Designing for a better tomorrow with Uber

Heather Stern: Today’s guest is Joanna Peña-Bickley. To be honest, I struggled with the best way to introduce her, given her multidisciplinary expertise, her groundbreaking work and her long and very well-deserved list of accolades. She’s a pioneering design technologist; one of Fortune‘s most powerful women; a former global Chief Creative Officer at IBM; former Head of Research and Design for Alexa devices at Amazon; fierce advocate for gender equity, inclusion, and education; creator of the first banking app on the Apple Watch; and now Director of Product Design at Uber Eats, where she’s reimagining what mobility means for the brand. Joanna is a lifelong learner on a mission to create market making experiences, platforms and devices for our connected world.

So, without further ado, welcome to the incomparable Joanna Peña-Bickley.

Joanna Peña-Bickley: Heather, thank you so much for having me. It’s such a pleasure to be here and with your listeners.

Heather: There’s a lot we’re going to cover today, but maybe we’ll start by talking through your relatively new role at Uber. You’ve said that there’s never been a more exciting time to innovate within the Uber technology sandbox. So, tell me what attracted you to the role and what your vision is—as much as you can say without revealing too much to the audience.

Joanna: Absolutely. Well, I have always had a love, since I was a little girl, around mobility. How do I get things from A to B—things, people, services—and really imagining that there might be an evolution of it?

One of the many reasons that I joined Uber…we are at a very important inflection point in the world. I don’t think just in our country, but in the world. And we’re amidst this fourth industrial revolution that, in spite of the pandemic, hasn’t changed. And so, it’s such a pleasure to come onto a team that has taken the pandemic as an opportunity to really enforce the local connection that people have when it comes to delivery of goods and services. Things like food delivery actually became essential services during the pandemic, and that hasn’t changed.

If you think about every global industrial revolution, [there are] three kinds of really important parts of the revolution. The first one is a reimagination, or inventions, in energy. Energy is so much of what we do, but we are actually reimagining things like the grid. We’re also in the place of reimagined communications. In my last role at Amazon, I got to reimagine what the connected home and the connected car and the kind of connected life got to be like, utilizing that intelligence. So, the idea around this reimagination starts with the foundation of the internet, of artificial intelligence. And then the third part is mobility—moving from connection to electrification, moving from electrification to autonomous. They’re highly interdependent, but thinking about new modes of mobility and not just mobility of people.

So, things like delivery and pickup and the new ways that we move goods and services around the planet are actually a really exciting problem space.

Heather: Obviously, I’m imagining that you were an Uber customer and an Uber Eats customer prior to this role. So much opportunity, so many forces at play…you are into this really exciting space. You’re inheriting some things, but I imagine—as the pioneer that you are— you’re really trying to set the stage for where we are trying to get to. So, what does that look like?

Joanna: I think one of the most important big things is coming into what feels like a family and being welcomed into a family, a family that is like everybody else in the world going through this great foundational reset. So, it has been really an honor to get to know the people; because, inevitably, all of these trends require people, right? They require the dedication, the idea and the respect of the people that came before and got the company to this point.

I think for me, this is a very human-centered conversation about design. If you don’t love people, you shouldn’t be in design. And if you don’t love people, you really shouldn’t be in design management. And a big part of that is getting to know people at a macro level—kind of the organization. But one of my favorite things to do in the early days, and I continue to do this today, is to meet every person on my team. As a leader, I think it’s fundamental to know people.

Heather: It’s true…like human-centered management, which I think is almost something that we don’t think enough about. Of course, we’re encouraging people to bring their full selves and all of that; but by really taking a fresh look at that, I imagine, it ends up creating an environment where people can really deliver their best and be their best.

Joanna: That’s right. Amidst every great industrial revolution comes social change, right? We’re also in a worker revolution. In the United States right now, there are two open design roles for every one designer looking. We’re probably in one of the most historic, most competitive times for design talent. In order to attract, retain and turn that design talent into enthusiastic leaders and evangelists of the method, that becomes your first and foremost goal as an organizational leader. Sometimes, that is taking an assessment of where most organizations are. I talk with so many of my peers across the board. The words that come back are “change fatigue.” I often hear it from organizations that never envision themselves as an iterative product.

