Deprecated Human

We've all had interviews we'd rather forget. But sometimes the worst part isn't being rejected—it's beginning to believe the rejection says something about who we are.

In this special solo episode, Jess Lowry shares one of the most bizarre interviews of her career and uses it as a starting point to explore the emotional reality of today's hiring process. From power dynamics and performative leadership to AI-generated job descriptions and increasingly automated recruitment, she examines why so many talented people are questioning their own worth in a system that often fails to recognize it.

Rather than offering interview tips or career advice, this episode asks a different question:

What if the anxiety so many job seekers are experiencing isn't a personal failure—but a perfectly human response to an increasingly disorienting system?

Through personal storytelling, emerging research, and reflections on stress, technology, and self-awareness, Jess encourages job seekers to stop blaming themselves, reconnect with their own experience, and remember that uncertainty is data—not proof that you've lost your value.

Because before we can navigate what's changing, we need to stop believing that every rejection defines who we are.

Resources mentioned in the episode:

Lemonade Documentary

16+ years ago, more than 130,000 advertising professionals lost their jobs in this 'Great Recession.' Lemonade is about what happens when people who were once paid to be creative in advertising are forced to be creative with their own lives.

Sage Creek Studio

At Sage Creek Studio, Rachael works with executives, leaders, and professionals who are facing career transitions, leadership challenges, organizational change, or personal crossroads. Her coaching is designed to help clients move beyond overthinking, self-doubt and external pressure so they can identify what truly matters, make aligned decisions and take purposeful action. Clients come to her for clarity, and they leave with greater confidence, a stronger sense of direction and a practical path forward.

Download your free What Clarity Feels Like guide: https://sagecreekstudio.hbportal.co/public/6a19de61c09e709e72c51904

Book a no-obligation Introductory Call: https://sagecreekstudio.hbportal.co/schedule/6a19f55c8197f8c2adfcfa86

Website: https://sagecreekstudio.com 

Podcast Host: Jess Lowry

Jessica Lowry is the Founder and Principal Human Systems Designer at ENID Studio, a consultancy that helps organizations redesign work, services, and governance for an AI-enabled future through participatory design and socio-technical systems thinking.

She is also a member of Effective Immediately, a community for people leaving, or thinking about leaving, corporate life to build something of their own.  Members get honest feedback, business fundamentals, and access to people a few steps ahead while they validate their idea, land first customers, and build the foundation.

Connect with Jess: ⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠

Subscribe to Deprecated Human

Deprecated Human is an ongoing investigation into what happens when human value is quietly redefined. The newsletter goes deeper.

Subscribers receive:

• Research summaries and source material
• Key insights from podcast episodes
• Emerging signals and trends
• Practical recommendations for individuals and organizations
• Monthly findings reports from the broader investigation

This isn't another productivity newsletter. It's a research project focused on understanding how work, expertise, and human value are changing—and what we can do about it.

⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on Beehiiv⁠

What happens after the layoff?

After nearly two years inside an organization experiencing repeated waves of layoffs, former global HR leader Rachael DiGiovine came to a difficult realization: organizations know how to manage business change, but they often don't know how to support the people living through it.

In this episode of Deprecated Human, Rachel shares what she learned from both sides of the employment relationship—the emotional toll of delivering layoffs, the identity crisis that often follows job loss, and why rebuilding confidence has become one of the biggest challenges in today's labor market.

In this episode:
• The unseen emotional toll of delivering layoffs from the HR perspective
• Why prolonged employment insecurity changes how we see ourselves
• What organizations often miss when managing workforce reductions
• The difference between career coaching and rebuilding identity
• Why human connection matters more than ever during times of uncertainty

At Sage Creek Studio, Rachael works with executives, leaders, and professionals who are facing career transitions, leadership challenges, organizational change, or personal crossroads. Her coaching is designed to help clients move beyond overthinking, self-doubt and external pressure so they can identify what truly matters, make aligned decisions and take purposeful action. Clients come to her for clarity and leave with greater confidence, a stronger sense of direction, and a practical path forward.

