UX Designer, Veronica Clarke, joins Media Producer, Justin James Lopez and they discuss how important it is to find and define your authentic self. Let’s hear her story!
Veronica Clarke is a UX Designer who’s passionate about creating environments for humans that are easy to use, navigate, and are aesthetically pleasing. Veronica is also very passionate about creating a fair, inclusive environment in the workplace by empowering and helping the non-dominate culture be the authentic self.
Veronica Clarke:
And so I’ve gotten to the point through my career that I just stopped. I talk the way I talk. I pause the way I pause because I take a longer pause than others. I’m like Obama in some cases. And-
Justin James Lopez:
That’s a hot take right there.
Veronica Clarke:
Mic drop, right?
Justin James Lopez:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Amazon’s Black Stories where we highlight the stories of Black designers, researchers and creatives from all around the world. I’m your host, Justin James Lopez, and today I’m joined by Veronica Clarke, where we explore the importance of defining and finding your authentic self. Let’s hear her story.
Well, Veronica, thank you again for joining me on this episode. I am so excited for this conversation. We’ve had quite a bit of interactions back and forth and this is a long time coming, finally getting you on the show so we can hear more about your story.
Veronica Clarke:
Thank you.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah, of course. No, thank you. For starters, let’s start with who are you today? What do you do and what does that mean to you?
Veronica Clarke:
Sure. Today, I am a UX designer here at Amazon/AWS. And yeah, what it means to me is pretty much I feel that I create and get something out to users to help them with their day to day, which is something that I really enjoy to do. We talk about being obsessed with customers, I am obsessed with users even before joining Amazon. So, my goal is to simplify and create an environment the user can go to on a day to day and make their day easy with their task.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah. Sounds amazing, right? I think that’s definitely the cookie-cutter answer of it. It’s like, “Hey. This is what I do, right? This is at a top-level view.” But let’s dig a little bit deeper. When it comes to you as a designer, as a creative, where does that story start? Was design always the end goal for you when you were younger?
Veronica Clarke:
I knew I wanted to be something creative. As a kid, if someone ever comes to my home, they would see a ton of painting because art, music, anything in just STEM or STEAM has always been my passion, poetry, anything on that part of. I grew up in a very artsy household. My dad studied classical music, he also did opera. My brother was a DJ/hip-hop artist. We had a ton of vinyl records from going all the way to classical music and different types of old-school Latin boletos, we call them boletos. And then with my brother’s side, a ton of old-school hip hop because he was older than me, so I grew up in a very artsy music environment. I had family members that painted, they created sculptures, this what they did, this was their job. So, I was always surrounded by art.
As a kid, I started with graphic design and that was a big passion of mine. When I was in high school, fun story, I used to take this math class and I wanted to get extra credit and the school had these old big computer, because I grew up in the ‘hood where we had access to computer, but they were really old Microsoft Windows machine. And so someone learned about some command codes to get to some games. That’s how I started. I was like, “Oh, I like this.” I was like, “Oh, I just type in all these different codes and I get a game and behind a operating system.”
And so technology and art has always been my biggest passion. But growing up, I remember at one point in my life, I wanted to pursue a career in finance because I thought that was the best way to make money. I don’t have the traditional background of going to school, getting a bachelor. So, I was focused on what type of certificate I should be getting.
My first path was like, “Hey, let me get my Series 6 and Series 7.” And then my dad at one point was like, “Hey, if you get into finance and especially if you work in New York, you’re going to be burned out by the time you hit 30.” And I was like, “Well, I don’t want to get burned out and I want to keep my youth and I want to have fun.” And so I stopped pursuing my career in finance and then I went into continue with my passion in design and went into interaction design and graphic design and web design. I was actually a front-end designer when I first started in tech. So, I was creating webpages and I even did freelance work where I created my own SOW. And so yeah, that’s how I got my foot in. And then eventually, I started applying to organization while I had a good portfolio to display. Here I am now, hanging out with Justin.