It’s also interesting to me that a lot of the born digital organizations are faring better than some of our more traditional organizations; because, when we are amidst this, we should always be looking to update our systems, our mechanisms, our processes to become better and better as we go. Ginni Rometty, the former CEO of IBM (I had the pleasure of working with her and being influenced by her), would say, ‘One of the worst things that can happen in a technology company is that you kind of rest on your laurels, that you protect the past.” When you’re protecting the past, you’re actually being very shortsighted about what the future is. Technology is about the future and ownership of the future. In order to own the future, you have to come to the table understanding that it is incumbent upon everybody in the company to be iterating—not just the product team, not just the engineering team, but everybody is responsible—both for the employee experience, as well as the customer experience. And often when your employee experience is bad, I can pretty much pinpoint how horrible your customer experience could be.

Heather: We are a huge proponent of brand being both the experience that you deliver and an experience for a customer—but also for the employee—and kind of building business from the inside out. It’s great to hear that, in coming to Uber, you’ve been embraced and impressed with all of the people that are around you.

You were talking a little bit about the workforce and this great reset. And because we’re on that topic, I’d love for you to talk about designedbyus.org and the notion of the new-collar workforce—what that means and what the implications are—for listeners who are at Fortune 500 companies around the world.

Joanna: You know, the new-collar workforce was actually something I identified many, many years ago when working at IBM…again, the great Ginni Rometty. If you ever get a chance to work for a woman in tech—which is rare, ladies and gentlemen, and we need to make it more—what I got access to was vision and the early identification of problem areas.

Ginni really began to suss out where the future of work was evolving. Those changes accelerated during the pandemic, but the early outlines were pretty visible 10 years ago. We began to see that we were facing pretty unprecedented shortages of skilled workers in the area of application development, technical design. And so, what you saw were companies and educators talking about inclusivity and equity around training your workforce. How do you reskill a workforce to new collar? What’s the new collar? New collar…we think about white collar. We have blue collar. The new collar is the digital collar. It is very much this pioneering way of being able to have both the, what I call STEAMD—not just STEM, which is very much an old way of looking at it. STEAMD is when you bring science, technology, engineering, arts, math, and design together into the workforce as core skills. Retrain them and do that over time to reduce worker shortfalls. IBM, I have to say, was absolutely (1) early in identifying that trend and (2) actioning against it, right, because they began to apply it to themselves.

Heather: I had the pleasure of knowing Phil Gilbert and a lot of the team that was responsible for, as you said, not just advancing the products and experiences that IBM was delivering to the world but also turning it inward—and including designers on the HR team and designers across the organization to allow a new way of thinking and doing. It’s pretty fantastic when you really see that applied in that thoughtful way.

Joanna: Phil took care of that internally. My job, as his peer, was to take that and commercialize it—take it externally to actually create a discipline where it became the services side, how we actually went to market with our customers like General Motor, like Citibank, like big financial institutions, Coca-Cola…you name it. And understanding that we said, ‘Okay, here’s an evolution.’ So that happens, we expand our footprint, increase revenues. We actually see great growth. And what I would say is great organic—not uncontrolled accelerated growth, but organic growth where everybody had ownership and everyone was a builder. You kept this as a builder mentality.

So, low and behold, the coining the new phrase ‘new collar.’ But now, post pandemic, worker revolution has emerged, right? The demand is through the roof. We don’t nearly have the policies in this country—and I would say in Europe, either—on immigration to actually bring in enough talent to meet the demands of our current labor market. It’s way out of whack; and it’s way overdue. so much of the work that we are doing, because there is not a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to big macro problems. We need to bring in more people. It’s really that simple. And that’s true in big tech, by the way, where inflationary things are happening and in chip manufacture, things like that. If we had the talent here, we wouldn’t be paying the prices there. It would be an evened-out growth. So, if you look at it from that perspective, that’s one aspect of it.

