Sara Cantor

I was saying, yeah I wish we could do more work with nonprofits, like I wonder, I wonder if we couldn't try that. And I remember she really distinctly said to me, I just don't think there's a business there. And I remember I was thinking, I didn't say it, but I remember thinking, I think you might be wrong.

Liz Gerber

Welcome or welcome back to the Technical Difficulties Podcast, where we celebrate the careers of amazing female designers and technologists. We are so excited to welcome Sarah Cantor. Sarah is a creative leader and human-centered designer dedicated to equity, inclusion, and social innovation. She co-founded Greater Good Studio in 2011 with the goal of applying design principles to social challenges. Sarah has helped millions, many, of nonprofits, foundations, and government agencies innovate and scale their impact.

We can't wait to hear from you, Sarah. Thank you for joining us today.

Sara Cantor

Thank you so much for having me. I will correct the record. I don't think I've helped to millions of nonprofits. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Liz Gerber

Okay, but the impact, it feels like millions. So that's why I had to say millions. Really, your impact has been incredible.

Sara Cantor

Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Liz Gerber

So we're gonna start with just some fun, quick warmup questions. And the first question we have for you is what is your favorite way to start your morning?

Sara Cantor

My favorite way to start my morning is waking up before my alarm clock. It happens maybe once a week, but a good night's sleep is just the absolute most important thing. It's like I think about it all day long.

Liz Gerber

I agree. Next one. What is your favorite creativity tool as you define it?

Sara Cantor

This would not be a traditional creativity tool, but I am learning Spanish. I have been learning Spanish for the last, three years. I take like a weekly lesson with a teacher and it is such a brain bender because learning a language in your forties is not easy, but it forces you to almost like rewire your brain. And I really feel like it's a workout for my brain.

in the same way that exercise is a workout for my body. So I would name language learning.

Liz Gerber

I love that and it is a it's rewiring your brain and creativity requires you to connect this different parts of your brain. So I would I think it's absolutely a creativity tool. I understand how you respond that way. Okay, next question. Favorite way to end the day.

Sara Cantor

Again with the sleep. I would say, I mean, certainly like I would love to be in bed by 9:30. But I also the ideal then is that I'm spending about a half an hour reading a book. Not looking at my phone, not, you know, any kind of like just screens at all. I've kind of I actually just got rid of my, like I moved my phone so that it's not in my room at night and I got an alarm clock. I know. So old school.

Liz Gerber

Hahaha!

Sara Cantor

But reading, yeah, I love to read books, whether they are about like social justice, leadership and management, or parenting. I just devoured nonfiction and it puts me to bed.

Liz Gerber

So old school.

Well, this is perfect. Next question, which is what's your current, what's a current favorite book, podcast, TV, movie, anything that's kind of getting you thinking about design and technology in a different way and why.

Sara Cantor

Yeah, good question. There are so many books right now. I just started one called We Have Never Been Woke. It's very interesting. I wouldn't say that it, you know, a lot of what I read is not about design in the sense that like, I don't know if I read a ton of like design literature.

Design justice, yes, like there are books that I will make space for, but I'm always trying to learn from other fields. And so far, you know, that book is really resonating with me. I think I've been wondering for a while, like, who am I? Why am I in this space? What's my deal? In terms of working in the social sector and wanting to make positive change in the world. Anyway, it's more of a deep dive into culture right now. But it's certainly giving me a new lens to view my colleagues, my clients, and myself.

Liz Gerber

Awesome, thank you. That book was also recently recommended to me as well. So it's on my reading list. So good to know that you like it.

Sara Cantor

Yeah, so far.

Liz Gerber

So now we're gonna dive into the questions. So the first question is how did you get started in technology and design? I know you have a mechanical engineering undergrad and then a master's in design and design planning. And so. Did it start with those degrees? Was there one moment of like, I'm a designer? did you know when you were two years old? Tell us the story.

Sara Cantor

Thank you. Yeah, I definitely didn't know when I was two years old. I was always kind of a generalist in school. I liked math and English the same, which nobody, everybody was like a math person or an English person. was like, but what if it could be both?

Liz Gerber

I so get that, yes.