Download your free What Clarity Feels Like guide: https://sagecreekstudio.hbportal.co/public/6a19de61c09e709e72c51904

Book a no-obligation Introductory Call: https://sagecreekstudio.hbportal.co/schedule/6a19f55c8197f8c2adfcfa86

Website: https://sagecreekstudio.com 

Podcast Guest: Rachael DiGiovine 

Rachael DiGiovine is the founder of Sage Creek Studio, a coaching and advisory practice that helps individuals and organizations navigate transition, complexity, and growth with clarity and confidence. 

With more than two decades of leadership experience in global human resources, organizational transformation, and change management, she brings a rare combination of executive-level strategy, deep listening, and practical insight to every client conversation. Her background gives her a clear understanding of what it takes to lead through uncertainty and how to turn pivotal moments into meaningful progress.

Rachael believes that the most effective next step is the one that aligns with both who you are and where you want to go. Whether she is speaking about leadership, reinvention, decision-making, or the courage required to begin again, her message is consistent: meaningful change starts with reconnecting to what matters most. Through Sage Creek Studio, she helps people gain perspective, build momentum, and create lives and careers that feel both successful and authentic.

Connect with Rachael: ⁠Rachael DiGiovine LinkedIn  

Podcast Host: Jess Lowry

Jess leads the overall strategy, service design, and development of Mindful Collective—overseeing everything from organizational structure and partnerships to programming, member experience, and community growth.

Connect with Jess: ⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠

Subscribe to Deprecated Human

Deprecated Human is an ongoing investigation into what happens when human value is quietly redefined. The newsletter goes deeper.

Subscribers receive:

• Research summaries and source material
• Key insights from podcast episodes
• Emerging signals and trends
• Practical recommendations for individuals and organizations
• Monthly findings reports from the broader investigation

This isn't another productivity newsletter. It's a research project focused on understanding how work, expertise, and human value are changing—and what we can do about it.

⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on Beehiiv⁠

What gives a story its power?

In this episode of Deprecated Human, Jess Lowry sits down with strategist and storyteller Ross A. McIntyre to explore why storytelling remains one of our most essential human capabilities in an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.

Ross represents a generation of digital practitioners who helped build the modern technology industry before there were degree programs in product strategy, experience design, or digital transformation. They learned by doing—following curiosity, embracing interdisciplinary thinking, and solving problems that had never existed before.

Together, Jess and Ross discuss the changing nature of work, the unintended consequences of AI-driven hiring, the value of generalists, and why stories are more than a communication tool—they're how we make sense of complexity, build trust, and create meaningful human experiences.

As organizations race to optimize for efficiency, this conversation asks a different question: What do we lose if we stop recognizing the people whose curiosity, creativity, and humanity made the digital world possible in the first place?

Whether you're navigating career transitions, building products, leading teams, or simply wondering what it means to remain human in an algorithmic world, this episode is a reminder that technology may generate content—but it's human stories that give it meaning.

Podcast Guest: Ross A. McIntyre

Ross A. McIntyre is a strategy and innovation leader with more than 15 years of experience turning ambiguous briefs into products, brands, and platforms that ship, sell, and scale. He has led high-impact initiatives including strategy for a Coca-Cola × Disney campaign that drove 11.9B TikTok views, contributed to a roughly 2% lift in U.S. sales, and an AI platform that saves an energy client approximately $15K per day.

Currently building his consultancy, human & co., Ross has held executive strategy roles at Subvrsive, Stellar Elements, Frogslayer, Hypergiant, Fjord, and Huge, where he has guided cross-functional teams, secured tens of millions in new business, and shaped global AI vision and strategy for major brands.  He is known for translating complex problems into clear narratives, experience visions, and go-to-market plans that align executives, win large deals, and accelerate delivery.

Before moving into the agency and innovation world, Ross spent nearly two decades in the entertainment industry as a writer, actor, and producer in New York City, a background that underpins his approach to storytelling, audience insight, and creative leadership. He brings that creative rigor to work in AI, emerging technology, and digital transformation, helping organizations imagine what’s next and build it.