Justin James Lopez:
Hanging out with me. So, there’s a lot to unpack here. Because I think you say it so graciously, but you also drop these gems in there. You mentioned growing up in the ‘hood where you had these outdated computers. I relate to that, because I grew up in a very similar space, in the northeast is where I grew up. My family historically comes from different parts of the Caribbean, South America. Having those resources that are technically there, it’s like that whole separate-but-equal argument of like, “Well, I have a computer, you have a computer.” I’m like, “Yeah, but mine has an OS from 30 years ago.”
But we don’t talk about these things, these inequities across the board and you mention it and like I say, you say it so graciously of, “Do you know what? I started here, I thought this was fun. I moved over to study in finance and then I shifted,” after you got some, what sounds like amazing advice from your father. I wish that more people had parents that could give you that level of perspective of what’s more important than making money is making sure that you get healthy, not stress-free, but minimal stress life that allows you to feel happy in your passion.
Which is something that it sounds like you got in that moment, but you’re shifting around and you’re getting back to it. But I imagine that wasn’t easy though. You say it like, I did the thing and then I did another thing. But for me, the trigger was when you said, “Oh, I started growing up in this area where a lot of the resources were scarce and outdated.” And for me, it immediately triggered back to my upbringing and how I got here talking to Vee. We’re talking to each other. My journey wasn’t streamlined and super simple and I tend to skip over those parts too.
So, how is that part of your life? We don’t have to get into nitty-gritty details, but I think for the listeners here, when it comes to going from where you started to here, what are the obstacles that made that a rich experience, if you will?
Veronica Clarke:
Yeah, it’s funny because every time I watch these videos of these Afro Tech, I follow Afro Tech on social media, on Instagram and they’re always posting a story. “Hey, this is how I became a developer in three years and now I’m making this much money.” Da-da-da-da-da. And they make it sound so easy. I get it. I kind of did that explaining my story. But yeah, there’s a lot of work. I’ll be honest with you, there was a lot of lonely time as well because I had my head down and focused on this career, this path that I desperately wanted and it wasn’t handed to me.
It wasn’t like I could go to my folks, even though my dad said, “Hey, you’re going to be burned out. You should do something in art.” He didn’t know exactly what, my parents still don’t know what I do. I could say, “Hey, I’m a UX designer.” They’re like, “What the heck is that?” And so I have to explain to them, “I make it easy for when you’re on a software on a cell phone. I make that part easy for you to use.” And so that’s the layman’s term that I explained to my parents as simple as possible, especially my mom, because my mom speaks very little English, so I have to really translate it, and kind of, I hate to say this word, dumb it down for my folks.
But yeah, the transition was hard work. One thing that I haven’t mentioned was when I said I had an outdated computer at my school, when I finally did get a laptop, it wasn’t the most common way. My father, God rest his soul, he passed away. But we call him, my crazy Uncle Charlie. He’s from New York. All he did was hustle. And one day he came across this laptop, he’s like, “Oh, I think Veronica will appreciate this laptop.” It was my first laptop and I looked at it and I was like, “What? This does lock, I don’t know how to get into it.”
One thing I would say that has been a blessing for me is my social skills. I hate to say this, but I’ve met so many wonderful people and one person that I’ve met, I would say when I was 18, 19 years old, was this girl from Denmark and she majored in quantum physics. And so she knew software much more than I did. I wouldn’t say she hacked the laptop, but she was able to install a whole new operating system. She gave me all the Adobe Suites. She’s like, “This is what you want, this is your passion, here you go.”
I remember clearly having all these Adobe software that I remember being so expensive that my parents couldn’t get. This person, this stranger, who I met and I told her that I had this laptop that I couldn’t access, but this was my passion, she hooked it up. And having that hooked up really set the stage of me performing and moving closer to where I was going to go.
