Coming Full Circle and Loving It
I had the opportunity to photograph Carol Massá, Service Design Lead at Northwell Health. She shared some of her full-circle journey.
“My mom is a doctor. From the time I was little, I saw how hard she worked. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had the idea of helping people & wanting to create higher impact. But I got an undergrad in graphic design & advertising. I wasn’t quite up for medical school. As a graphic designer, originally doing posters & brand boards, I decided to get my master’s in design management in Savannah, GA. Design management is in essence the way we design activities, systems, software, front-end services, & workflow.
After I received my master’s degree, I began working with Fortune 500 companies, but I was open to other settings. Maybe I hadn’t found my sweet spot yet. I worked on innovative teams, B2B & customer-facing. But an opportunity came up when I spoke to friends who asked, ‘Have you ever thought about working in healthcare?’ Before they finished their sentence, I said ‘Yes!’
It felt like a connection to a calling.
Someone teasingly coined us designers as ‘middleware in healthcare’. We are behind the scenes. ‘Good design is invisible.’ In other words, if you have a smooth or seamless experience, that is a good design. As a healthcare designer, I translate needs into concepts or products. Sometimes I identify a potential need & sometimes it is assigned to my team. That begins investigative digging to understand the context around a need & the ideas that may fill that gap. To do that, we do a variety of activities, including interviewing & shadowing the professionals. We watch to see if the process or the clinical workflow needs to be redesigned, then we develop products & services to fit.
I have been in healthcare now for almost 5 years, and that has deepened my relationship with my mom. As I work, I understand my mom’s work even better. Clinicians go beyond themselves. It's selfless. The words don’t measure the impact of their giving. I don’t know how she did it when we were young, but now sharing our joint experiences is fun.
I have come full circle from a child whose mother was a doctor to working in health care & loving it.
When I take a new photo, it is because I need to re-represent myself. I do this every 2 or 3 years. Usually, I photograph myself with help from Photoshop, but this time I wanted a new headshot to represent me. Some of my work got accepted at a design conference. I was so excited about it; I wanted to celebrate that moment!
A colleague, David Russo, posted his professional picture done by Alissa. When I saw his photo, I thought, ‘This is exactly the aesthetic that I’m looking for.’
I contacted Alissa. I was very nervous about being photographed professionally, so when she took the first few pictures, I asked if I could see them. She showed me what she had & wow, they were spot on! She got me so quickly. It was much easier than I thought. I love my headshot!”