1 • Episode 6

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In today's episode, I interview the remarkable Tisha Woods, whose own metamorphosis from Child Development Educator to a Design Program Manager is nothing short of inspirational. Tisha illuminates the path she carved out for herself, transforming her classroom skills into tech talents in the bustling tech scene of the San Francisco Bay area. Her insights on work-life balance and the art of boundary-setting are golden nuggets for any professional seeking harmony in their hectic schedules. Tisha's story isn't just about a career switch; it's a masterclass in leveraging life's lessons across industries.

In a world where job titles can intimidate, Tisha breaks down the walls around the Design Program Manager role, showing how its core—goal setting, nurturing projects, and stakeholder management—mirrors the heart of teaching. She turns the spotlight on the essential soft skills that educators possess, which are invaluable and often underestimated in the tech world. Whether you're a teacher contemplating a career leap or a design enthusiast, Tisha's journey proves that with a bit of grit and a lot of self-compassion, the classroom's confines can give way to the limitless horizons of UX and design. Don't miss this episode where we celebrate the adaptable spirit of educators and the expansive future that beckons in the tech industry.

Guest Bio: Tisha Woods is an Auntie, a student, an educator, and a Design Program Manager based in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can find her daydreaming about chips and salsa, reading and writing, and hanging out with her niece and nephews.

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Zee:

Hello teacher friends, coach Z here and in today's episode I interviewed Tisha Woods, a child development educator turned design program manager in the San Francisco Bay area. In our discussion we talk about everything from her transition journey to work life balance, her transferable skills and advice she has for transitioning teachers. It was so great to get her perspective on all the things, so I know you're going to love this one. Stay tuned.

Narrator:

Welcome to the UX teacher prep podcast, the ultimate destination for educators who aspire to break into the field of user experience and product design. Your host, Z Arnold, a 15 year teacher turned UX researcher, is here to guide, coach and mentor you through every twist and turn as you make your career transition into tech. If you're ready for a more satisfying career and lifestyle and you want the balance to unleash your creativity, this podcast is for you. Now for the show.

Zee:

All right, Tisha, it's so great to have you on the show today and I'm excited to learn about your journey to UX. How are you?

Tisha:

I'm doing well. Thank you, z, for inviting me. This is incredible for you, incredible for me. I'm excited to get started.

Zee:

So let's start by just telling everyone a bit about yourself and who you are.

Tisha:

I'm Tisha. I am a proud auntie of three youngsters, whom I affectionately call my menaces, and I live in the San Francisco Bay area. I was a child development educator for many, many, many years. I grew up in that profession and in that field, but now I'm working as a design program manager.

Zee:

So, with you being a design program manager, how long have you been in that role?

Tisha:

I've been in this role for almost a year and a half, which is absolutely wild to think about.

Zee:

Time flies.

Tisha:

It really does. But yeah, it's an amazing transition. It's an amazing role. Deciding to transition the way I did this specific role, the best decision that I've made.

Zee:

That's great to hear. So what does like a day in your role look like?

Tisha:

I'm the design program manager for three teams that make up what's called design foundations, so that team includes design systems, illustration and inclusive design or accessibility.

Tisha:

Day to day could be anything from coordinating one-on-ones or larger meetings, kick-off, making decks, knowledge management, making sure information is accessible and, yeah, attending lots of meetings, interviews, managing software. It all depends, but yeah it's an exciting role.

Zee:

Yeah, it sounds like you're doing a lot of different things at once. So when you're doing these things that you mentioned, it sounded like you might be collaborating with a lot of different UX roles. Like I heard you say interviews I don't know if that's interviews for hiring or if that's UX research interviews. Who are the people that you collaborate with as a design program manager?

Tisha:

Given the design foundations team is a central role whose work impacts the entire organization. I could be collaborating with other designers, product managers, product marketing managers, executive leadership it covers pretty much every role in the organization, which is exciting. And regarding interviews, I interview for hiring, not necessarily like user interviews, but I could sit in on those if the project scope allowed for it.

Zee:

That's interesting. In your role then, are you remote, in person hybrid? How does that look for you?

Tisha:

Yeah, hybrid. I started as remote but our organization shifted to return to office last September, giving some flexibility with how we show up with that. So each discipline or each organization within the company has assigned days, three days a week and the other days are remote.