Sara Cantor

Yeah. And, but I did, I was, I was pretty good at math and physics in high school. And so my parents, would say kind of pushed me into mechanical engineering in the sense of they were like, you know, it'd be a great field for women. I think they felt like I could get in and have a better chance of getting in, which I did. know affirmative action has mostly bestowed its benefits upon white women such as myself. And I'm sure that's part of why I got into Northwestern in 1997. But also I was interested in engineering because I saw the movie Big with Tom Hanks and that movie, I just thought

I can do that. I know what's fun.

Liz Gerber

Yeah, what part? What part? What got you into it? Because not everybody seemed big. Yeah, what's the premise?

Sara Cantor

Well, he's a child. Yeah. So he's a, he's a child, like a, I don't know, eight, eight, 10 year old child who is sort of magically transformed into an adult's body. And now he has a job that he has to go to and he works at a toy company and he becomes sort of like the best toy designer ever because he is actually a child and he knows what's fun. And the movie is fantastic. It's totally goofy. I highly recommend it. But for me, even though I understood that the premise was, you know, fantastical, I was like, I will always know what is fun. I can be a toy designer. And yeah.

Liz Gerber

Sarah, have I ever told you that my first job was in toy design because of the movie Big?

Sara Cantor

Oh my goodness, no, I don't think so.

Liz Gerber

I absolutely resonate with this story, yes.

Sara Cantor

I have had a couple opportunities throughout college and grad school to work on toy projects and toy internships. I still think it's a really like just awesome and fascinating area. It's not really what I do anymore, but I do think it gave me the impetus to at least consider mechanical engineering.

Liz Gerber

Okay. But to know what's always fun, I would love for you to explore that a little more in your role both as a designer but also an entrepreneur. You started a design studio. Say more about that. How does that play out?

Sara Cantor

Yeah, that's a great, it's actually a really great reflection for me because I don't know that I, I don't know that I on the daily think how can we make this more fun? I work in a really serious space. know, our clients at Greater Good Studio are all nonprofits, foundations, and government agencies. And the projects that we work on are sort of baseline project is something that is going to advance a more equitable society, right? Make things more fair, have more access and opportunity for people who've been underserved. And so, you know, we are like really daily dealing with just really challenging topics and a lot of unfairness and a lot of frustration.

Liz Gerber

Can you give an example of some of the topics for those who might not know?

Sara Cantor

Sure, yeah. So let's see, right now we are working with the Pima County Health Department. That is a public health department in Arizona around Tucson. And they have a lot of diabetes in their community. We're actually working with three teams. So one's working on diabetes and other chronic conditions. One is working on mental health and substance abuse. So how do we reduce the stigma associated with drug use specifically in healthcare providers? And then the third team is working on tobacco specifically, how do we get young people basically to stop vaping or at least to talk about tobacco use with trusted peers and adults? So those are some of the projects that we're working on just in the public health realm.

Liz Gerber

Yeah, so going back, if you want to infuse fun, I'd love to hear you reflect more on that. Those are very serious topics.

Sara Cantor

Yeah, they are. think that, you know, there's a few things that we do that I've kind of tried to bring to the studio in terms of, I don't know if I would go so far as like fun, but I would say staying positive is very important to me.

Liz Gerber

Yeah.

Sara Cantor

Certainly we look for moments of levity whenever we can on projects and you know, our team will travel together and we try to have moments of, you know, having meals with clients and just having kind of building good relationships. But also we lean on a theory called appreciative inquiry, which basically says people in groups move in the direction of what they talk about. So if you talk about the problem, you can sort of move towards it even if you don't totally, sorry, if you talk about the solution, you can sort of move towards it even if you don't know exactly how to get there. And so we, we try to frame projects around what we call positive goals. And we kind of give people permission to brainstorm a lot of those, and then we narrow it down. But those positive goals form a North Star for all of our projects. And it's exciting, you know, to think about what if we could get every young person in Pima County to have a conversation about tobacco use?

Liz Gerber

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I love that idea. It's not necessarily levity, but positivity. I just see in every project you celebrate people. Like it's just each project is just an inherent belief that people are capable and empowered to improve their own lives and the lives of their communities. And that's how I would say I see that the spirit of the fun coming playing out.

Sara Cantor

Yeah, I do think that our work is sort of based on an operating system of love, if you will.