Connect with Ross: ⁠Ross A. McIntyre LinkedIn 

Check out his work: www.rossamcintyre.com

Podcast Host: Jess Lowry

Jess leads the overall strategy, service design, and development of Mindful Collective—overseeing everything from organizational structure and partnerships to programming, member experience, and community growth.

Connect with Jess: ⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠

Subscribe to Deprecated Human

Deprecated Human is an ongoing investigation into what happens when human value is quietly redefined. The newsletter goes deeper.

Subscribers receive:

• Research summaries and source material
• Key insights from podcast episodes
• Emerging signals and trends
• Practical recommendations for individuals and organizations
• Monthly findings reports from the broader investigation

This isn't another productivity newsletter. It's a research project focused on understanding how work, expertise, and human value are changing—and what we can do about it.

⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on Beehiiv⁠

What happens when experienced professionals decide to stop waiting for the job market to tell them what comes next?

In this episode of Deprecated Human, Jess Lowry sits down with Lindsay Vetell and Angela Anderson, co-founders of Friend Group and creators of Effective Immediately, a peer-support community for people exploring independent work, consulting, fractional leadership, and new ways of building meaningful careers.

This conversation explores:

• The realities of prolonged unemployment and career transitions for experienced professionals
• Why some people are choosing not to re-enter traditional corporate roles
• Building trust, capability, and community instead of dependency
• The rise of independent, fractional, and portfolio careers
• Applying systems thinking and design practice to your own life and future

A conversation about what becomes possible when people decide to design new paths forward—together.

Featured Guests: 

Lindsay Vetell 

Lindsay's experience spans everything from typography to systems design. After 20 years of creating products and services for startups at Fortune 4 companies, she traded corporate life for small-business ownership, where she now helps entrepreneurs apply the same strategic thinking, research, and design practices typically reserved for large organizations.

Connect with Lindsay: ⁠Lindsay Vetell LinkedIn 

Angela Anderson

Angela spent 20 years in operations and leadership across enterprise, product, and startup orgs. She’s built the operational backbone for large cross-functional programs including planning, roadmapping, vendor management, and systems that kept research, design, and product work on track. Angela is an experienced systems builder who believes that work moves faster when the messy middle is made visible early, so nobody's guessing about status, scope, or what comes next.

Connect with Angela: ⁠Angela Anderson LinkedIn

Friend Group

We're a business strategist and a service designer who realized our skills are two sides of the same coin. One of us focuses on the numbers: financials, business models, making sure the strategy pencils out.

The other focuses on the people: desirability, customer needs, understanding what truly works. We both have deep backgrounds in operations, which means we're all about efficient, human-centric workflows that don't make you want to pull your hair out.

https://www.hellofriendgroup.com/

Effective Immediately

Effective Immediately is a private, paid community for people leaving or considering leaving corporate life to build something of their own. It's a bridge for two kinds of people: professionals who aren't founders yet but feel the pull, and those who’ve made the leap and are navigating the early steps. 

The premise is that your corporate experience proves you can operate in demanding environments. The community pairs real education with peer support so no one has to go it alone. Members get honest feedback, business fundamentals, and access to people a few steps ahead while they validate their idea, land first customers, and build the foundation.

https://www.hellofriendgroup.com/effective-immediately 

Podcast Host: Jess Lowry

For over 15 years, Jess has helped organizations understand how work actually happens within complex enterprise environments. Through research, systems thinking, and human-centered design, she helps teams build the capabilities, relationships, and structures needed to support meaningful and sustainable change.

Connect with Jess: ⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠

Subscribe to Deprecated Human Newsletter 

Deprecated Human is an ongoing investigation into what happens when human value is quietly redefined. The newsletter goes deeper.

Subscribers receive:

• Research summaries and source material
• Key insights from podcast episodes
• Emerging signals and trends
• Practical recommendations for individuals and organizations
• Monthly findings reports from the broader investigation

⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on Beehiiv⁠

What happens when organizations stop investing in curiosity?