Then you go to the second one, which is a little bit more interesting. It’s where we are now and where we’re going to be in the next 10 years, which is the investment in new pathways into large corporations. I think, a decade ago, taking on student loan debt and things like that in terms of the high cost of education hasn’t been necessarily putting out the workforce that we need— in numbers. So how do you help that? How do you help advance people who have the nascent interests? One of the pioneering paths to the new-collar economy that designedbyus.org is working through is actually apprenticeship, creating a global apprentice program that aims to solve the advancement of technology and the workers needed to propel our businesses forward. In this very quickly iterating business landscape, you also need to be able to predict the skills that will be useful in the next 10 years. We do a lot of research around those emerging spaces.

Then, obviously, it was balancing kinesthetic learning—meaning that apprenticeship means that you are getting credit and acknowledgement for real-world experience, combining real-world experience with a little bit of classroom or even nontraditional boot camps, things like that. There are a lot of different pathways to the education, but the missing path was the entry into these jobs. So, here we have all these boot camps for a bunch of companies that weren’t able to accept apprentices.

I did some of this work early at IBM. I carried it over in my role at Amazon, bringing people through the early apprentice pathways into UX design and research both for software and hardware. It is such a pleasure to be able to continue that work. We’ve got apprentices within the Uber sphere, as well. So, being able to both craft that—but also insist that more and more companies create this pathway for minorities and for majorities alike—to introduce them, get them on the job training, and create more acceptance of certifications to produce everything from entertainment to product experiences that educate, incubate and truly invest in and equip anyone who identifies as a woman or a girl with that hands-on learning experience that they need to pursue the global workforce opportunities today.

Heather: First of all, bravo…and for taking it with you as you continue to come into these different experiences. It seems, on one hand, to be the solution. It’s a brilliant idea. And it’s also about not doing what we’ve always done in terms of where we look, where we hire, who we hire, how we train them. It feels like an obvious move. Why aren’t all companies doing this, particularly given the issue that there’s a need for that talent? There’s a craving for that talent—design and digital and all the things that you’re talking about—truly, to not only have a seat at the table, but people are looking to them saying, what do we do to keep up and to transform? So, where do you think the barrier is?

Joanna: You know, I think the barrier sometimes comes from the top down, not understanding that, to solve the workforce and labor problems that we have, there’s not a silver bullet; you have to apply human-centric problem solving to get to multiple solutions that you will iterate over time.

Again, this is a problem that doesn’t solve itself overnight. You’ve got to look at the right leaders who are accepting of it, who have their eye on the long haul and know that they’re going to see if they don’t make the investment now in apprenticeship programs for their companies. They’re starting from ground zero.

A part of what designedbyus.org does in working with corporations is actually doing that upskilling. So, if [the companies] don’t have a program at all, we’re doing the upskill and the cross-functional skillset training so that they are prepared for hybrid interviews or part of the interview processes just to get in the door.

So, one side of it is very focused on building our own products and services. Actually, my goal is to see a young woman, maybe two women in a basement, and fund that. We say, ‘Hey corporations, for those of you that don’t have a program, come to us. We’ll help you implement what that program should be—at a right size for your organization.” That’s what designedbyus.org does for the corporate side. For the job seeker side, what they’re doing is actually getting to work on big systemic problems and launching new products and services that, ultimately, they will own as a part of a very different company set that is focused on employees as owners.

Heather: And as a real concept model.

Joanna: That is the model today; 100% of designedbyus.org is owned by the employees and will always be that.

Heather: That’s amazing. So, I read that you had spoken about the idea that the Earth’s problems are business’s problems, that they’re inherently linked. I think that there is definitely a waking up to that. How does your team embrace that spirit every day, and what are some of the things that you’ve brought into the market over your career that you feel kind of fit in that model?

Joanna: I think that’s a really good question, in that I think that belief manifests itself in varied ways. Let me just start with the quote, ‘Earth’s problems and business problems are inherently linked.’ We’re seeing that amidst climate change. As we think about this, we are at a stage of climate change that we aren’t attempting to reverse it, although that is some of the work that needs to be done. The work in front of us, the serious work in front of us, is how do we create human resilience amidst an entanglement in a wilding world? That wilding Earth isn’t going to be unwild for the next 10 to 25 years.