Zee:

Okay, well, it's nice that you have that flexibility. I know a lot of teachers talk about wanting to kind of lessen the burden of burnout and kind of wanting to have that option to work from home, you know, or even have that hybrid option where they can go in some days and stay home some days. So it's good to know you have that kind of flexibility. As you know me, my job as a UX researcher I'm just fully remote, but we do have office that I could go into if I wanted to, but it's not mandatory for me.

Tisha:

Yeah, you know it's an interesting shift to go from being in the class every day, all day, with all that like environmental stimulation, and then to have that choice. It's really good to have that flexibility and to be mindful of your own personhood, and you know, it's really cool yeah so with that, I'm thinking about that work-life balance piece.

Zee:

How would you say that is for you? Because I know when I was teaching, there was basically no work-life balance. Everything was, you know, work, work, work, and then you take everything home, and so there was no balance there for me. So how is it for you going from teaching to being a design program manager? How does that work-life balance feel for you?

Tisha:

Yeah, it's great there are clear boundaries. It gives me the kind of freedom to set my boundaries like, especially when I work from home, like the days I work from home, really being mindful of how I spend my time and how I protect myself, whether it's, you know, hiding my laptop at the end of the day, turning off Slack notifications. I didn't add Slack to my phone for a while simply because I didn't want to fall into the same pattern and have it. So I mean, the work always affects you, impacts you, but it's really good to have a choice in how to engage with it. Having a great team really helps. Not that I didn't have a great team as an educator, but to have different group of people caring and genuinely invested in your personal success as well as your professional success really helps keep those boundaries flexible.

Zee:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I definitely need to have those boundaries because you know how it is. So I wanted to pivot to talk more about your journey into the UX field, the creative industry. So I know that you and I met when we were going through that course from she Designs, the Woman of Color UX Design course. But for the audience, for my listeners, can you talk about your journey to UX and how you even discovered UX and got into being a design program manager?

Tisha:

Absolutely, and I can't believe it's been two years since we met in she Designs.

Zee:

It's absolutely bomb for this time as well. It's crazy.

Tisha:

So in 2021, my family dynamics shifted a bit and I had to evaluate my personal needs, my professional needs and my opportunities to improve both. After some soul searching, some counseling, I guess some general reflection I landed on. You know, I feel like I've maxed my capacity as an educator. I want to try something different, but not completely different that will require me to go back to school for X amount of years, something that would require me to shift from my mind works. So I spent a lot of time researching it. I eventually landed on UX design broadly and, within that, looking at the different roles within UX and UXR. User research design strategy really piqued my interest because they aligned with, like the planning and scoping and strategy in the classroom. I started looking for programs that supported that growth. I looked at Google Coursera program. I tried it but considering it was so new to me, I was like I need that interaction.

Tisha:

I did another Google search. I really was like okay, what are some programs that support black women? In time, I landed on the interview with Shiree Gibbs, who is a Google interaction designer and the founder of GDesigns. I signed up and between that was around October of 2021. So between October and January, when the program started, I did lots of one-on-one with designers in different roles. I did some initial research just to prepare my mind for what was coming. During the program I realized, yes, I love research, I love its strategy, I love planning and making sure everyone's on track. So I talked with another coach who said looking at your experience and looking at your goals, design program manager will be a great role for you. It's not design heavy in the sense that you're in the tools like Figma or Igami, but you are designing programs and ways of working to help those product designers be successful.

Zee:

And yeah, there I am. Wow. So you had someone really look at your skills and your expertise and let you know what would be a good transition for you. That's interesting.

Tisha:

Absolutely. That's an amazing investment, especially for your listeners or people who are looking to transition. Having someone who's been in both fields is absolutely beneficial and it's worth the investment because transitioning is absolutely worth investing in someone being your coach, your guide, your supports and your sound for everything that you're going to be going through.

Zee:

Yeah, that's so important. I love to talk about investing in your future, investing in your growth, because I always say investing in yourself is the best investment that you can make, and that's so true. I was listening to what you just said, and so it sounds like you were just thinking about all the transferable skills that you had and thinking about the skills that you loved to do in the classroom, like planning, strategy and research, and so you kind of navigated into UX, just knowing that those are some of the things that you could do in that field. So that is really, really important, because we think about all the skills needed to be a teacher. There's the list is endless, right and so we have so many transferable skills, but then we also have to think about what are the skills that? What are the things that we love to do, right, that we want to do in our next role?