But a lot of it took a lot of lonely nights, a lot of long nights. Especially learning things like HTML, CSS, learning research, understanding things like qualitative and quantum data and a lot of that I teach myself.
Justin James Lopez:
I think that those stories are really important. They’re important from when you think about diversity, equity, inclusion, these buzzwords in the industry now, when I think about those, I think about stories like yours, where you think of it’s not always sweet. You are alone a lot. A lot of people don’t understand when you say a thing, what that means and having to constantly explain what certain references mean and how they hit you and reality of all of those things. I think there’s a beauty to that coming from that hustle, to not having all of the answers and having to figure it out yourself. It’s owning the knowledge. It’s being able to say, “I’m going from zero to one,” where you go, “I didn’t know any of these things. I didn’t even have access to Adobe Suite. Now I have this, I’m going to learn everything I possibly can about it.”
And not being afraid to not be the smartest person in the room in order to become the smartest person in the room. It’s a scary thing. But I love that you were able to do that, that self-teaching thing. Because I imagine you said that you had to learn it on your own. So, I’m assuming a lot of it is, all right, here’s a gap area, I need to go learn it. And these new generations, it’s easier, because you go, “Okay, I’m going to go to YouTube University and learn it all.” What was that experience for you?
Veronica Clarke:
I mean, I had Google and everything. It’s just I think a lot of it was, I’m a big observer. So, observing others, just being in the right circle, just going to the right meetups or the right tech event, that really helped me.
The way I learn is not just also being by myself is I’m a visual learner and I’m also audio learner. So, I have to hear and listen at the same time. For me to do that, I had to put myself in environment that you don’t see people like me. I’m going to these tech ops or this UX event to learn more about UX and I’m the only one there. I’m the only woman of color, I’m the only minority, and I don’t sound like some of the other people when they talk. I might have my little northeast accent, my little Spanglish accent.
And so it took a lot of, especially for someone, I would say, growing up, I was very much of an introvert. It took a lot of pushing myself out of my comfort zone. That’s where I think where a lot of the challenges came because the little voice in me has that fear. “Okay, don’t say anything yet. Don’t say anything yet.” But in my heart, I’m like, “Wait, I want to say something.” So, I think my heart trumps my brain more than anything because I then say it and I follow my passion.
Justin James Lopez:
I love that. So, I heard recently this idea of our human experience is broken out into the languages of the mind and body and the language of the mind is thinking. We use our mind to think and the language of the body is feeling. It’s a feeling experience. When you combine those, that’s the human experience that you have. So, this kind of ebb and flow between the two that you’re talking about, it’s really natural for us to feel that. But we tend to fight it a lot of... I have to pick one and that’s something that I’m still working on as well.
With something you mentioned is really interesting though, that idea of being the only person... This is a pretty frequent thing on the podcast that I hear from different guests. But on the road to that, and I imagine you’re probably experienced that a lot, even in Corporate America, kind of being the only one. But on the road, how hard was that to constantly be a person that’s saying, “I want to learn, I’ve got to put myself in these uncomfortable spaces.” It’s already uncomfortable because you don’t know and you’re trying to go from zero to one. But then on top of that, you amplify that experience by not having a support system that looks like you. What was that experience for you?
Veronica Clarke:
The challenge definitely was corporate America not having support from some of my teams or manager. Because again, I was different, or I would say my biggest challenge was trying to fit in because a lot of, especially when I first started, they all pretty much came from the same background. I’m not saying it’s generic, but I want to say their background was much more similar than my background. So, they had a lot to bond with. Their culture was much more similar than my culture. So, it just made it hard for myself to find my voice within the organization. I felt like the only time that I could talk about anything was about work. There was little bonding experience that people talk about that you have at your job. I was missing out on those friendship that people always talk about. I was just missing out. So, how do I fit in with you? And it goes to that. It’s like playing Double Dutch. When I can jump in? And I’m not good at Double Dutch.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah, I love that last part. And I’m not even good at Double Dutch, so how could I possibly figure this out? I can’t even figure out Double Dutch. No, but I think it’s real because that’s where it came down to for me. Like I was mentioning before, it came down to that aspect of a lot of people look at it as a super strength and I’m like, “What you’re actually witnessing is just exhaustion. I’m just so exhausted of having to circumnavigate this labyrinth that you put in front of me. This labyrinth of, if you can figure out all of this and get out of the hamster wheel and then understand code-switching and then figure out all of the things that you didn’t have access to when you were growing up or when you were basically starting at a deficit to begin with in this race, then maybe we’ll see you as a part of the room, not even the table.”