Hurricanes, all of these things, wildfires…we talk about higher temperatures, rising oceans…why is that a business problem? When I talk to CEOs—like the CEO or president of John Deere, who is in farming and agriculture. He shares that every one of their customers is one climate event away from complete destitution. So, what does that mean to your customer base? It means that they will not exist and will not be a revenue source, if we don’t act as a whole. Understanding that the parts of the whole impact the business is a systemic approach to climate. It can’t just be a business approach. It can’t just be a consumerized approach. It can’t just be an academic approach. It actually requires bringing all of these factions together at a table to think about the behavior changes that we need to do.

What are the products, the services that we need to re-envision? What are the things that we have to full stop? Stop today? And how do we equip human beings to live in a wilding Earth over the span of their lifetime. We—as communities, as the people, as governments, as constituents of those governments and global citizens—all have to play a part.

If you are so cynical that you’re not playing a part, your community is at risk. There isn’t one community that isn’t at risk. Now, I will tell you that some communities are at more risk; but every one of our communities is at risk. When I think about it—and thinking about it so dire—in my everyday role, I think about it as the next flood and how that will impact business. If the next flood happens, it isn’t that I’m going to be able to deliver more water or toilet paper. They’re not going to have an address to deliver to. When you think about Katrina-size storms and impacts that wipe away entire communities, it means that your customer base goes away—and, therefore, you have no more revenue.

We have to deal with it. So, if you were only going to take the business approach, the old-fashioned capitalistic approach, that is: In a wilding Earth, there is money to be made in making humans more resilient to these changes. The more holistic approach, the human approach, is the one that unites us with nature a little bit more. It says that we cannot continue to work the way that we worked. We actually are a part of the future work connection, whether we are hybrid or we’re not, whether you know who’s commuting and who’s not. Start with climate and work backward, because I think that what we are not connecting the dots enough on in both media narratives and business narratives is that the pandemic that we just survived, for those of us who were lucky enough, fortunate enough, to survive it, there’s one coming along right behind it if we don’t reverse the actions. And I think that is what’s really clear for me in my daily work, and I apply it equally in all aspects of what I do, whether it is the more philanthropic world, designed by us or really looking to create models that you share out. By sharing out those models, you hope that somebody gets it right. But in my work every day, we look at the impact of how food and groceries and prepared foods are delivered and how the earner network is impacted by this ever-changing workforce.

Heather: It can be daunting, you know, when you begin to look at all these things. But I also think you’re bringing a voice of optimism, to a certain extent, of how we can all play a role—and certainly the role that businesses and the platforms that we’re building have.

Joanna: Heather, what’s the alternative? Put your political views aside for a second. Actually giving up, retreating, not taking on problems, saying, ‘You know what? We’re going to be protectionist, because we can just protect what’s on our shores,’ that’s a BS notion. Everything is interconnected…basic resources, like water, oil, energy, these are things that we take for granted every day. To think that those things don’t have impact on us and not to prepare for it is actually a very cynical way of believing that our best days have passed, as opposed to we can work together to get to a better tomorrow.

Heather: Wow. So, you’ve been designing experiences all your life. We talk about the interconnectivity of the brand being the experience; and the bar has, I think, been raised because of some of these great inventions and innovations that have come to market. In the purest sense, despite all of the technology and the things that we can do, what do you think makes an amazing, magical brand experience?

Joanna: Anybody who says magic, it sounds easy; but have you ever talked to a magician? Ask them how much time they actually spend on the craft of creating a magic trick or an illusion. I happen to have had the pleasure of a friendship with David Copperfield, the world’s iconic magician…I would say aficionado of all things, magic and history magic. And the thing that makes magic is work, hard work and the willingness to fail. So, when I think about applying the answer to that, I think it’s threefold.

First magical experiences raise the expectation of what is possible, and I think about that in a couple of different ways: the expectation of what is possible, meaning, ‘Wow, yesterday it took me 10 minutes to do that. Today, it took me 10 seconds.’ That’s magic, and it becomes kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy that just accelerates. You’ve got to continue making the magic, because people become addicted to magic. They’re, like, ‘Wait a minute, you just paid me back in time. That’s a dividend in my life,’ which is the most valuable piece of currency for most people.

