Nate Kerksick

Product Designer

I lead teams that design digital products in order to improve our real world lives. Today I’m helping Dropbox go from a file sync company to one that helps teams stay in sync—we’re building better ways to help people collaborate at work. Before that, I grew the Social Impact design team at Facebook across 5 product teams. I was the founding designer at Change.org where I also built a talented team, and grew a global platform that would see a campaign victory every hour. Created Obama’s 2008 online ads in Chicago, ran a product & brand studio in Brooklyn, and art directed with Ogilvy Paris. Raised in Milwaukee and indoctrinated into doing meaningful work by parents who met working for Cesar Chavez. Lived in eight cities across four countries and today I live in San Francisco. Degree in Interactive Art Direction from Hyper Island in Sweden and teach Civic Design at California College for the Arts.

Experience

  • Dropbox
  • Design Director, Smart Workspace
  • San Francisco, California
  • Lead design for the Smart Workspace, keeping teams in sync with Dropbox. Support people & strategy across teams advancing this vision.
2019+
  • Facebook
  • Product Design Manager, Social Good
  • Menlo Park, California
  • Led design managers and product designers across five impact-focused teams: Charitable Giving, Health, Mentorship & Support, Crisis Response, and Civic Action. Partnered with product leadership to identify and define opportunities for impact across Facebook family of apps.
2016
  • California College of the Arts
  • Adjunct Professor
  • San Francisco, California
  • Interaction Design studio course on Design for Civic Engagement. Co-taught with fellow Obama alum Scott Thomas.
2016
  • Change.org
  • Design Director
  • San Francisco, California
  • Started and grew the Change.org design team to fourteen talented designers across product and communication design. Led rebrand of Change.org; front-end styleguide; and substantial design changes to product measurably boosting core metrics and qualitatively improving look and feel. Founding designer of one of the world’s most impactful organizations, enabling petition starters who achieve more than a victory per hour, all over the world.
2012
  • Ogilvy & Mather
  • Art Director
  • Paris, France
  • Art director in three person team under CD Simon Mogren (who drove Volkswagen’s “Fun Theory” campaign.) Storyboarded data visualizations for IBM video on life-saving medical technology. Updated design for Louis Vuitton’s “Amble” iPhone app. Designed key visuals for 2012 Louis Vuitton Journeys Awards. Our team won campaign pitches to Mattel and Louis Vuitton.
2011
  • Obama for America
  • Art Director and Designer
  • Chicago, Illinois
  • Concepted, pitched, designed and developed more than forty interactive ads on major media networks. Designed-developed best performing web ad of Obama's campaign; as well as a tax cut calculator banner-ad; a tool for finding the nearest polling location; and the first-ever in-video game advertisements used by a political campaign. Provided interactive support to policy/communications team with an interactive feature that made complex tax policies accessible. Worked as part of an aggressive and innovative new media department that helped to elect Barack Obama.
2008
  • Institute for Policy Studies
  • Online Communications Director
  • Washington, DC
  • For the nation's oldest progressive think-tank, participated in strategy and development andled design for IPS websites, project sites and campaigns. Managed contractors and interns. Began IPS’ "Unconventional Wisdom," news from the Institute to upwards of fifteen thousandactive constituents.
2006
  • culturegraphic
  • Consultant
  • Brooklyn, NY
  • Ideation, direction and production of digital brand and UX; partnered with Obama-Bidentransition team, US Senators, NGO’s including the World Resources Institute, Transportation forAmerica, Sustainable Endowments Institute, and innovative start-ups.
2003+