“Make sure that you’re going to work with a company that allows you to have a great support community” - Kelly Hensler
Kelly Hensler is a design leader and workplace strategist at the global architecture firm BWBR in Madison, WI. She is an NCARB certified and registered architect and holds a masters of architecture degree for the University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign. She was recently appointed as an honorary fellow at the center for design and interior culture for her innovation and dedication to the future leaders at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where she also received her bachelor degree in interior design. She sits on the UW -Madison interior architecture advisory board, along with intermittently teaching design studio courses there.
In this episode, Michael Gardon and Kelly get into how this COVID situation is impacting the future of workplace design, and whether or not there will ever be a time where we have to go into the office again. They also discuss how design thinking, and the skill related to design thinking, are critical to all of us as we pursue our careers now, and into the future.
SHOW NOTES
- How Kelly got into architecture [3:27]
- What Kelly does on a day-to-day basis [5:00]
- Do we even need offices anymore? [7:10]
- What people are looking for in the workplace post COVID-19 [11:02]
- Creating a place people want to come back to [13:26]
- Kelly’s take on remote work [17:08]
- Whether or not teams can work remotely and giving people an equal platform [20:19]
- The process that goes into design thinking [25:50]
- Elements that everyone needs to learn [31:02]
- The topics Kelly teaches in her classes [32:31]
- Advice for people wanting to follow in a career path similar to Kelly’s [35:18]
- How COVID-19 has affected Kelly as a working mom [37:28]
