S8E6: Lisa Nakamura

Lisa Nakamura is the founding director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan.

Nakamura has been studying identity in digital spaces since the 1990s. She recalled an early experience in a graphical chat room called the Palace:

So I was given an avatar randomly, and I was given a black female avatar. So I came into the chat room, and someone was talking to me. They were very friendly. And the first thing they said was, “Let me help you find a new head and body.”

And I said, “Really, why do you want to do that?”…

This person didn’t know if I was black or a woman, but they wanted me to look different.

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By Jessica Helfand & Ellen McGirt

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer and a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Communications Arts and Eye magazines. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame, Helfand received her B.A. and her M.F.A. from Yale University where she has taught since 1994.

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Ellen McGirt is an author, podcaster, speaker, community builder, and award-winning business journalist. She is the editor-in-chief of Design Observer, a media company that has maintained the same clear vision for more than two decades: to expand the definition of design in service of a better world. Ellen established the inclusive leadership beat at Fortune in 2016 with raceAhead, an award-winning newsletter on race, culture, and business. The Fortune, Time, Money, and Fast Company alumna has published over twenty magazine cover stories throughout her twenty-year career, exploring the people and ideas changing business for good. Ask her about fly fishing if you get the chance.