Women of Vision: 2023 Edition
As the head of Blumline, a woman-owned studio, I am honored and privileged to be a leader and a role model for many. And many, many women have unknowingly conspired to be role models for me.
As we grow our careers and our lives, we need stories of great possibility and of surviving peril, icons of courage and tenacity, and exemplars so expressed in their craft that the truth and beauty conferred in their medium evokes a deep affinity and kinship.
When we have models that demystify success, with whom we can empathize and grieve failures, and recognize those fated inflection points of our lives, we can see ourselves and our trajectories with much greater clarity, with both inner and peripheral vision (see: Bateson, below).
Today, I begin honoring several profoundly inspiring women in the hopes they may influence and inspire you—with more to come in the following days.
Debbie Millman
Debbie Millman is an author, educator, artist, and brand designer. She is the Chair of the first Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and has created unforgettable brands including Burger King, Hershey’s, and Procter & Gamble. Her books Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits and Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design have become part of the modern branding canon.
To me, she is a personal hero, whose curiosity, empathy, and ambition coalesce to create rich, inspiring interviews and creative dialogue on her podcast “Design Matters,” which has been in production since 2005. Her guests range in creative, influential figures—from Michael Beirut to the Indigo Girls, and she is known for unearthing unusual detail to examine with her interviewees. Authenticity and candor define her voice and journalism, and her vulnerable storytelling of her wayfinding struggles have been incredible lessons to me as I carved my own path. In recent years, she’s shared about a traumatic childhood that informed her ambition, and also her empathy.
In her words:
“The thing that distinguishes us is not what we suffer, but how we make sense of our lives amidst it all.”
“Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”
“You don’t have to have all the answers; you just have to be willing to keep moving forward.”
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
“The most extraordinary thing about being a good listener is that people will tell you their secrets.”
Krista Tippett
Journalist, author, and host of the Peabody Award-winning podcast “On Being” and intrepid explorer of inspiration, awe, and creativity, Krista’s conversations with artists and bold thinkers of our time range from topics of biomimicry to “spiritual contrarianism.” With a Master of Divinity from Yale University, she has spent her career exploring spirituality, religion, ethics, and the intersections of these topics in contemporary life.
Studies of the human experience naturally include phenomenology, cosmology, spirituality—these are essential pillars of what it means to be human, and are foundational in design where people, planet, and futures are involved. To those under the spell of hyper-growth or incremental product improvement myopia, these may appear to be “nice-to-have” knowledge bases, but nothing could be further from good practice. These affect obvious topics like healthcare and the climate crisis, but they also help us understand the deification of brands, and why we trust them or don’t; purpose, engagement, leadership, and organizational design; and what it means to live and design a creative life.
In her words:
“The mystery of who we are is not a problem to solve but a gift to cherish.”
“Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.”
“It’s never too late to start heading in the right direction.”
“We have to cultivate new experiences and relationships that will give us something to live for and fight for.”
“We are all born into a world of stories. It is the first thing we are immersed in, the medium through which we learn who we are and how to engage others.”
Mary Catherine Bateson
Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, was a remarkable anthropologist and author, known for her groundbreaking work on culture, identity, human development, and women’s lives. She forged her own path in the field of anthropology, becoming a leading voice in her own right as a keen observer of human behavior and cultural dynamics. Her work was marked by a deep curiosity about the ways in which we create meaning in our lives, and a reverence for the start-and-stop complexity of women’s lives (very rarely straight lines), which she called an “improvisational art form” in Composing a Life.
She was a tremendously gifted writer and thinker, and her books and articles continue to inspire and challenge audiences. I return to Peripheral Vision with some frequency, and initially carried it with me for many months, certainly on more than one vacation. Her written voice I can only liken to a portal, transporting one not to a vivid scene, but to a perspective and a mindset—akin to wearing the same pair of glasses, and observing with the same wonder.
In her words:
“The human condition is marked by the capacity to live with contradictory and paradoxical elements, and to use them to create new meaning.”
“Our lives are not single stories, but complex tapestries woven from multiple threads.”
“The search for identity is a process, not a destination.”
“Each of us has worked by improvisation, discovering the shape of our creation along the way, rather than pursuing a vision already defined.”
“The challenge of the 21st century is to find ways to live together across our differences and to build a sense of shared responsibility for the future.”
Natasha Margot Blum is the founder and principal director of Blumline, a woman-owned insights-based innovation studio that partners with strategic leaders on ethnographic-led insight and foresight; strategy, design, and storytelling for products, services, brands, and environments. She and her team work with bold leaders to create and go to market with big ideas, and teach organizations creative and innovative methods for competitive edge through courses, workshops, and immersions. We design smarter, kinder, wiser futures–for net positive impact.