Veronica Clarke:
Correct.
Justin James Lopez:
Like I say, when you get beat down by that so often, you just get exhausted. And that’s what a lot of people are witnessing, but they’re going, “All right, in your exhaustion, you’re being so honest, you’re being so open, you’re helping to motivate a lot of other people to just be able to be themselves.” And I’m like, “I’m glad that I can be a martyr for you.”
Veronica Clarke:
I mean, there is a gift of being vulnerable, being vulnerable with your colleagues, being vulnerable with your boss. There’s a gift to that because it helps them see where you’re coming from. But taking out that vulnerability or pulling it out from yourself, that’s where the work comes in. It’s like, “I know I need to be vulnerable, but how can I do it? I don’t want to be judged or I don’t want them to think I can’t do my work or I don’t want them to think that I’m failing.” Especially when we’re taught to work harder than other cultures, than other races. Growing up, you have to be two, three times ahead of the game than other races.
When I mentor other Black employees, one of the things I say, “Hey, note down those conversation. Follow-up with an email, follow-up with the Slack. If the decision was made, follow it up. This way you have something to track because if you don’t, that might come back and bite you.”
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah, they’re going to be like, “We never discussed that.” Or they forget. They forget about what happened. I think that that’s true. I do kind of skim over it, but if I’m being honest, that’s what it is. It is just that exhaustion. Because what I realize is I used to have this fear of being judged, of being judged poorly based on how I show up.
And it’s one of those situations, I heard this on the topic of music that we were talking about before. I remember listening to this freestyle, and in the freestyle, and I promise you this makes sense. The artist just randomly says, “I’m tired of people critiquing me for things that I have to struggle for.”
That hit so hard for me, that idea of that’s true. I spend so much time and effort to try to learn your culture, your ways, your way of talking, your way of interacting from a corporate lens, from just a non-urban environment lens. And that’s the way I describe it. I spend so much time and then the only thing you can do is critique me for saying the word wrong. If that’s what it’s going to come down to. Like I said, I used to be afraid of being judged, but if you’re going to judge me anyway, then I want you to at least judge me... I don’t care if you judge me poorly, at least judge me fairly.
Veronica Clarke:
Exactly.
Justin James Lopez:
Based on who I actually am. And what’s funny is that people started to go, “Actually, I think that’s dope.” People start to be like, “Actually, you know what? I actually really like talking to you now.” And I’m like, “Really? I was trying so hard.” But I think because there’s that concept of you can’t be the best copy, but you can be your best self. You’re never going to be the best copy of something else. So, we spend so much time trying to copy and imitate these other things that we think are valuable. But what people really, really need is for us to show up as ourselves so that they can feel comfortable showing up as their selves in a way. I don’t know.
Veronica Clarke:
I agree. But if you show up as yourself, you also need someone that’s going to be accepting of how you showing up as yourself and not try to change you.