In this episode of The Deprecated Human Podcast, Jess Lowry sits down with UX leader and UX Murder Mystery co-host Eve Eden to explore the role of creativity, research, and human understanding in an era increasingly defined by automation and artificial intelligence.

At its core, this episode is a conversation about imagination. As organizations race to adopt AI, many are reducing or eliminating product, design, and research teams in pursuit of greater efficiency. But what happens when companies optimize for production while neglecting the people responsible for understanding customers, uncovering opportunities, and making sense of complexity?

Drawing on more than 15 years of experience in UX and digital product design, Eve reflects on the evolution of the industry—from the early days of experimentation and creative exploration to today's conversations about AI-generated interfaces, synthetic research, and organizational restructuring.

Together, Jess and Eve examine a growing tension within the technology industry: the difference between building products and understanding the people who use them.

Podcast Guest: Eve Eden

Eve Eden is a UX and product design leader with more than 15 years of experience helping organizations design better products, improve customer experiences, and navigate digital transformation. Throughout her career, she has worked across industries, translating complex business challenges into human-centered solutions through research, design, and strategic thinking.

Eve is also the co-host of UX Murder Mystery, a podcast that explores product, service, and organizational failures through the lens of user experience, design, and decision-making. Through both her practice and podcasting, she advocates for the role of curiosity, creativity, and human understanding in building products that create meaningful value.

Known for her deep curiosity about human behavior and her passion for design, Eve brings a uniquely human perspective to conversations about AI, innovation, and the future of work.

Connect with Eve: Eve Eden on LinkedIn

Podcast Host: Jess Lowry

Jess leads the overall strategy, service design, and development of Mindful Collective—overseeing everything from organizational structure and partnerships to programming, member experience, and community growth.

Connect with Jess: ⁠Jess Lowry LinkedIn⁠

Subscribe to Deprecated Human

Deprecated Human is an ongoing investigation into what happens when human value is quietly redefined. The newsletter goes deeper.

Subscribers receive:

• Research summaries and source material
• Key insights from podcast episodes
• Emerging signals and trends
• Practical recommendations for individuals and organizations
• Monthly findings reports from the broader investigation

This isn't another productivity newsletter. It's a research project focused on understanding how work, expertise, and human value are changing—and what we can do about it.

⁠Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on Beehiiv⁠

Podcast Sponsor: Mindful Collective

Mindful Collective exists to help people stay relevant in a rapidly changing world of work by practicing real, meaningful work. It connects experienced professionals with organizations that need practical solutions, using small, cross-functional teams to design and build systems that improve how work happens. The model is designed to support both sides—helping individuals maintain and grow their capabilities while making high-quality, human-centered work more accessible to organizations.

Learn more: ⁠Visit Mindful Collective⁠

What happens when organizations stop understanding how value is actually created?

In this episode of The Deprecated Human Podcast, Jess Lowry sits down with Brian Crowley, a UX design leader and co-host of UX Murder Mystery, to explore a question at the center of today's technology industry. As AI transforms how work gets done, are organizations learning from history, or ignoring it?

Their conversation begins with an observation that inspired UX Murder Mystery. During a period of widespread layoffs across the technology sector, many organizations struggled with declining product quality, fragmented customer experiences, and the unexpected loss of institutional knowledge. The problem wasn't simply that people had left. It was that critical knowledge about how work actually happened that had been left with them.

Together, Jess and Brian explore how decades of lessons from UX, Agile, product management, and service design are being challenged by a new wave of technological change. They discuss why so many organizations still misunderstand the roles of design and research, how process is often conflated with bureaucracy, and why alignment becomes increasingly important as systems grow more complex.

Topics include:

• Why organizations often struggle to recognize invisible forms of value creation
• The role of UX, research, and product teams in reducing operational chaos
• How Agile evolved from a mindset into a checklist
• What happens when institutional knowledge disappears
• Why AI is changing the nature of work rather than eliminating the need for human judgment
• The relationship between process, collaboration, and innovation.

At its core, this episode is not about technology. It's about adaptation. Before organizations can redesign the future, they need to understand why the systems they have today were built in the first place.

