Dare to use your voice where it counts - Jessie McGuire

Jessie McGuire is a designer, educator, and managing partner at Thought Matter, a design studio exploring civic imagination and creative participation. In this powerful conversation, Jessie shares her journey from being adopted from El Salvador to becoming a voice for designers who don't fit traditional molds. She discusses teaching entrepreneurship at Pratt Institute, where she transforms creative students into confident public speakers who can talk about money and value. 

Jessie reveals how Thought Matter redesigned the US Constitution to make democracy more accessible, and why she believes designers must use their seat at the table to design the world they want to live in—not just the next unicorn startup. 

This is a conversation about belonging, asking better questions, getting off the benches, and building creative economies that generate more for communities rather than extracting from them.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Designer as a title you grow into – It took Jessie into her forties to confidently introduce herself as a designer, realizing it's about designing conditions for creativity, not just moving pixels
• The rice and beans moment – Sometimes our assumptions about identity prevent us from truly understanding who someone is; we must ask questions and wait to hear the answers
• Teaching is public speaking about money – Jessie's entrepreneurship class at Pratt focuses on getting creative students comfortable discussing funding, salary, and value without whispering
• Civic imagination over commercialization – After working on mass consumer brands, Jessie found her purpose in helping people participate in the world around them through design
• Redesigning democracy – Thought Matter's US Constitution redesign project showed how design can make civic participation more accessible by simply improving typography and presentation
• Get off the benches – If you haven't seen yourself in the mainstream narrative, you must step up and change it—fear cannot override the opportunity to create change
• Community over scale – We don't need more Amazon-sized businesses; we need creative practices that care for communities, support families, and deliver intrinsic value
• Designers have the power now – Design has moved beyond asking for a seat at the table; designers have literally designed the world we live in
• Creative economies beyond extraction – The future requires moving from extractive business models to generative ones that create more for more people
• Use your hot takes locally – Instead of rage-baiting on LinkedIn about logos, take that creative energy and redesign something in your community that actually helps people

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