Justin James Lopez:
You’re right, exactly. I think you can’t just, for the actual advice, it’s like I wouldn’t say, “Just show up as yourself all the time.” It’s like you need to learn, you need those skills. And as exhausting as it is, to your point, I needed to learn those skills. I needed to go through those experiences in order to get to the point where I’m comfortable enough to say, “You know what? I’m taking off this mask, I’m taking off this suit, and I’m going to just be me because I know how to play the game. I just choose not to.” There’s a difference between not being able to play, not understanding the rules and choosing not to play the way that it was set up. Because when you know the rules, then you know how to say, “Okay, technically this is what the rule says. So, technically I’m not wrong in what I’m doing because I understand the rule.” There’s a difference between that and just hoping you got it right because you never read the rule book. So, I guess that’s the advice that I would give.
Veronica Clarke:
It really took a long time, I would say, that when people talk about your authentic self or just for me to stop, I want to say, adapting to their culture and just maintaining myself the truth of my culture, I think that’s when I found my happiness because I’d gotten to the point where, okay, I am not going to conform to the way they talk. I will literally imitate someone else’s voice and the way someone else talked, the tone of their voice, just so they could sense that, hey, we are similar. It’s like a parent when they kind of talk to a kid to make that eye contact, they go down. They get on their knees or they go down, so they make that eye contact level to their child. So, this way the child feels some form of equal-ness. I felt like I had to do that. I had to understand and study their culture. That was extra work. Now, on top of that, I was doing my own work. And so I’ve gotten to the point through my career that I just stopped. I talk the way I talk. I pause the way I pause because I take longer pause than others. I’m like Obama in some cases.
Justin James Lopez:
That’s a hot take right there.
Veronica Clarke:
Mic drop, right? And so I’ve learned to be myself and meet people halfway. I think that’s the important of the diversity inclusion, is not someone saying, “Hey, we’re going to hire these group of people because we need diversity or the product needs it.” Our products need tremendous diversity inclusion, especially because our customers are so diverse. If you consider yourself a global company, you have to include everyone. You have to represent everyone in your workforce. So, you create products that represent your customers.
Now, when you are talking about collaboration, the collaboration part, that needs to be trained. Some folks need to be trained on how to adjust, just how I adjusted many, many times on how to adjust and meet others halfway when they are different, when they sound different, when they communicate different. We talk about, you and I come from the Latin culture, we talk with our hands, how we communicate differently. That awareness needs to be brought into the diversity inclusion program. If I say that a program needs something, it’s the awareness that, hey, not everyone’s going to sound the way you are. Not everyone’s going to come with the same background. So, you have to have some form of empathy and compassion to the other person when receiving the information that they’re giving you because their tone might be different. The way they use words to be direct might be different. Some folks, some cultures use more direct wording than elaboration. Some cultures like to elaborate, they like to be a narrator and create a story. Some cultures are straight to the point and that needs to be accepted more.
Justin James Lopez:
It’s a valid point. And I also from growing up and seeing so many different cultures clashing in my family, as far as not just heritage but just social cultures as well of how people interact here in America versus in the islands and stuff like that, you know it’s one big thing. It’s like there’s a lot of people in my family where, and myself included, where English is actually, a lot of people are surprised when I say this, but English is actually my second language. I didn’t learn English first and I chose to spend a lot of my time trying to master that so that I can show up in this kind of really significantly well-polished, code-switched way. But that’s also very unfair because I’m constantly having to, in my brain, move between different worlds where other people don’t.
Veronica Clarke:
That’s extra work for you, that’s extra exercise that you don’t need.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah. You get to exist in your world and I have to jump in and out of it. But then when I say, “Hey, to your point, can you meet me halfway?” That’s what inclusion is, you go, “Eh, it’s uncomfortable.”
But my point was to some of that communication gaps and having empathy is, for some people, like I mentioned, for some people, this isn’t even our first language and that’s not even just from Latin America. You think of people that come from Europe, people that come from Africa, people who come from different places. So, maybe this is the best way that they can communicate is just using the words directly as basically the fastest way to get from point A to point B is a straight line. And that’s the way they... And we’re just used to talking around things before we get to the point and they’re like, “I don’t have all of the words you have because I didn’t grow up in this culture.”
