Our guest is Jo-Nell Sieren, a photographer, designer, and educator who spent fifteen years at Columbia College Chicago before moving into her current role at Northwestern, where she focuses on industry strategy and connecting design and engineering students to employers.

In this episode, Jo-Nell speaks with host Christian Solorzano about her path from studying photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York to building one of Columbia's most ambitious student programs — Agency Columbia, a studio that placed students in real client engagements with real deadlines. She shares how that experience of learning through doing, not just observing, shaped her entire philosophy as an educator.

Jo-Nell talks candidly about what it actually takes to build confidence in students who don't yet believe in their own work, why she considers networking a design skill in its own right, and what a cohort of exhausted, overcommitted, fully present students taught her about resilience. She also reflects on the anxiety she feels watching AI reshape both the creative landscape and the job search — and what she hopes the next generation of designers holds onto.

Music by the band Eighties Slang.