Liz Gerber

Yeah, exactly.

Sara Cantor

Whereas, you know, I worked in the corporate world for about seven, eight years and that felt like the operating system was more fear and competition. know, lots of things that just felt really counterproductive to like people's humanity. And even though I was practicing human centered design, was very transactional. You know, it was very, what can I get from this person? How can I use them? And I think human centered design at its core is about believing that everyone is doing the best they can. Which hands down a hundred percent, I do believe, even though, you know, people will fight me on that. My mom always says, know, the guy I worked with last week, he's not doing the best he can. And I will say no, he's doing the best with what he has, he is.

Liz Gerber

I just, and I know you and I, as both we are moms and we are lucky to be moms, we are also lucky to have mothers. I think I could do a whole series just on the role that mothers play in our career trajectories and the influence they have, or parents or caregivers, have you. Everybody seems to have some story about a voice that they hear, either in real time or in memory, they hear a voice saying something. So thank you for bringing your mother into the conversation today, I'm sure.

Well, I appreciate it. Okay, so on that note, I'm wondering if you can share a specific project you're working on today that you're getting really excited about that's just kind of blowing your mind in terms of possibilities. What's exciting you today?

Sara Cantor

Yeah, so a lot of things. There's always something that is really exciting to me in our work. think that's why I'm still, I feel so committed to leading the studio. One project that I am working on right now is around exploring an opportunity to organize older adults.

Liz Gerber

Ooh, cool. Say more.

Sara Cantor

So we have a client, they're called the Scan Foundation. They're out of California. They've been working in aging for 20 years. And we've done some projects with them in the past that were around understanding health equity and aging. We worked on the California Master Plan for Aging. So lots of experience lately in what it means to be an older adult in America today.

Which, you know, sidebar is to be invisible, forgotten, infantilized. I mean, there are lots of what, you know, taken advantage of. It's not a great experience. Of course, it's an even worse experience if you are an older adult with one or more marginalized identities. If you're a person of color, Native American, LGBTQ, a veteran, you know, someone with neurodivergence, et cetera. So the Scan Foundation for years has been talking about elevating voices of older adults and we've done that work. That's great. But I think something that I've been on a bit of a high horse for for a long time and we haven't had a lot of clients yet who are like, that's what we need to do, is this idea of, how do we actually share power? How do we actually empower?

Liz Gerber

Okay.

Yeah, okay.

Sara Cantor

Because we as an institution, a nonprofit, a foundation, etc. How do we take the massive amount of power that we've got and actually redistribute some of that? And, you know, we're not trying to change their board of directors or anything like that, although I wouldn't mind having access to that type of project. you know, we've we've offered to them, what would it look like? And they've said we're interested in.

Liz Gerber

Okay.

Sara Cantor

What would it look like to actually have older adults across our country be organized and by organized, know, come together to get educated about the issues affecting them, to have a voice, whether in political processes or issue campaigns. And so we are just starting to do some of the research there, talking with experts, talking with people who either have done that work in the past, but or could do it in the future. But it's research towards the idea of a potential new program that the Scam Foundation could develop if they wanted to, or they could just fund it. So yeah, it's just so interesting because I feel like this long journey of using design, design is a process that creates some power because we're making all these decisions.

Liz Gerber

Yeah. Cool.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Sara Cantor

And so how do we kind of expand that decision-making power, bring in advisors, bring in people who have lived experience? Of course, they're closest to the problem. They will be closest to the solution. And I just think it's a radical idea that whose time has come.

Liz Gerber

Yeah, I love that. I can't help but wonder how, if at all, do you think about the role of technology at this stage of the design process?

Sara Cantor

Yeah, the role of technology at this stage is much more of just an enabler. It's sort of the infrastructure by which we do our work. You we were actually, we meant to go out and do a kickoff meeting in person with our client. And this was during kind of the height of the fires in LA. And so we all decided it made more sense to, you know, have a virtual meeting instead. And so, you know, having Zoom and Miro, cause we can use. You know, we use a lot of Miro to visualize things and have it be interactive. But, you know, I don't know if that's necessarily the answer that you were interested in. I think that as we start to move into research, we're going to be learning about how, for example, technology enables organizing, how older adults interact with technology, what are kind of the opportunities there. I wouldn't be surprised if a supporting concept wouldn't be some type of technology related to this opportunity space of organizing older adults.

