Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Melika Kalbasi. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Melika, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career.

I would like to start off by saying the education system is flawed in many ways, but I’ll primarily focus on how it works against students that aren’t able to adapt to the traditional structure. That was me. I wasn’t able to focus in school, when I felt lost, I didn’t feel comfortable asking questions, let alone knowing what questions to even ask, and I surely didn’t feel like I was supported throughout my time in school, despite trying what I thought was my best. I can recall a few amount of good teachers that recognized my potential, but throughout school I wasn’t excelling nor failing, so I kind of cruised by. My head was always in daydream land, where I could imagine a life outside of school where I was playing with clothes and producing cool art; whether it was writing a blog post or creating a fun photoshoot. I was always drawn to the more abstract, finding concrete subjects such as history and science to rigid for my mind to settle on for longer than a few minutes. I always did well in writing and art.
It wasn’t until after I graduated college (which took me 6 years, and only really finished to appease my parents) that I finally felt free to decide what my future was going to look like. I had moved from Southern California to the Bay Area and that’s when a shift happened. I spent 5 years in San Francisco, where the first 3 years I had spent believing I would eventually garner a career in fashion, but the city offered nothing beyond a few retail jobs for me to exercise my love for the industry at large. After graduating, I reached out to the handful of business cards I collected working front desk at a trendy salon in the city. I was always a natural with customers, and they loved my energy and vibrant style to match. I eventually picked enough brains to realize I was not yet equipped with the knowledge or experience to join their teams at their headquarters or agencies.

Something about San Francisco that’s not at ALL talked about enough is… it’s a tech city. Growing up around my father who has his masters in nuclear engineering, electrical engineering AND computer engineering, I knew my way around a computer at a pretty young age. It was a quiet voice in the back of my mind that it was something I wanted to consider exploring, and it wasn’t until I was immersed in the city of tech innovation that led me to signing up for a coding bootcamp. I had never been in school and not worked a job alongside simultaneously. This time was different. I was choosing to go back to school and had 6 months of savings to get me through the 3 month commitment, leaving me with 3 months to find a job after (spoiler alert, it only took me 1 month – I was determined).

All this to say, I wish the school system provided me with more mentorship throughout my primary and secondary education years. If I had more concentrated support, or alternative methods of learning, I think I would have discovered earlier on where I excel.

Melika, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I mentioned before I had reached out to a few connections I had made post graduation, and one of those people was a creative director at an award-winning advertising agency. I was inspired leaving their office in San Francisco, after meeting with another one of their female CDs, I was empowered to want to get into that industry. Funny enough, post my coding bootcamp concluding, my first job in software engineering was at a fellow award-winning advertising agency. I felt like my two worlds of left brain, right brain satisfaction was colliding. My tiny team of two consisted of myself and the director of engineering. He was instrumental in setting me up for success. I learned and applied cutting edge technology while working at a firm that housed the most talented bunch of humans I’ve ever been graced to work with. Collaborating with the creative team there has given me an advantage not many software engineers are blessed with. Not only was I upholding industry standards on a tech level, I was able to acquire understanding of the power of storytelling in UI. These skills were transferrable to every job I undertook thereafter. It’s helped me stand out in interviews and I’ve become the point person creative and product people will consult with since I not only consider things from a tech perspective, but a design lens as well.

A project I’m most proud of is, while I was at this firm, I took on the challenge of creating a completely custom solution for presenting our ads to our clients. This solution was a password protected portal that stored our campaigns for each client no matter if it was a video commercial, podcast audio ad, html5 banner, pdf deck, etc. and the clients could submit their feedback and upon submission, the appropriate stakeholders would be notified via email. I paired with one designer to help with the design and user flow of the project and the proof of concept was a success after launching with one of our larger clients.

Alongside working full time jobs, I always love working on freelance projects on the side when I have the bandwidth. Whether it’s a website or app, I find it incredibly fulfilling to help people bring their visions to life.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

A big misconception about software engineering is that it’s not a creative job. I definitely confound that stereotype, just upon first impressions with people, they are always surprised to learn what my job is. I present my creative self forward but I am very aware that not a lot of people in my industry are like this, hence the stereotype. I think something non-creatives will struggle to understand about my journey is that, leaning in to the creative side helps me tap into my analytical brain. I always throw out the comparison to puzzles. When you think about the design first, the steps to pull it all together will follow. I find I problem solve the most efficiently when the design aspect comes first. Though many times we don’t have that luxury, it’s nice to be able to at least think about it early on to really get those development gears moving.

Another creative outlet for me is embroidering. I started last year when I wanted to pick up a hobby (er, something to do with my hands while watching tv). I soon realized I had a hidden talent unbeknownst to me and I started making gifts for my friends by embroidering designs of their pets. I was eventually bullied into making it a small business and in my first month I made $1000 just from word of mouth. A year later, in the month of February I taught 3 workshops for 3 different companies. Teaching was an incredible muscle I had rarely used before and I discovered a new strength within this talent.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

All my life, my bottom line has always been to help people. I can’t look at another person and not see the complexities of the human experience in each of us. We are all making it up as we go and that’s easily forgotten. I think collaboration is a beautiful thing, it’s how we learn and serve a purpose for a greater good, and how we connect as humans. I will always hold my first software engineering job close to my heart as it taught me the power of storytelling. When done effectively, it can move people to places they never could’ve imagined.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @cold_navy and @myfriendmelika
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melika-kalbasi

Image Credits
Sam Schmieg Maxwell Swift