A recipe for career resilience: achieving growth in the face of uncertainty
Join Meredith McDermott (Human Experience Lead at Gray Swan AI) and Susanna Zlotnikov (CMU Professor & Design Practitioner) for a candid conversation about career resilience. Susanna and Meredith will share experiences from their own career journeys with a focus on the habits, behaviors, and tangible skills that have made change and uncertainty easier to face.
There will be 30 minutes to hear from our speakers, and 15 minutes for Q&A.
Meet your speakers:
Meredith McDermott (MDes 2015), Human Experience Lead, Gray Swan AI
Throughout her winding journey, Meredith has repeatedly reinvented herself and her career.
In her most recent act of reinvention, Meredith now works for Gray Swan AI alongside fellow Carnegie Mellon graduates, and her work focuses on keeping the human experience relevant in a world dominated by AI.
Her career has taken turns that she could not predict, but instead of digging her heels in, Meredith welcomed change and found that reinventing her life was simply a part of her journey. Through all of this, Meredith has learned the importance of flexibility, as not everything can be trusted to work out as we initially intend.
Susanna Zlotnikov (MDes 2015), Online Program Director & Assistant Teaching Professor, Integrated Innovation Institute at Carnegie Mellon University
Susanna is a qualitative design researcher and educator with expertise in analyzing and designing for complex workflows. Much of her professional experience has centered on understanding where and how to implement new technology into highly regulated clinical care processes.
Over the last decade, she has taught diverse students and various subjects such as Pilates, Hebrew, math, and design. At the Integrated Innovation Institute, Susanna teaches courses on harnessing service design frameworks and tools in innovation. Susanna’s path into design, product innovation, and academia involved taking leaps into the unknown, good timing, and introspection.
Susanna earned her Master’s degree in design from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design in 2015 and a BA in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2011. With this background, Susanna is uniquely positioned to explore what shapes and impacts people’s needs and craft innovative strategies for them.
Currently, Susanna is an assistant teaching professor at the Integrated Innovation Institute and director of the iii Online Program at Carnegie Mellon University.
Carnegie Mellon University Integrated Innovation Institute | [email protected]