For the second part, I really rely on Arthur C. Clark as a point of inspiration and as a total nerd. For those of you who don’t know me, I am a science-fiction nerd—more on the Star Trek side, who envisions a positive future rather than the dystopian Black Mirror side that says the best days are behind us. So, if you look at that as envisioning that the best days are in front of us, what science fiction often does for us and art does for us is actually help us imagine the ‘What if?’ What if we could all work virtually but actually feel and be able to touch and sense as if we were in the same space. These are things that are important. What if you could bestow the gift of X-ray vision or even the ability to predict a future outcome. What if? And to me, being able to start with narratives that answer ‘what if,’ with the bold statement of: If we do this, this and this, we might be able to produce that outcome. So, magic is something that takes hard work. In technology speak, when we talk about things being indistinguishable from magic, it is, like, how did they do that?

Your customers are saying, ‘How I can pay for this in a tap without pulling out my phone, without being distracted from driving?’ For all of the things that are hurdles and pain points today, you can feel bits of pixie dust and that magic wand being waved every time you launch a solution that enhances somebody’s life. I don’t know that all technology makes it better, but it enhances the way that we do things—or fundamentally changes the way that we achieve a goal.

Heather: Sign me up, right? Well, you talked about magic and mistakes, and making mistakes is pretty interlinked.

Joanna: A part of growth is mistakes. A great leader once reminded me about growth and comfort—the fact that if you’re comfortable, you’re probably not growing. Growth and comfort are actually often incompatible with each other. In order for us to grow as human beings, as great designers, as wonderful creatives, as parents, you make mistakes. You can ask all four of my children, by the way. I got better with each one of them! But if you ask the first what I know now and or what I knew then, you can actually apply the theory. I make mistakes every single day. I prepare myself for it…and they’re okay.

You can also make mistakes in choosing the wrong job or the wrong organization. Sometimes we feel like they are big mistakes, but those are little mistakes. In reality, the things that we should be focused on are our families and the importance of surviving in a wilding Earth. Sometimes in your career, an everyday mistake is sometimes forgetting to mention something, forgetting to acknowledge somebody, or when somebody calls you out on something like, ‘Hey, you really looked at this the wrong way.’ Take a moment of pause, think about it and come back with, ‘I heard you, and you’re right. I made a mistake, and here’s how we’ll fix it.’

Those are the kinds of things that I think that we, as leaders…great leaders, do every day. We humans are fallible. And if you’re building a culture of continuous learning and iteration and invention, you have to be humble enough to say, ‘We are imperfect souls, and this is a journey.’ You don’t show up to a job having every skill possible; but when you do show up, it’s principled to say, ‘You know what? I’ve made financial mistakes in my lifetime. Here’s how I corrected them.’ I’ve made planning mistakes, where I look at it and say, ‘Yes, I’ve actually made design mistakes.’ By admitting it, great leaders demonstrate that even they still have a lot to learn.

Heather: Well, as I said, the idea of building a culture of learning and celebrating that, there’s something both messy and beautiful about that. And it lends itself to pushing yourself further; but it can be scary and, as you said, particularly in this culture where everything is curated, everything is perfect.

Three generations of designers—your mom, you, your daughter—it’s in your blood, it’s in your DNA. Just given what you’ve seen and what you’ve learned, tell me what that’s been like—and give us some advice for designers. There’s already been a lot that you’ve shared, particularly the idea that you’ve got to love people and you’ve got to dig in. And I think collaboration is super important, but what has that been like and what have you noticed, kind of cross generation, that you could share?

Joanna: That’s a great one. Well, one, we’re all problem solvers. And we’re all pretty hopeful people. I find that we are often unmistakably kinesthetic learners. We learn by doing. Most designers, every time I speak with them, it’s like there’s a part of the design curriculum that is so good that it’s book. You study the history, and then how do you apply that? Where I have found my love is in the application of that.

I grew up in a design studio—an interior design and architecture and construction studio that my mom ran. And I see that as an incredible, you know. I have very big, broad shoulders, because she ran a business. It wasn’t like design was a separate business. Design was the business. The financial model was you were paid for your design outcomes. I have found that to be a great designer, you have to have great business acumen. That’s true in your corporate life. And as you grow, understanding the heretofore of business becomes more and more important. It’s the driver, your key performance indicators, actually taking ownership with your product management and engineers with it. Part of it is family. It was a privilege to have a mom, a working mom, who showed that it could be done. Not everybody has that. And so, so much of that recognition is built into the Peña philanthropy and designed by our organization, in that why it is important to see what you could be. Had I never seen that, I don’t know that I would’ve seen this as a path, a doable path for myself. And had my daughters not seen it….

