I recently interviewed Laura Silva who is a Colombian immigrant who is a speaker, writer, andVice President, Accessibility Technology UX Design Lead at Bank of America. She graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design with a degree in writing. Laura Silva always loved writing and art. She knew that writing is powerful and can play an important role in society.
After she graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design, she went to work at Amazon as a UX Designer on the Global Search team, the same place she had previously interned. While working at Amazon she made her impact. Her team introduced the emoji feature on the Amazon search bar. This feature is important because there are a lot of people who aren’t able to write in English or have a difficult time typing a lot. Pictures are universal, and with this feature now millions of more people now have access to Amazon.
Laura Silva then went to work as Vice President, Accessibility Technology UX Design Lead at Bank of America. While working at there she has made it her mission to make Bank of America accessible to everybody despite any limitations that a person can have. She wants to make sure that anybody can use the product.
“So, it’s just about understanding that not all users are created equal and if we really want to be, you know, inclusive and diverse, whatever that means, we need to think about our customers and the intersectionality of them and so that’s what I do.”
Laura Silva
Laura Silva has not only helped make that technology that she works on accessible to millions of people but is also a mentor. For example she was a Lead Mentor for the program Girls Who Code, which is a program that helps with the inclusion of women in the tech field. She also was an Alumni mentor for the writing department at Savannah College of Art and Design. And as of recently a Distinguished Lecturer for immigration design at Lehman College. She was brought to Lehman from a very important grant from the Sara Little Turnbull Foundation. This grant was used for financial and career support, increasing existing design course offering and establishing new lecturer positions within the department.
She will continue to inspired people. As a Latin American myself she has shown me and many more that we have a place in the tech field, and can succeed in it.
Works Cited
Laura Silva LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurasilvah
Girls Who Code, https://girlswhocode.com/about-us
Savannah College of Art and Design, https://www.scad.edu/
Grant Article, https://www.lehman.cuny.edu/media-relations-office/documents/FINALTurnbullGrantRelease_000.pdf
Author: Luis Molinuevo
