pale blue jen

PALE
BLUE
JEN

Hi

I'm jennifer gergen and I've been designing for the web since Y2K. You may know me from Meetup, Teachers Pay Teachers, and Ladders.

As a
DESIGN LEADER,
...I want to
  1. 1. Craft experiences that have positive & measurable impact on lives…
  2. 2. Grow strong & diverse teams who collaborate to achieve their best and most creative work…
  3. 3. Build loved products, resiliant organizations & vibrant communities…
…so that
We leverage the internet to amplify real human connection and be our best selves.

2 Truths and a Lie

Select the lie


I’ve traveled to more than 50 countries

TRUTH

I’ve traveled to more than 50 countries mainly in Europe, Asia and North America


I have the world’s tiniest tattoo

TRUTH

I have a “pale blue dot” tattoo on my wrist to remind me of perspective—hence my nickname.


I’ve never dyed my hair

LIE

I’ve been dying my hair since my 16th birthday—almost every color on the wheel.

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Work

Force Multiply the Mission

TPT School Access is a completely new subscription product that gets teachers exponentially more access to the educator-created resources they love and provides visibility and insight to school administrators while growing the TPT community—ultimately supercharging our mission to unlock the collective wisdom of educators.

TPT School Access Dashboard Screenshot TPT School Access Dashboard Screenshot TPT School Access Dashboard Screenshot
TPT School Access
Do something today for Educators

Experiences All the Way Down

Meetup promises a future where people have access to each other and can self-organize around almost anything. Establishing a design culture and growing our design team allowed us to design appealing new mobile apps and launch an exciting rebrand to drive growth, based on systems designed to adapt and improve experiences for the future.

MORE

‣ Building a design culture from scratch

‣ How I Managed—Scaling a design team, and keeping track

‣ Achieving Lift-off: How to Embrace a Rebrand

‣ Design Driven Talk

Meetup Mobile Redesign
Meetup Rebrand
Meetup Launch Swag

Laddering Up

When I joined Ladders in 2011 the way we build websites was undergoing a dramatic shift and we were right on the bleeding edge. In our effort to become more agile, we streamlined and rebooted our job matching and coaching products with a responsive, mobile-first approach, inventing lean UX, early design systems and design version control along the way.

MORE

‣ Watch my talk about design systems at Agile UX 2012

Ladders Homepage
Ladders Signature
Do something today for Educators

Core Values

  • Care.

  • "Strong opinions, weakly held." (do the work, then do it again)

  • Give what you have to offer.

  • Seek challenges. Don't be lazy

  • Open-mindedness. atrophies if you don't actively expose it to new things

  • Breadth
    >
    Depth

  • Chummy & Friendly & Neighborly & Inviting.

  • "Good" is the enemy of "Great."
    "Perfect" is the enemy of the future (and it's gross)

  • profit is not the bottom line

  • comedy matters

  • No douchebags. *personal definition of a douchebag: putting image over other people's feelings.

  • abhor excess

  • Backlogs are bad. Now, or you risk never. Maintenance is cheaper and better.

  • transparency almost always pays off. Share all the things

  • investigate the impossible

  • make choices that enable (rather than limit) further choices

  • see it another way

  • fear is not a good reason

  • take some time to celebrate & some time to be critical but not much

  • distrust certainty. Make doubt into experimentation, not paralysis

  • Do the homework. You always learn something.

  • Invest in tools, skills & relationships

  • mind your metrics

  • be observant & alert.
    Anticipate & read minds.

  • Say it out loud.

  • Revise this list as often as necessary. But not more often

Let's go there

LinkedIn · Résumé ·