Liz Gerber

Yeah, I like, thank you. No, I appreciate that you parse that out between the role of technology and the process of doing your work versus a potential solution that comes about. Thank you, Sarah. One thing I've always admired about you is your careful reflection on the projects you choose. Several years ago, you wrote an incredibly impactful piece about the gut check of how you choose projects. I...

Sara Cantor

Yeah.

Liz Gerber

I just would, I wonder if you might share a little bit about what is that gut check and what is it and how did it come about and why do think it's resonated so much with people?

Sara Cantor

Thank you for reading something I wrote. But I'm like, yay, someone's out there. Yeah, no, absolutely. So when we started Greater Good, we were like, we just know what we don't want to do, which is work with corporate clients. But in terms of what we did want to do, I think it was a little bit of a we'll know it when we see it. So we were like, we just want to work with nonprofits, nonprofits, cool, cool, nonprofits, right?

As we went, we were approached by different types of nonprofits and we realized that we needed to get a little more clear in our kind of selection criteria for clients. And so, we sort of jokingly called it the gut check because that was what it was before we wrote anything down. It was just my gut and my co-founder's gut. This is a greater good studio project, yes or no. And we would be like, yes to one and no to another, but we had to be like, this is not sustainable, this isn't organizational design, why are we saying yes or no to these clients, to these projects? And so when I published that piece, the gut check was a pretty long, almost like a 30 question survey. It was too long. It became arduous, but we've really narrowed it down. So I'd say right now we just have three criteria. So kind of an updated gut check, if you will.

Liz Gerber

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sara Cantor

The questions are, is this a mission aligned client, which is just about the organization and what is their mission? Like, what are they here to do? Are they here to maximize profits for shareholders or are they here to advance an equitable society? Right.

Liz Gerber

So mission aligned, it had to be aligned with your organization. That was the alignment, is that correct? Okay.

Sara Cantor

Correct as in yeah, as in their mission is aligned with our mission, which, you know, long term visionary and a more equitable society where access and opportunity are.

Liz Gerber

Sure. OK.

Sara Cantor

Equitably distributed, which is certainly, you know, unfortunately, not the society we live in today. So, you know, if a, if an organization exists to. You know. I'm thinking of one that was not necessarily mission aligned. It was actually an organic farm, which was kind of interesting. We were like, oh, it's a farm. Like, it's good for the planet, sure. But like, they essentially existed to make really beautiful, expensive food to sell to high-end restaurants. And so we were like, I don't know if they really have like a social mission, this organization. And you know, climate, anyway. Yeah. And then.

Liz Gerber

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, thank you. That's a great illustration. That's very helpful to illustrate. Yeah, because I think we can put a lot of, we can gloss over a lot of organizations, a lot of nonprofits and assume they all have the same, but they don't.

Sara Cantor

That's right. Not to say that we don't want to be the arbiters of like, good and bad and be saying, you you're not good enough to work with us. mean, most people who come knocking are people we want to work with because they see our website and they go, yeah, we want to see an equitable society. And we're approaching that through housing or we're approaching that through health care or education.

But just, you we look at the client as an organization because ultimately in a project, like, what's it going to come down to when they're making decisions? They're going to be ultimately saying, does this align with our mission?

Liz Gerber

Our mission. that's exactly right.

Sara Cantor

And, you know, we have gotten stuck. will say we did a, started a project for a large American auto manufacturer, which we knew was probably a mistake, but the project was really mission aligned. They wanted, this is the second criteria is the project mission aligned. They wanted to create a community of disability justice experts who could advise them on making cars. And we were like, that's amazing. But guess what? The project got killed after four months because leadership turned over and this project was not ultimately aligned with their mission. So there's what is the client here to do and also what is the project here to do? And then the third is just skills aligned.

Liz Gerber

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Sara Cantor

Is this project, does this project need what we have? Which you'd be surprised, you know, on the one hand, there are not a lot of nonprofits sitting out there going, you know what we need? Some human centered design. They're just not, they're not, they don't always know that that is what they need, right? They might be thinking about a new program or reaching a new community, but they don't really know what we do. And then on the other hand, when they meet us, they're like, you seem like you could do anything. So could you like design our website or get us a new like strategic plan? So there's all kinds of things that people throw at us. And we have to try to shape that into a project that really does use our skills in human centered research and design.

