Transcript of Interview With Kaiden Anderson

Interview With Kaiden Anderson

This interview features Kaiden Anderson, lead product manager at Nike. You can watch it on Kaiden’s profile page.

Transcript

– All right. Well I’m Joe Welinske, the conference director of Convey UX, which will be coming to Seattle and online in the last week of February. And this is where I get the chance to speak to another one of our great presenters. Today I am visiting with Kaiden Anderson. Hello Kaiden. How are you doing today?

– Hey Joe, doing well. How are you?

– I’m very good. I’m north of Seattle, which is Blink’s founding headquarters city. Where are you talking to us from?

– Today I’m calling you from Portland, Oregon, just outside Beaverton, Oregon.

– Well, I’m glad to be able to share a little bit of time with you. You know, I know a little bit about your background, but you know, for everybody that’s watching this, maybe you can talk a little bit about that and your current work.

– Absolutely. So current state, I’m a lead product manager at Nike, and I also like to mention that my side job at Nike, we always have your day job hat, and then you have your ERG or your employee resource group hat. And I’m a proud community leader for the Nike United Pride Network. So super passionate about that work and the mission of the Pride initiatives at Nike. Prior to Nike, I was in the startup world working as a product manager at Plume Health. We’re now known as Plume Clinic. And then before that, working at Transform 90 Day Training and then Orange Theory Fitness, working in the world of business development, inspiring folks to get healthy through technology and fitness and really starting my world of product management and product design in those spaces as well.

– I think most people are familiar with the brand that you represent at Nike, but I know there’s a lot more going on within the organization beyond the obvious fitness apparel part of it. Maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, how you see your industry and if there’s any particular challenges that you’re having to confront right now.

– Yeah, great question. So the funny thing about being a product manager at Nike is when folks hear product management, they immediately say, “Oh, you develop shoes,” or “You develop shirts and apparel.” And I’m like, “No, that’s really cool, but I’m actually developing technology.” So currently I am on a project called Strategic Enterprise Capabilities, working on improving our ERP or enterprise resource planning. So across Nike we’re going through a big business transformation as well as a digital transformation. So in the world of Nike, we have been known as an apparel or shoe, running company. However, we are moving towards like being a leader in the technology space, different initiatives within AI. How can we improve our supply chain efficiencies? How can we improve sustainability measures by reducing samples and doing more 3D work? How are we as a company connecting with people on our Dot Swoosh platform and using different ways to technology to not only connect but improve people, bringing people together through sport? And that’s all technology driven right now. So Nike is at this inflection point of figuring out who we are as a brand for the next 50 years.

– Well you’re, just to introduce your topic, it’s titled “The Power and Value of Belonging.” Maybe you could talk a little bit about how you came around to that topic, what it means to you, and why you think it’s important to share with others.

