From Products to Planet: Jane Abernethy’s Mission

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Jon: Welcome to break some dishes, defying the rules to inspire design. I'm John Strauser. And I'm Verta Alexander Today Virta, we're gonna talk to an old friend. Right. Old friend and a and a old guest. Gosh. And you looked it up because you were curious what episode? Our third episode. I hate to think how, how awful we were back then.

How terrible we sounded. Yeah. Probably talking over top of each. Probably doing everything we're doing today. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so. We talked today, we're gonna be talking with, uh, Jane Abernethy, the Chief Sustainability Officer at Human Scale. I've known Jane for a long time now. You've known Jane [00:01:00] now for quite a while.

Yep. She's a real leader in the sustainability, uh, movement in our industry. She's been doing it at human Scale for about 10 years, but it's really, her background is interesting in the sense that she was an industrial designer for human scale before she moved into the C-Suite. To run sustainability. And so that perspective, I feel like we're gonna see when we talk to Jane, it's, there's gonna be some really fascinating overlap between our conversation with Jane and the conversation we had last time with Bailey and Lauren from prowl.

Yeah. I wish I could say that we

Verda: planned this. This well, but yeah, so we talked to different industrial designers, but from a different perspective. They're entrepreneurs. They're a small practice. They haven't been in the business as long as Jane, and then Jane's, of course, with a large corporation. And so I think just hearing their two different perspectives is gonna be really interesting.

Jon: Yeah, I'm excited. You ready to talk to her? Let's

Verda: [00:02:00] go.

We're here with Jane Abernathy today. You're our first repeat guest, Jane. Wow. Very nice to be back.

Jon: Yeah. You'll get a t-shirt, the free t-shirt in the mail.

Jane: One of our

Jon: very first episodes. Thanks for joining us a again. Mm-hmm. Gosh, episode give, and I also

Jane: listen to the old episode because it's always so painful to hear your own voice.

I don't know if you guys listen to your episodes or not. Maybe you don't feel that, but

Verda: No, I, we, I definitely feel that it's hard, but I try, I wanna get better at this. And I think the only way to do it is to suffer.

Jon: Right? Yeah. The painful act of listening to yourself.

Verda: Yeah. Yeah. So, Jane, so. I know we clued you in our, our season is about women, women in design and women doing stuff, breaking dishes in all kinds of different ways.

And we started out, well, our two episodes ago, we talked to Amanda Schneider [00:03:00] with some really great statistics. We'll probably repeat here just so that we can start a conversation, but right before your episodes, it's a. It's gonna drop in April. We interviewed prowl, who I, I believe you know, they're an in and also an industrial, they're two industrial designer women.

They have their own practice and I think what would, what will be interesting about this episode is having that different perspective of, I know you work for a large firm that you've worked. For, for a long time, and you've, and you've had a, a much longer career than these two young women, and then they are just powerhouse entrepreneurs doing all kinds of interesting things.

So I think this will be a great perspective.

Jon: So let's just get started. Let's get going. Let's talk to Jane Abernathy, the Chief Sustainability Officer for Human Scale Corporation. Mm-hmm. And has been for, gosh, 6, 7, 8, how many years, Jane?

Jane: I've been C [00:04:00] for, I'm trying

sustainability. At the C-suite level prior to that, and then on the design team prior to that. So I've been at Humanscale for quite a while.

Jon: Yeah, it's been a good run and it's interesting, your background having started in industrial design, which we're really excited to sort of dance around in that.

Subject matter a little bit today.

Verda: So

Jane: tell us what inspired you to focus on sustainability? I'm gonna be honest, I never have a good answer to this question. Get it so often. Like, um, I wish I had like some origin story of like, I saw a toothbrush on the beach. I think that's somebody else's origin story.

It's a great one. But, um, and I've tried to unpack it in simple ways, and this is the best I can figure out is that I grew up in Canada and.

Being in nature, and that was in pristine wilderness where the[00:05:00]

crossing your path and. Never made sense to me not to take care of the place that we live. Like it's sort of like it's your own backyard, an extension of it. Like it just didn't make sense to me not to do that. So I, I can't point to a specific time I started, but it's, I think it goes deep from childhood, I'm guessing.

Jon: Well, I know I've talked with you about this before too, and I always thought you had an interesting take on your role as an industrial designer that. The better you are as an industrial designer, the more stuff gets out there on the planet. Right. And so there's a certain hippocratic oath almost that you, you know, that you kind of took

Jane: Yeah.

And, and I, now that I'm a little older and wiser maybe, than our last conversation is. I'm realizing that that's a bit more nuanced than I first thought about because it, to me, going into industrial design, I had a kind of a conflict of like, do I do this? And then exactly as you [00:06:00] say, John, like if I'm good at it, people will wanna buy more stuff and then there'll be more stuff made and going to landfill and whatnot.

And eventually I realized like that I can influence how stuff gets made and we could make better stuff. And now that I've been thinking about it for quite a while, I think part of the challenge is our relationship to stuff. To. In some ways, they're not good enough. Like we don't care about them enough to take care of them, to have a, basically like a relationship with them.

We, we don't wanna use them for years. You think about that, you know, Swiss watch that has been handed down for three generations, like nobody's recycling that for scrap metal because it's, it's gotta. Inherent sort of value to it, or you think about like somebody's favorite, like a little kid's favorite stuffy, like it can be old and and battered, but like they love it and they have that relationship that to something that it really brings them joy.