Liz Gerber

Yes, of course.

Sara Cantor

So that's the gut check.

Liz Gerber

Yeah, right, right. That's awesome. I love that you simplified it to three, but I also appreciate the 30. I think they're really brilliant. And actually as a consequence of that, think I may have told you that I now ask people to make their own gut checks. And I think the process of making gut checks, so thank you for giving a great example and role modeling this, has been really helpful for people. Because like you said, I think people start with, well, I kind of know it when I see it,

but articulating it has been a very empowering process. So thank you for inspiring that. Very much. So I'm going to go back a bit to your journey and a bit of your career. And I want to remind our audience that you started off as a mechanical engineer. And I think I'm correct in saying, I don't know that you pictured at this age, this is what you would be doing.

So I'd love to, you've taken some turns and had some moments of like pivoting of like, oh no, this is, and I think it's because you checked in with your gut and said, this is what I want to do. So I'm curious what's a surprising, if you can share a surprising thing you've learned in your journey or some career, a career defining moment, or it could be a failure or a success where you like, whoa, wait, this is the direction my career should be going. How can you share, what can you share as an example?

Sara Cantor

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for asking this question. I love to hear other people's as well. There are certainly a few, but I'll hone in on I think what was probably the most defining, which was the decision to start the studio. There were a few things that were swirling at that time. So I'd worked in corporate innovation consulting for about six years at that point, out of grad school.

Liz Gerber

Yep.

Sara Cantor

I had all the internships and done all of the design of things that people could sell to make a profit. And I started to feel kind of disillusioned with my role as a researcher because I thought, well, I'm here as an advocate for the end user, therefore I'm quote unquote helping people. But there would be recommendations we would make and if they weren't perfectly aligned with how the client.

wanted to go to market, they would just sort of go nowhere. So that had been happening for a few years. And then I had the opportunity to work on a project for Nike, which was sort of a dream client in many ways just because they were sort of the coolest client in the studio. And they had something called a social innovation lab. And so the project they asked us to do was around how do we get more kids to play sports? Because that is both a social problem in the United States that sports participation has declined. And it's of course a business problem for Nike. So what my job looked like on that project was going to all of these nonprofits, these sports based youth development organizations and kind of talking to their leaders about how are you getting more kids to play sports? And in the process, I think I saw for the first time what that like,

love OS, like operating system looked like, where it was just, you know, people were just hustling and they were just doing it out of passion, passion and duct tape. it was, it was…

Liz Gerber

Yeah, that's a that's a bumper sticker. Passionate duct tape. I love that.

Sara Cantor

Like holding things together with, you know, those ingredients. And I was just like, wait, these people exist? Like, just don't even think I knew. Like, I'd always done service work. I'd always volunteered in high school and college and, you know, felt fulfilled by that work, but never understood that that was like a profession. Like, just nobody had ever said like, nonprofits are like a sector of the, you know, economy.

Liz Gerber

Yeah.

Sara Cantor

And these, you know, leaders were so inspiring that I was just like, wait, I want to work for you. I don't want to work for these clients. I want to work for you. And so just, just thinking about like, how can I make them my clients? Um, and then there was a moment where I was talking with one of the founders of the company that I worked for at the time. And I was saying, yeah, you know, I just wish we could do more work with nonprofits. Like I, I wonder, I wonder if we couldn't.

You know, try that. And I remember she really distinctly said to me, I just don't think there's a business there. And I remember thinking, I didn't say it, but I remember thinking, I you might be wrong.

Liz Gerber

Well done, Sarah. Yeah, you questioned an authority. Yeah, good for you.

Sara Cantor

You know, like, I think I, yeah, yeah. I mean, in the moment, of course, I was like, yeah, okay, sure. I understand. And then meanwhile, I'm like, greatergoods studio dot com is it available?

Liz Gerber

Yeah. How? That's awesome. I love that. so Sarah, I have to say from the outside, your, your career looks pretty perfect. You did this, it led to this, it led to that. May I push you to share any moments of failure that you just said, wow. Okay. That didn't work. Is there anything you can share or that you feel comfortable sharing?

