The Valuing & Jerk Project
Graphic DesignThe Valuing & Jerk Project
I learned about this project from the brilliant mind of Karen Holtzblatt. I met Karen after seeing her speak at an event hosted by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA.) Later that week I learned that her organization WITOPS was looking for volunteers so I signed up and I was lucky to ran into this amazing project.
Credits
Client:
WITOPS,
Creative Director: Karen Holtzblatt,
Designer: Peter Verastegui
The Problem
The tech industry is a boys club, so it comes as no surprise that U.S. tech companies do not provide a supportive workplace for women. In fact they are the exact opposite, hostlile. Fifty percent of women in STEM report gender-related discrimination. According to a report by the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) women in technology have an astonoshing 41% quit rate compared to just 17% for men.
One Part of The Solution
One Solution Karen Holtzblatt and her team at WITOPS came up with was to seek (through research) a better understanding of workplace interactions in order to identify specific behaviors which create or undermine the experience of connection and value in the workplace.
Two main behaviors
Women report that men, managers, or teammates are “bros” or “jerks”. But what does this mean? WITOPS’s research focused on understanding which behaviors are experienced as valuing and which result in naming the other as a “jerk”.
My contribution
I was lucky to work with someone as creative as Karen, when I arrived she had the whole concept layout, all I had to do was to come up with the aesthetics for the project, she really gave me creative freedom to create fun and colorful graphics for it. To learn more about this amazing project visit WITOPS's website.