– Oh my goodness. So I don’t know about you, but 2020 was the year that we realized how important human connection was. If you didn’t realize the value of our human-ness and the desire to be around other people, the pandemic really centered that, especially for me. Going from working in-person five days a week to being on a computer like we are right now 24/7 was a big shift and for me it was having to figure out how can we create a culture of community and connection while living in this now digital world, which is here to kind of stay? So it’s like how do we keep this now hybrid approach? A lot of companies are going for 1, 3-2, but how do we keep that connectivity going? And so for me, I’ve been on this journey for the last, honestly, even before the pandemic. This journey started in college as I was a division one athlete trying to figure out how I belonged in school as a, well, I consider myself more of a nerd and then on the field as what I was an athlete and a jock. And so I was always at this juxtaposition of like who I am, how do I fit in, and where do I actually belong? And so when you take that fast forward 10 years into the workplace, you’re like as a working professional, we all have different identities at different moments. We’re parents. We’re spouses. We are more than just a product manager or a UX designer. We are our intersectional beings. And so for me, the power of belonging is allowing that moment to highlight all those hats you wear or the different flower petals is like what I like to call, one of the exercises I do with my groups is in saying like, hey, we are all uniquely made and beautifully who we are, but how do we bring that authentic self to the workplace? And I had a very powerful moment to do that at Nike about a year ago when I got to speak at a global all hands for our supply chain group, our marketplace supply chain, and got to share my story. So one of the things at Nike is we always ask, “What is your connection to sport?” During the interview process and honestly and transparently, I would hesitate to answer that question. Why? Because me saying, “Hey, I was a softball player,” immediately outs me as a transgender person. You think, okay, you’re in the Pacific Northwest, no big deal. But to me as a professional working in corporate America, that is still a big deal today. It’s still a hotly debated topic, especially when we talk about trans inclusion in sport. So when I took the stage last January in front of 200 plus people in the Tiger Woods Theater, I said, “Hey, I wanna talk about purpose, belonging, and togetherness.” And I can’t do all three of those things without being honest and truthful about myself and my journey because I told the company, “I’m transgender. I played softball.” But if I just said I played softball, people would look at me and wonder, I didn’t know men or males could play collegiate softball. That confused people. People thought, “Is softball a men’s sport?” And it just caused a bunch of chaos and confusion. And so I took that stage that day and said, “Hey, I have a story to tell.” I want to reclaim my ownership of my identity in my sport. I put in 24 years of hard work to be a division one athlete. And I put in that many years of trying to become a professional and figuring my way into corporate America, to figure my way into product management. And so that intersection came to be that moment and I said, “I want to be the person of beacon of light. I want to be that connection point.” And from there, I started a group called Cohorts across the supply chain and brought people together intentionally to have conversations, to have those moments in which we can share our humanity with one another and make each other more real. ‘Cause I don’t know about you Joe, but when you’re sitting on Zoom all day, sometimes you get one, Zoom fatigue. Sometimes people are off camera or not even having a picture. You’re just talking to someone’s name on a screen with a black icon and you just miss that human connection. And it was a really powerful moment last January in which I was able to share my truth, share my story, and lead with that vulnerability which let others feel more comfortable and safe in doing so as well. And it really transformed that connection and culture we were having across the marketplace supply chain.

– Well yeah, I appreciate you, you know, sharing your story here and also, you know, bringing that to our conference attendees. So yeah, I think a lot of people are gonna be very interested in hearing about that and kind of how it, how your lived life fits in your work life and your topic of belonging. You know, you obviously have a lot of experiences and we have a lot of people from a variety of backgrounds, both senior people in UX but also people that are kind of new to the area, new to the field. Do you have any tips that you might wanna share, a tip or a thought for people that are just getting started? Maybe something that helped you as you found your way?

– Yeah, the easiest thing I can say is there is no one right path. There is no one cookie cutter method. If you do this, then you will achieve X. Follow your passions. That passions will turn into a roadmap and then you can look back and reflect and say, “Hey, I did this. That brought me to this connection point which taught me this, then brought me here.” And that’s something I’ll be happy to talk a little bit more about in my presentation at the conference is saying like, there is no one right way. If you’re passionate in it, and you’re willing to learn and invest, you’ll be successful. Just trust the process.

– Well, as a final thought, one of the things I like to mention is we guys have a conference bookstore at the physical version of the conference. Are there any, is there any books you might wanna mention that you’ve, a book title you might have read recently that you’d like to tell us about?

– Absolutely. So I have just finished the book called “Speak Up Culture.” The author is Stephen Shedletzky or also known as Shed. And he is this fantastic person that talks about psychological safety in the workplace and you can’t have purpose and belonging without feeling like you’re safe to have a conversation and to speak up. So definitely shout out to Shed and his “Speak Up Culture.”

– All right, great. Well I’ll add that to our book list, and we’ll see if we can have that available at the conference. Well Kaiden, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. I’m looking forward to meeting you in person in Seattle and having you part of the conference.

– Thank you, Joe. I can’t wait to see you there.

– All right, thanks a lot. Bye-bye.