Featured Guest: Brian Crowley

Brian Crowley is a Chicago-based UX design leader with more than 15 years of experience helping organizations improve products, scale design teams, and navigate complex organizational change. He has held leadership roles at companies including DocuSign and Allstate, where he focused on design operations, cross-functional collaboration, and building stronger product development practices.

Brian is also the co-host of UX Murder Mystery, a podcast that examines product and service failures through the lens of user experience, organizational decision-making, and design. 

Connect with Brian: Brian Crowley LinkedIn

Podcast Host: Jess Lowry

Jess leads the overall strategy, service design, and development of Mindful Collective—overseeing everything from organizational structure and partnerships to programming, member experience, and community growth.

Connect with Jess: Jess Lowry LinkedIn

Subscribe to Deprecated Human

Deprecated Human is an ongoing investigation into what happens when human value is quietly redefined. The newsletter goes deeper.

Subscribers receive:

• Research summaries and source material
• Key insights from podcast episodes
• Emerging signals and trends
• Practical recommendations for individuals and organizations
• Monthly findings reports from the broader investigation

This isn't another productivity newsletter. It's a research project focused on understanding how work, expertise, and human value are changing—and what we can do about it.

Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter on Beehiiv

Podcast Sponsor: Mindful Collective

Mindful Collective exists to help people stay relevant in a rapidly changing world of work by practicing real, meaningful work. It connects experienced professionals with organizations that need practical solutions, using small, cross-functional teams to design and build systems that improve how work happens. The model is designed to support both sides—helping individuals maintain and grow their capabilities while making high-quality, human-centered work more accessible to organizations.

Learn more: Visit Mindful Collective

In this episode, Jess Lowry sits down with Jody Martin, a community organizer, writer, and creator of The Snarky Correspondent⁠, to explore the emotional reality of today's job market. Together they discuss ageism, AI-driven hiring systems, automated rejection, and what it feels like when the rules you've followed for years suddenly stop working.

But this conversation isn't just about frustration. It's about agency.

Jody shares how a deeply personal post about her job search resonated with hundreds of people and sparked new connections, opportunities, and a sense of community. Together, Jess and Jody explore how writing, creating, organizing, and sharing our experiences can help us reclaim a sense of purpose when traditional career paths feel uncertain.

If you've ever wondered whether your experience still matters, this episode is for you.

Have you lost a job?

Our survey is part of an independent research study by Mindful Collective examining how job seekers experience the U.S. tech job market. We are particularly interested in understanding "lost job opportunities"—roles that enter the hiring process but do not result in a clear outcome.

Some of the stories will be featured on the Deprecated Human Podcast. Each month, we'll compile our findings in our newsletter and share what we learn on LinkedIn.

Featured Guest: Jody Martin

Jodi Martin is a Chicago-based writer, community organizer, and creator of The Snarky Correspondent. With a career spanning more than two decades across film, television, communications, and organizing, she writes about work, identity, ageism, and what happens when the systems we've relied on stop making sense. Through humor, storytelling, and community building, she helps people find connection and agency during times of uncertainty.

Connect with Jody

Jody on LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Snarky Correspondent Newsletter on Substack

Podcast Host: Jess Lowry

Jess leads the overall strategy, service design, and development of Mindful Collective—overseeing everything from organizational structure and partnerships to programming, member experience, and community growth.

Connect with Jess:

Jessica Lowry LinkedIn

Podcast Sponsor: Mindful Collective

Mindful Collective exists to help people stay relevant in a rapidly changing world of work by practicing real, meaningful work. It connects experienced professionals with organizations that need practical solutions, using small, cross-functional teams to design and build systems that improve how work happens. The model is designed to support both sides—helping individuals maintain and grow their capabilities while making high-quality, human-centered work more accessible to organizations.

Learn more:

Mindful Collective

Subscribe to Deprecated Human

Deprecated Human is an ongoing investigation into what happens when human value is quietly redefined.

Every week, the podcast explores a new question through conversations with researchers, practitioners, creators, and people directly affected by changes in technology, work, and society.

The newsletter goes deeper.