Tisha:

Absolutely, and then figuring out how to translate them to the corporate or tech way. Looking at a job description as a teacher, looking to transition, to be overwhelming because the language is different, the focus is different, and having someone be your guide and helping you match those skills takes a lot of personal burden.

Zee:

I love what you said about soul searching, because that's really what it is. When you're making that transition from the classroom, trying to find another place where you can use your skills and be more creative, it's kind of like you have to really set aside time to reflect and soul search, and in my experience it was really during that time, during the pandemic, where everyone kind of had to pause and slow down and think about everything that was going on, and so that soul searching is a really important piece not just jumping up and applying to all different types of roles, but really soul searching and trying to figure out what the next step is going to be for you.

Tisha:

Yeah, and really introspective, but also like I did something where I asked different people in my life what do you think my values are? What am I showing to you? To make sure my personal opinion of myself matched what I was actually giving to the world and that was really affirming too, because you have to know yourself and you have to know who you are as a person in order to be vulnerable enough to make that leap, because it's intent. It can be scary, because change is scary, but having those grounders of so-and-so recognize this in me I recognize the same thing in me it really helps, kind of like, develop that confidence as you move forward.

Zee:

Yeah, and that validation is definitely important because you know about the imposter syndrome, which comes and goes.

Tisha:

That is a constant companion for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So just considering that whole transition from the teaching experience to the design role, how long did that transition take for you, if you can remember, yeah if we exclude the 2021 soul searching part and only go from the day I started G-designs until my first day on the job as a design program manager 8 months.

Zee:

Oh wow, that's pretty good yeah that speedy, that's fast.

Tisha:

It's something I'm still processing where it's like oh wow, it's not always going to happen that way, I didn't expect for it to happen that way, but I'm very glad that it happened that way.

Zee:

Yeah, for me my transition took about five months and you have people in different places LinkedIn and such who are transitioning, who some can imagine that it would be so quick. But you really have to put in a lot of work and when we were in that course, you know the homework, the assignments, the final exam. It's a lot of work you have to put in after work hours, at night, weekends to make sure that you have everything you need to really make that transition as quickly as you need to for your own time.

Tisha:

Yeah, it can't be a wake up one day and say I need to get out. I mean, it can be, that's totally fine, but really having the time to, like you said, set your own timeline, manage your own expectations and frustrations is huge. It makes the transition more bearable. If you're expecting something to happen like instantly, with zero prep, zero work, it's not happening. I mean, think about the journey to becoming an educator.

Zee:

Right, right, yeah, yeah. So it's really about planning, having that roadmap for yourself and, like you said, strategy. It's all about strategy. You talked about the transferable skills that you were trying to kind of match to your new roles based on what you're doing right now. What are some connections between the things you were doing in teaching and the things that you're doing in your design program manager role, if you?

Tisha:

think about a program as a classroom. You have overall goals, overall metrics and then individually there are projects. The projects are the students, any ways to make those projects successful. And then you have check-ins, which could be like the report card sessions or in the design world, it could be retros finding those similarities. They don't quite align, like no one's being graded necessarily. The programs aren't fixed like. There are intended outcomes, there are expected outcomes, but things happen so you have to adjust and iterate. So I feel like, yes, considering a program as a specific class or a specific course is the best, not necessarily an analogy, but comparison. And then the way to make it successful overall is relationship building. Relationship building with the entire class, like kind of like stakeholder management, in addition to individual relationships, understanding how people work, how people prefer to be communicated with, how people prefer to collaborate, how people like to receive information, really understanding those nuances of interpersonal relationships as well as larger, like cross-functional relationship. Those are those are huge parallels.

Zee:

So you mentioned the retro and I'm thinking if listeners don't know what a retro is, what does that mean?

Tisha:

Yeah, a retrospective is a time to Come together as a team and talk about what work, what could improve, what could be difference and ways to move forward. It can happen. And 30 minutes it could be a week long discussion, it could be an hour. It could happen with just your core team, with the larger Discipline team having a retro with designers, having retros with engineers, or it could be like a massive Meeting retro and, yeah, it's like another planning session, like, okay, we know what to do next time, because next time Will happen very quickly.