By no stretch of the imagination was I, like, ‘Go do something else.’ They did, by the way. They did. They migrated into the space of problem solving with their artistic knowledge, using art and science to bring forth new kinds of innovation. So, I feel fortunate that that happened kind of by nature. And what it proved to me was that you can talk all you want about design; but what people really learn from is observation, and your actions, and the impact of your actions.

So for us, we kind of live in a design family. I’d say it’s really tough for the younger generation. Often, they see the successes and feel like, how am I part of it? I have to remind them consistently, as a parent and as a leader of an organization, that, you know what? You will get there, or you’ll get to a different place. Your success will not look like mine. It shouldn’t look like mine. It should look like yours, because the decisions that I made were indigenous to me—but that doesn’t mean that’s the right path for you.

So, what I look to do, principally, is to equip them with the tools that they need and the belief system and the behaviors that they need to have to be successful, and then give them the space to go figure it out for themselves. I believe that in my family life, and I really believe it in business; if you can’t get out of the way of your people, that is where you will fail to innovate all the time.

Heather: Such great advice. I could talk to you all day. There are so many topics that we want to get to, but I want to end with a question that I ask all of the guests—which is, first, an acknowledgement of the fact that you’re an icon. I mean, you are iconic in the way that you think, and the way that you work, and the things that you’ve done and created, and how lucky we all are to be able to even get a little bit of that today. So, thank you so much. But the question is, who is your icon?

Joanna: My mom.

Heather: You know, you describe why and I understand it was the model of being a leader and building something and creating something and working—and that, of course, trickled into you and all that you’ve done…and now your daughter and your other children. So that’s a good one. I like that one.

Joanna: For me, first of all, thank you. It is so humbling to hear that, to be recognized that way; and it only fuels my insistence on continuing the work in front of us, because it means that we’re doing something right. The outcome of success isn’t always fame. It certainly can be infamy, depending on how you define success. But for me, you know, success is human. It isn’t always happiness. Happiness doesn’t always equal success. It is moments of reflection, trying to navigate, finding fun in the journey. Sometimes you can be unhappy, but try to have a little bit of fun in that unhappy path to make your way into a happier place. I think it’s unrealistic for people to think, ‘Yes, we will always have a happy life.’ I think that we are fortunate in this space. I’ve had the opportunity of traveling all over the world; and in those travels, a part of that observational learning that I do is being hands-on in other cultures, asking questions, respecting other human beings and celebrating what’s what makes us different, as opposed to trying to make us all the same. That would be a really boring world, if you imagined a world that could not accommodate our cultural differences.

I take a very pragmatic yet principled approach to both my life and accountability. It’s a principled approach and then holding yourself accountable to your daily decisions as to how they impact your health, how they impact your ability to earn a living, and how they impact your community. Ultimately, we do have to answer for our actions.

So, for me, it is such a compliment; and I really appreciate it. But all of that comes from growing up in San Antonio, Texas—early days of having a single mom and then that single mom picking a partner, who was an amazing dad, and being able to have that father and mother figure in my life and show me the balance. My father was an attorney and, for a time, he was a public defender. Part of that piece of it taught me about public service, the importance of civic duty, and to apply my skills as an individual. Part of being a citizen of the United States meant that you didn’t just contribute taxes. That civic duty is the everyday interaction that you have in your community to make it a better place to ensure a better tomorrow, whether that’s for your children or for somebody else’s.

Heather: Well, that’s an amazing way to end. Thank you so, so much, Joanna. And here’s to living and working with integrity, to making mistakes, to having some fun with it, and to the pursuit of magic. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing all of the amazing things that you’re going to do.

Joanna: Thank you for having me.

Heather: Thanks for tuning in. If you liked what you heard, share it with your colleagues and friends and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. And if you’re feeling really generous, leave us a five-star rating. Thanks, and I’ll see you next time.