Subscribers receive:

• Research summaries and source material
• Key insights from podcast episodes
• Emerging signals and trends
• Practical recommendations for individuals and organizations
• Monthly findings reports from the broader investigation

This isn't another productivity newsletter.

It's a research project focused on understanding how work, expertise, and human value are changing—and what we can do about it.

Subscribe to the Deprecated Human Newsletter

This episode explores Nic Brill's perspective on navigating uncertainty, career transitions, and the changing nature of work in an era shaped by AI, economic disruption, and rapid technological change.

After taking an extended sabbatical with his wife, Nic returned to the workforce with a different perspective on work, success, and adaptability. Rather than treating uncertainty as something to eliminate, he approached it as a design challenge—using constraints as inputs for learning, experimentation, and growth.

Throughout the conversation, Nic reflects on the value of curiosity, continuous learning, and maintaining a practitioner mindset in a world where industries, technologies, and career paths are evolving faster than ever before.

A central theme is the relationship between specialization and adaptability. Nic challenges the assumption that expertise is tied to a single domain, arguing instead that many of the most valuable skills—problem solving, systems thinking, communication, and design—can be applied across contexts and industries.

The discussion also explores the impact of AI on design and knowledge work. Rather than viewing AI as a replacement for human creativity, Nic frames it as a powerful tool that still requires direction, judgment, and a clear understanding of what problems are worth solving.

At its core, this is a conversation about how to move forward when the future feels uncertain. It explores what happens when familiar career paths become less predictable, why adaptability matters more than certainty, and how individuals can continue designing meaningful lives and careers amid constant change.

Have you lost a job?

Our survey is part of an independent research study by Mindful Collective examining how job seekers experience the U.S. tech job market. We are particularly interested in understanding "lost job opportunities"—roles that enter the hiring process but do not result in a clear outcome. Some of the stories will be featured on the Deprecated Human Podcast. Each month, we'll compile our findings in our newsletter and share what we learn on LinkedIn.

Featured Guest: Nicholas Brill

Nic is a design leader and practitioner with experience helping organizations create products, services, and digital experiences that balance user needs, business goals, and emerging technologies. Throughout his career, he has worked across product design, user experience, and digital innovation, helping teams navigate complexity and deliver meaningful outcomes.

Driven by a deep curiosity about how people learn, adapt, and interact with technology, Nic approaches design as both a craft and a continuous practice. He recently took a year-long sabbatical with his family, traveling across Europe and North Africa while exploring new perspectives on work, creativity, and what it means to design a fulfilling life in a rapidly changing world.

Connect with Nic:

Nicholas Brill on LinkedIn

Podcast Host: Jess Lowry

Jess leads the overall strategy, service design, and development of Mindful Collective—overseeing everything from organizational structure and partnerships to programming, member experience, and community growth.

Connect with Jess:

Jessica Lowry LinkedIn

Podcast Sponsor: Mindful Collective

Mindful Collective exists to help people stay relevant in a rapidly changing world of work by practicing real, meaningful work. It connects experienced professionals with organizations that need practical solutions, using small, cross-functional teams to design and build systems that improve how work happens. The model is designed to support both sides—helping individuals maintain and grow their capabilities while making high-quality, human-centered work more accessible to organizations.

Learn more:

Mindful Collective

This episode explores Abby Margolis’s career journey—from academia to public radio to design, strategy, and consulting—and the thread that connects it all.

Trained as an anthropologist, Abby began her career focused on deeply understanding problems. Her transition into public radio introduced a new constraint: making those problems relevant and meaningful to a broader audience through storytelling. Moving into design added a third layer—turning insight into action.

Across these transitions, Abby describes her work as a consistent practice: identifying meaningful problems, interpreting them in context, and communicating them in ways that shift perspective. She frames this as the work of an “insight artist.”

The conversation challenges common career frameworks like “pivoting” and the binary of generalist vs specialist. Instead, Abby emphasizes a practitioner mindset—where skills are not abandoned, but applied in different contexts over time.

A key theme is the distinction between findings and insight. Findings are observable facts, while insight requires interpretation, context, and the ability to reframe a problem in ways that change how people think and act.