That’s something that I grew up with as well with some of my family members of they just have to say the thing. It’s not about being rude or curt or any of that, but not understanding that is a part of lacking that empathy. A part of not really leaning into that I in the DEI. Where people just say, “Diversity, put different people in the room,” but you go like, “What’s the point of putting different people in the room if they can’t cohabitate well or they can’t collaborate,” as you mentioned, really well.
When you think about the advice that you would have for not just corporations but for people kind of experiencing the things that you’ve experienced in having to lean in, having to meet people halfway without them necessarily wanting to meet you halfway all the time, what advice would you give them?
Veronica Clarke:
Well, I stopped leaning in.
Justin James Lopez:
That’s a mic drop right there. There’s depth to that. So, you say, “Stop leaning in,” but I think you mentioned earlier a part of that feedback is saying you stopped leaning in order to love yourself more, right? To say hey-
Veronica Clarke:
Correct.
Justin James Lopez:
A big part of that. So, what do you mean by that, when you say stop leaning in?
Veronica Clarke:
I don’t do, you used the term code-switch, I don’t do that anymore. I don’t switch it up. You accept me how I am. I do discuss. Now, I’ve gotten into therapy within my role where if I’ve noticed that my voice is not being heard or it’s not being understand, then I would take the extra step and say, “Hey, let’s discuss it. What’s going on? Let’s get some clarity. I noticed that we’re not on the same page or I noticed that our communication is not aligned, so how can we make that better?” I will call the other person out. This is where I am now within my career. If I notice that your communication is hindering my job and we’re not aligned, then yes, I’m going to use my voice now because I’m a little more extrovert than I was in my early years of my career. And I’m going to say, “Hey, let’s discuss this. Let’s sit down, let’s discuss it. I want to understand more your point of view.”
Especially being in a creative field and being in an environment where we’re all trying to innovate and we all have ideas. People fight for their ideas to be pushed. And I’m one of those, I like to fight for my ideas to be pushed, but I also want to understand your communication style, especially if your background and your culture’s different from mine.
I’m also going to say this. I want you to understand my communication style, and just like you mentioned, you talk about the language and the exercise you have to do with... I do that as well. And I think, I hate to say this, one of the advantages say that I’ve been fortunate with my career is my last name. Clarke. I do come from a Spanish-speaking household. English is also my second language. I was in ESL classes all the way to fourth grade. And so I speak Spanish, I write in Spanish. I could read in Spanish, but I speak Spanglish more than anything I say. And I think that illusion, I have to tell people, “Hey, just because the last name is Clarke doesn’t mean English is my first language. Spanish is my first language.” My parents come from a different country, a different culture. They speak different. And then my grandfather, whose last name that I have is Clarke, come from Barbados. They speak Patois, like a broken English, in some cases. So, if you hear my dad speak, his English and his Spanish sound very different from most Caribbean, because of that mixture that he has.
Justin James Lopez:
I think it’s valuable and it’s important to make sure that we are always bring ourselves back and recenter in that. Because I think we don’t always, from an empathy gap perspective, and this is one of my main takeaways from this conversation and many of the conversations we had, by the way, is that idea of whenever you ask something of someone, you have to be able to, even if it’s a tacit ask. A lot of people in corporate America, by existing in the dominant culture, you’re tacitly asking people that don’t come from the “dominant culture” to lean into you. So, when you’re having that ask, you have to be able to lean back into them and really say, “You know what? This is us meeting halfway. This is us collaborating, this is us working together for that gain.” But I think that that’s such a valuable gem.
But I wanted to take time to thank you again for joining us on this show. This has been one of many conversations that we had, but this is one of the great conversations that the audience is going to get to hear for this episode. So, thank you again for that.
Veronica Clarke:
Thank you for having me. I had a great time and I’d love to leave it with, don’t just have empathy for your customers, but have empathy for your colleagues as well.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah. Love it.
Veronica Clarke:
Thank you.