Sara Cantor

I I don't even know where to start. Like so many things are coming to mind.

Liz Gerber

That's the, I just, I want our listeners to understand. think when we tell stories, we obviously, we share the best ones, but I think there's so many, there's so much humility. Role modeling vulnerability, I think is a great gift. And I'm wondering if you would share that gift with us.

Sara Cantor

Of course. How much time do we have? I would say that our studio started with a pretty big failure, which was we decided, because we had no clients and no projects, and we were like, here we are, but what are we doing? We decided to do a self-driven project.

Liz Gerber

Oh cool, okay.

Sara Cantor

It was a Kickstarter campaign. It was this radical idea. We called it Designing Chicago, where we were going to bring together a group of transit riders to help innovate the CTA, you know.

Liz Gerber

I remember this, the CTA being the public transportation system. Yep. Like the subway.

Sara Cantor

Yes, thank you, the Chicago Transit Authority. you know, we hosted this big party, this like kind of kickoff or launch event. And I remember that night, you know, we probably had 100, 200 people at our office, like a huge event. And we played the video, we were like, yeah, and somebody was like, everybody donate, and then not everybody donated. And I remember by the end of the night being like, we're not going to make this Kickstarter. Like we're asking for donations and we were asking for, I don't know, $100,000 and we got 20 maybe. Look, it was such a flop. We'd put all of our time and energy into it for like months leading up to this. And I just remember being like, what's going on? Where are the people? And you know, we did all these presentations and we met with people and tried to kind of boost it along.

Ultimately, I think, you know, the very obvious and retrospect lesson was on Kickstarter, people are trying to buy a product, not a process. And we were kind of selling up.

Liz Gerber

Correct. Yes, it's a consumer experience. Yeah.

Sara Cantor

Yeah, we were selling a process. And like, I just think now like, what were we thinking? Like, that just makes no sense.

Liz Gerber

It was also early on, it was early on in crowdfunding, not as many people understood that.

Sara Cantor

Yeah, mean, I still like today if I saw that Kickstarter, I would not give it $10. Like I would be like, what are you talking about? It's just there were so many components that were ill formed. But I think, you know, the main purpose of it, essentially was to just put ourselves on the map, if you will, to get some attention. And we did we ended up winning a TED prize from that project, which sent us about $10,000.

And that was about what we spent on making all of the tools to do the product. So we're like, all right, we'll just do it anyway and not be paid for it and just have it. But I mean, my goodness, challenges and failures in leadership, sharing leadership with my co-founder, that's been a whole bucket of worms.

You know, moving out of our space during COVID, we actually bought a building in 2021 because we were like, we're done with this remote working, you know, nonsense. We want an office. We bought a building. In 2021. Worked with architects in 2022 to get it like designed in 2023. Put it out for bid. Bids were two to four times the budget and sold it in 2024. And now we're back to the drawing board where we don't have an office. And it's like,

Is it a failure? I we did lose some money, not as much as we could have. Was it a learning experience for sure? But I feel like the failures are, they are rapid. Like they come in rapid succession. I think there's some phrase or quote that's like, know, success isn't lack of failure. It's like failure, but not losing your ambition to keep trying. You know, I could.

I'm sure it's an actual quote by an actual legit famous person that I'm butchering, my point is you can't let failure... Yeah, you're not going to avoid it. It's just all in how you deal with it and what you learn from it.

Liz Gerber

Yeah, yeah. The other thing I've been thinking a lot about failure is there's different degrees of failure, right? Like there's scales, there's scope of failure. And they're very different. And the kinds of failures we're often talking about are not truly capital F failures.

Sara Cantor

Totally.

Liz Gerber

And I think keeping track of that is, or keeping mindful of that is important. I want to finish up with two questions and kind of building off of your stories there. And I think you've shared some, but I'm wondering if you have any further, maybe unexpected advice that you'd give somebody for entering the field of design or social innovation as you are in.

