Mariam Braimah is the Lead Product Designer at Netflix and founder of the Kimoyo Fellowship, a design program that connects designers to leading tech industry professionals across the African diaspora. Braimah was born and raised in New York and moved to San Francisco after college when she decided to be a UI/UX designer.
When she was young, Mariam Braimah wanted to be an architect, but she didn’t like Physics and ended up transitioning into graphic design. Although she didn’t want to be a graphic designer, she found out about user interface design. She landed a job with the cross-functional research and design team at a public data tech startup, Inflection, and moved to San Francisco. Sharing her experience at Inflection, she said: “In my time at Inflection, I was able to try many different things — the company wasn’t too small where I was worried about job security, but it wasn’t too big where I had to focus on just one thing.” But shortly after, there was a set of layoffs and although she wasn’t affected directly, she considered it as a sign to “move forward and create more”. She applied to different roles and one of them was Netflix. Braimah joined the company’s “Growth and Acquisition” team. The team goal is to attract and keep the attention of non-members immediately after they land on Netflix’s website by a process of familiarization. Recently, she switched to the Emerging Experiences Design team, where she deals with the member and content experience of the product. Mariam Braimah narrates her growth journey at Netflix from money-oriented to the opposite end of the spectrum as she’s more into the abstract approach now. Netflix is an opportunity for her to work under a widely recognizable brand, learn about global users, and expose to more opportunities. Although Netflix has one of the most diverse design teams she has worked in, there were still very few black people and Braimah makes it her goal to include even more diversity in the team. As an African woman, Mariam Braimah extends her skills beyond international borders while inspires designers from her own root Nigeria.
When she was looking for inspiration, Braimah quickly realized that no one was Nigerian. She soon discovered the need to learn from international industry professionals in the Nigerian tech ecosystem. This is the biggest reason for her to found the Kimoyo Fellowship. The fellowship is a learning program that aims to connect the designer communities across the different borders of America and Nigeria. With this, knowledge will be gained effectively by both sides. She identifies it as a step towards identifying and sharing knowledge between both sides.
Mariam Braimah concludes that working at Netflix indeed a dream job and her experiences as a designer and as a Nigerian woman help her lands such an opportunity.
Cites
Nwosu, Amaka. “Breaking Barriers in Product Designing across Frontiers.” News Central – Latest in Politics, Business, Sports and Stories across Africa, 23 Aug. 2019, newscentral.africa/breaking-barriers-in-product-designing-across-frontiers/.
Adejumo, Debbie. “Mariam Braimah on Changing the Status Quo in Design and Putting Africa on the Map.” Medium, Designish, 17 Aug. 2020, medium.com/designish-af/mariam-braimah-on-changing-the-status-quo-in-design-and-putting-africa-on-the-map-8f5d3aa4d13b.
Nice one! I like that you include quotes, but if you use the quote option rather than the paragraph option in wordpress, it would be much easier to read.