Zee:

A lot of times my listeners they don't necessarily know all the UX language, so I want to make sure they understand. So it's basically like a debrief and then you talk about next step.

Tisha:

Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, yeah.

Zee:

So your title is design program manager, and so I know that a lot of transitioning teachers have told me that they shy away from applying for roles that have the word manager in them because they feel like they might be Underqualified. What would you say to them about the situation where you know I don't know if design program manager is an entry level Position or if it's a high level? I mean, what would you say about that title design program manager to transition teachers?

Tisha:

Yeah, so the manager part is Not necessarily like a people manager, though that is part of it. You're managing the program, you're managing the curriculum. Program is a curriculum or a classroom, so managing that piece and if you think about it that way, you are uniquely qualified to me.

Tisha:

So don't shy away from that. But again, it all comes down to knowing how to communicate and translate your past experience, or your current experience as an educator, to your future experience as a design program manager or whatever role. It's really connecting with the coach and also Knowing the role. You can hear me talking about it and say, hey, that sounds like something I would vibe with. But still, research it. Read several articles, look on LinkedIn to see what other design program managers are doing, see what it's called at different organizations, because For some reason there are many different titles for the same role Throughout the industry. Yeah, so you can get kind of lost in that. But Again, know who you are, know your skill set, what you really like, and then base your search off of that. It's a challenging industry to break into, for sure, but Don't let the external qualifications or Want Impact your desire to transition to it. It'll take some work, it'll take some reflection, but don't shy away from it.

Zee:

So not getting so caught up in the titles, but looking at the job description to see exactly what the expectation is and if you meet those qualifications or at least most of those qualifications is what it sounds like you're saying yes absolutely. Great information, so off the top of your head. Do you know another name that they would use for design program manager and another organization?

Tisha:

design operations manager, design ops manager, design producer right.

Zee:

Oh, now I'm making some more connections.

Tisha:

Yes, exactly.

Zee:

Because in my organization it would be design operations manager and also design producer.

Tisha:

Oh, there you go, okay yeah.

Zee:

Oh, that's interesting. So different names across. I mean the same thing. For UX research, you can be called a user researcher, you could be called a design researcher so many different names for the same thing. But really, looking at those qualifications, that's super important.

Tisha:

Yes, for sure yeah.

Zee:

So the last question I wanted to ask you is just overall. If you could send one message to teachers who are transitioning careers or thinking about leaving the classroom, what would that message be? I know you gave a lot of good things throughout the whole session, but if there's any final things that you wanted to add, yeah, you got this.

Tisha:

Like, oh, I love that. You know you put in the work to educate our children and this is a major step. To say, hey, I want to try something different. That is huge. And then I'll add another piece to it is give yourself grace, because it's going to challenge you at every point. It's going to challenge you in the initial phase, it's going to challenge you in the interview phase, it's going to challenge you when you're in the role. So so, yeah, give yourself some grace and you got this.

Zee:

Yeah, I love that advice. Just like teaching right and just like teaching in the classroom every day you're challenged left, right, and every day there's something else that you have to. You know, put out a fire or finish something or take care of something. In the same way, teachers are so flexible and they're so resilient and they just can adapt very quickly. So just using those same skills as you go through that job search process, that's important. So I really love that piece of advice that you gave. Yeah.

Tisha:

And you remind me of the growth mindset like generally yes, yes, keep growth mindset at the forefront of everything. Yeah.

Zee:

Oh, that was good, that was good.

Tisha:

All right.

Zee:

Tisha, it was so great to have you on the show today and to learn about your career transition, so I just wanted to ask how can people reach you if they want to connect? You can check me out on.

Tisha:

LinkedIn. That is the only social media I am on. I am very happy to set up chats, talk in DMs via email. Happy to be a resource for transitioning teachers.

Zee:

Oh, awesome, and so it's Tisha Woods on LinkedIn. Yes, and I'll put that information in the show notes as well. All right, thank you, z. You're welcome, and thanks so much for being here and we'll talk soon.

Tisha:

Yes.

Narrator:

Thanks so much for tuning in Like, subscribe and share. Until next time, be well.