Sara Cantor

Yeah, a couple things come to mind, I guess. Well, one thing that's sort of my like always go to career advice just because I think it was it would have helped me tremendously at the age of, you know, 19. Don't be afraid to change your mind. I was in mechanical engineering, I was kind of drowning, getting like Cs in my classes and As in everything else, sociology, psychology, religion, know, art, music, theater. Like I took all these other classes and got As and then was getting like Bs, Cs and Ds in mechanical engineering and was like, why am I doing this? And nobody ever told me it won't be quitting if you just change your mind. But I thought I can't change my major because then I would be a quitter, who quits. And you know, I'm here to stick it out. like, no, persistence is not a virtue if it doesn't make any sense. So like, that is just general. Like, it took me so long to figure out design and then to figure out social impact design. Like, it's okay. Like, like, welcome those pivots. You're not a quitter.

Liz Gerber

I love that. It's not a virtual if it doesn't make sense. I think that's just brilliant. Yeah.

Sara Cantor

No, like I'm talking to my own younger self. And then the other thing I would say as it relates to design in the social sector, because people are often like, I'm a designer or I work in some technical field, but I want to be able to help. I want to be able to give back. want to support causes I care about. it's like, there are so many ways to do that. You can do that in your organization. Even if you work for like a large corporation, you can start employee resource groups. You can bring in speakers. You can advocate for education for various things. For give backs, you can do volunteer work. You can find an organization you care about and give them some of your services on a pro bono basis, you can go work at a nonprofit. Very basic piece of advice, but nonprofits are companies too. They have jobs. They're not just all running on passion and dung tape. There is some money, not as much maybe as there is at a General Electric, but there's some. I think the idea that social impact design is a is a growing space there are think more and more firms that are starting. We keep a database of them. You can find them on our website.

Liz Gerber

Great.

Sara Cantor

But yeah, there's like, there's so many ways to kind of use your your skills for good. If you will.

Liz Gerber

Yay. I want to thank you for that in particular. I think your organization has done a wonderful job of collecting resources, especially in this space. can be really opaque. It's opaque to navigate careers in this space, and you've done a wonderful job pulling things together. So thank you very much. Really a huge gift. Final question for you is what's something you still want to learn and do with your career, with your life that you're not doing right now?

So not Spanish. Something you want to do.

Sara Cantor

Yeah, not Spanish. I don't think I will. I've accepted that I will probably never be fluent, that I will just be learning it for the rest of my life.

Liz Gerber

I think every person is learning language. I'm learning English for rest of my life. I think everybody's still learning, so.

Sara Cantor

Yeah. I appreciate that. I, this might be the first time that I'm saying this in a somewhat public way. Um, but I'm saying it to hold my own self accountable. I would like to one day write a book.

Liz Gerber

Yes, I was hoping you'd say that. Good. Yeah.

Sara Cantor

I really would like to. I am such a, I think I've been hard on myself because I'm like, love books so much, they all have to be amazing. How could I even get started? It's got to be perfect. I know that's an attitude I bring to anything else in my life, but I've had some of those false starts of like, I don't know, I don't know what I'm doing. But I feel like our work is unique and not necessarily the best or only, I would love the researcher in me just really wants to go out and interview all the other people who are doing this work.

Liz Gerber

Yeah

Sara Cantor

And kind of put together some type of like, this is how you design equitably. This is how you design to share and shift power. This is how pissed off optimists need to approach their work.

Liz Gerber

I love that.

Sara Cantor

So, it's in there. I'll get to it. I will.

Liz Gerber

Well, well, here's my challenge, my suggestion to you. You can take it or leave it. But I similarly, I have a similar ambition and I recently self-published a board book. So you know those books you babies read that have maximum 100 words? I published a board book and it was a wonderful first step for me in making progress and reminding myself I could do it. And because of this, another friend has now done it and just sent me his board book. To be sure, our ambitions are bigger than board books, but it was a great first step. So I'm going to encourage you, Sarah, to make a board book because it lowers the bar, I think, for just how perfect it needs to be. And it gets, it gives you something to put on your desk to work.

again and now I've been using that and showing that to other people and getting them to comment on it and it's a nice lo-fi prototype.

Sara Cantor

Exactly!

Liz Gerber

So make a make a board book that's my suggestion for you.

Sara Cantor

I love this so much. This is exactly what I needed, honestly. What is your board book and how can I get one?

Liz Gerber

Well, I'll have to give you version two because I've already have new, new, so I will make a version two and send it to you that will be my that will be my gift to you.