[MUSIC PLAYING] SABRINA SULLIVAN: My name’s Sabrina Sullivan. I’m a Vice President at BlackRock. I am a Lead User Experience Designer on the User Experience Design Team, for Aladdin Product Group.
Early on in my life, I was the person in my household who, you know, that was the moment where the VCR became invented. My parents were fumbling through the guides. And I just wanted to watch, you know, “Back to the Future.”
I read the technical manual. And I found it to be easy to absorb. And I set up our VCR.
And after that, whenever there was a technical manual in our household, my parents gave it to me to figure out or to set up something. And I just found that this was sort of a skill that I seemed to have, and was interested in. To be successful as a user experience professional, or on the User Experience Design Team, I think that the right kind of person, for now, has to have somewhat of a pioneering spirit, the ability to work independently, and the desire to work independently.
But then also, the desire to pave the way for people who are going to come after you. I believe that when I first started considering working at BlackRock, I was afraid that perhaps it would be a little dry. When I came in and I met the team, in fact, there was a need for strong professionals in this space, because they were building out a user experience practice for the very first time.
I felt that there were mentorship opportunities as well, for some of the more junior designers. So that was attractive. Specifically regarding user experience, we have a job at hand, and that is to try to bring our enterprise software customer experience up to a higher level and a higher standard. So I am very excited for BlackRock to be known in engineering spheres, not for asset management, but for our design system.