The episode also touches on how current uncertainty—particularly in the job market—exposes gaps in how people understand their own skills and how systems value them. Abby suggests that navigating this moment requires returning to fundamentals, engaging in real conversations, and approaching uncertainty with curiosity rather than reactivity.

At its core, this is a conversation about how to carry a way of thinking across changing environments—and how to stay grounded in your practice, even when the context around you shifts.

Have you lost a job?

Our survey is part of an independent research study by Mindful Collective examining how job seekers experience the U.S. tech job market. We are particularly interested in understanding “lost job opportunities”—roles that enter the hiring process but do not result in a clear outcome. Some of the stories will be featured on the Deprecated Human Podcast. Each month, we'll compile our findings in our newsletter and share what we learn on LinkedIn. 

Podcast Sponsor: ⁠Mindful Collective ⁠

Mindful Collective exists to help people stay relevant in a rapidly changing world of work by practicing real, meaningful work. It connects experienced professionals with organizations that need practical solutions, using small, cross-functional teams to design and build systems that improve how work happens. The model is designed to support both sides—helping individuals maintain and grow their capabilities while making high-quality, human-centered work more accessible to organizations.

Podcast Guest: Abby Margolis

Abby is an anthropologist and insight practitioner who helps organizations make sense of complexity. Drawing on ethnographic research and a deep curiosity about human behavior, she translates lived experience into strategic insight and action. Alongside her research work, Abby leads movement-based and embodied learning practices that expand how individuals and teams understand themselves, their patterns, and their work.

Connect with Abby on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abby-margolis-phd-b7b5991/

Podcast Host: Jess Lowry

Jess leads the overall strategy, service design, and development of Mindful Collective—overseeing everything from organizational structure and partnerships to programming, member experience, and community growth.

Connect with Jess on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeslowry/

Let’s examine what happens when a million people with highly in-demand skills lose their ability to get hired.

It’s hard to know the exact number, but from 2022 to May 2026, more than 1 million tech workers have lost their jobs.

In software, when something is deprecated, it doesn’t mean it’s broken. It still works. It still does exactly what it was built to do. It’s just been decided — by whoever is the ultimate decider, it’s no longer worth supporting. Functioning as a deprecated human is what this podcast is all about.

Episode 2 drops next week.

If you're impacted by what's happening in tech, I'd like to hear from you. What are you seeing that nobody is talking about? Who should I be talking to? What question keeps you up at night that nobody is asking out loud? Drop it in the comments.

Podcast Sponsor: Mindful Collective

Mindful Collective exists to help people stay relevant in a rapidly changing world of work by practicing real, meaningful work. It connects experienced professionals with organizations that need practical solutions, using small, cross-functional teams to design and build systems that improve how work happens. The model is designed to support both sides—helping individuals maintain and grow their capabilities while making high-quality, human-centered work more accessible to organizations.

Podcast Host: Jess Lowry

Jess leads the overall strategy, service design, and development of Mindful Collective—overseeing everything from organizational structure and partnerships to programming, member experience, and community growth.

Her work focuses on bridging structure and humanity, combining systems thinking, design, and lived experience to create more supportive pathways through career transitions. Her background spans global consulting, enterprise strategy, and innovation programs across digital media, government, and emerging technology.

She has worked alongside leading consulting organizations, including Accenture, McKinsey, Fjord, and within global organizations such as Amdocs Studio and Cision, leading design research, service design, and rapid innovation initiatives. Alongside this work, she has consistently built and supported communities—from growing Girl Geek Dinners in Melbourne to launching SheHacksATX and SheDesignsATX in Austin.

Her work explores how systems shape human behavior—from civic tech initiatives like Key to the Street to STOA (Standards for Transparent Online Agency). Jess currently teaches social media literacy to tweens, helping them better understand and navigate the digital environments they are growing up in. After experiencing firsthand the disorientation of layoffs and prolonged job searches, Jess founded Mindful Collective—bringing together strategy, empathy, and community to support the people building what comes next.

Connect with Jess on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeslowry/