Chetana Deorah is an Indian American woman who grew up in Mumbai, India and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area for her masters and work. She majored in Biology for her undergrad and after a frog dissection gone wrong, quickly realized that was not the correct career path for her. She received her MFA at the Academy of Art University in Graphic Design, and found that her scientific approach to understanding the world paired well with her love for art and design.
Currently, she works as the Director of Product Design at Coursera and Growth, and previously worked with Scribd, Yahoo, Pivotal Labs, Pentagram, and Netflix. At Netflix, she worked as the Director of Design and led product design for global acquisitions, producing consumer products with a focus in emerging markets. More specifically, her work involved audience growth, sign up and registration, payments and partnerships, and new member experience and onboarding. Deorah describes herself as a product designer who empowers with human-centered design, and is passionate about causes such as education, wellness and well-being, culture and community, productivity, and media and content. She has taught UX Design at Whitespacecrew and DesignLab, and has served on the nonprofit Inneract Project for over 8 years.
One of her inspirations and the speaker of her favorite quotes is John Cage, who said, “The principle underlying all solutions is the question that was asked.” She believes that impactful design solutions result from the alignment on the problem statement, and that thoughtful questions help in understanding, which is the single most important element when designing. Her positions in leadership roles have helped her strive for better ways to provide the highest value at the intersection of business and design.
Works Cited
- Deorah, Chetana. “Chetana Deorah | LinkedIn.” LinkedIn, www.linkedin.com/in/chetanadeorah/.
- Roskovec, Matous. “The Grit – Chetana Deorah, Product Design Director at Coursera for Avocode.” Avocode, Avocode, 13 May 2020, avocode.com/blog/chetana-deorah-product-design-director-coursera-interview.
- Deorah, Chetana. “Ask Me (Almost) Anything!” Medium, Invincible Career, 23 Sept. 2019, medium.com/invinciblecareer/ask-me-almost-anything-c9fc30480a2d.
I worked with Chetana at Yahoo! and she has grown into an amazing design leader. Once we are teaching again in person – she will be teaching here at CCA (fingers crossed).