It really, it really brings some, connects to something deep within them. And so it makes me think that as [00:07:00] designers, it's not just about making something that's gonna be cool, that will have that immediate, like it'll sell in the marketplace quickly and. Long lasting, not just in the materials and the design side, uh, like the physical, you know, mechanisms and whatnot, but also long lasting, as in you really wanna use it for a long time.

You really engage with it, you enjoy it. Um, there's, I'm sure we all have things that we, like our favorite pen or, or whatever it is that is like, we've had it for a long time and it's outlasted many other similar items and it's, you know, something we, we enjoy using and it makes our day a little better.

Jon: I think you're right.

Like our relationship with our stuff is different, but I don't, I don't blame us. I, I think that. A long time ago, stuff was made

Verda: not that long ago. Probably,

Jon: yeah, probably not

Verda: that long ago. Just a few decades I would imagine.

Jon: Planned obsolescence. Thank you. There it is. I mean, that, that's, you know, stuff used to be made so you could fix it.

You know, [00:08:00] you, you just can't anymore. So, back to, you know, our friend Den Shandler who speaks of corporate complicity, I do put the onus on manufacturers right to, they have to want to make better. Things they have to wanna make stuff that could be fixed and heirloom and kept for a long time.

Verda: I, I agree.

But I do think a little, there's a little bit on us, and, and it's, it's challenging, like I think to myself, I wanna buy one toaster and I want it to be the toaster that I keep for the rest of my life. And sometimes that, yeah, option is just not available. Sometimes that option just seems too expensive because there's so many other toasters that are cheaper.

So you have to make a conscious decision usually to spend more money. If there's that option available. But yeah, in any case. In any case, in any case, so human scales really set itself. Outside the crowd. It's really, it's really set itself apart in sustainability. And, and you've been a part of it, like John said, for a number of years.

How has human scale affected your journey?

Jane: [00:09:00] Well, I think human scale is a great place that is very entrepreneurial, very open to change, very. It's almost like a startup that's like 40 years old, you know what I mean? Like, it's, it's um, it's not a place where I really hear people say, oh, we've never done that before here, as in a reason not to try doing it.

It's really a place that's, that has a great culture of, of embracing change and being willing to try things and innovation and entrepreneurs like being quite entrepreneurial is part of the culture. C open to.

You know, we can take risks that he wants to take or to take the company in the direction that he wants to take. Um, so I, I started the sustainability program within Human Scale, and I think that at Human Scale, like I don't think ev, I'm not sure that every company, especially 10, 15 years ago, like I think I started in 2012, but in sustainability at human scale.

I don't that every company would've been willing to take the level of change that we, we were able to, to do. [00:10:00] And I think that's largely because of the culture and because the CEO was, was open to it. So I could pitch things like, should we take on more circularity or should we try to become a B Corp And not is like people are excited about taking that on.

Jon: What's, because human scale has, has really risen to the top in this conversation. And what I would think is a fairly short period of time. Is it because. There was a, a methodology, you know, human scale didn't try to do everything all at once. Did you find your lane? Was it in materiality and transparency?

And did that help?

Jane: I would say so. I mean, that's been my approach to sustainability and try to make change is to try to, uh, I'm not sure that I'm speaking to all of human scale here. I'm just kind of speaking to department, my approach. Um, other folks might have a different experience if they're. Um, I would say in trying to make change, I have always tried to, um, take on something that is, [00:11:00] there's a sweet spot where it's a big enough challenge that you would be proud to say you've done it, but it's a small enough challenge that you can definitely do it.

And in doing that, I definitely try to bring other people. Along with me. So we would work on these projects as a team succeed. And the first time around, like people would be a little bit skeptical or they're not sure if this is, you know where this is going. And then once we succeed, they're like, yeah, I worked on that.

And they're a little bit more engaged. And then the next project, you're starting from that place of already people being a bit more engaged and a little bit more. Confident that we're doing something that's worthwhile and then the next project you can kind of get a little bigger and kind of growing it like that.

Like I've been leading sustainability human scale for more than 10 years now, so I, it's not like I could start day one and do all the things that we're doing now. Um, I would say it took me about a year, a little over a year to fully understand like, how are we doing? What are all our impacts?[00:12:00]

I could do some small projects and show winds along the way while in the background, really getting that deeper understanding, having those conversations with stakeholders to say, what should we focus on? And then you're right, John, one of the main things where we said we're really gonna take a deep dive is the materials and make sure that we're not using toxic ingredients in our products.

These are huge projects, right? So we really understanding what's in the product and then making the changes to the product. Those are even making the RD changes as a couple of years per change. So we're making a huge amount of progress in removing toxic ingredients. Not that we're perfect, but that we've, and then building on that success to say, we've done this.

Now we could take on something bigger like. Could we put solar power on our main manufacturing facility? And then, okay, that project was a success and now could we do, you know, the next part of like, trying to become climate positive. Um, and have now we have a certain number of products that are and just kind of building, um, from one, from, from one success that the next, I do [00:13:00] find people commonly either take on something so small that people are not excited about it.

They're like, what's the use? It's only that little thing. Although you'd be surprised, you know, some people do get excited about fairly small things, so that's not usually, usually I'm seeing people take on just a bit too much and then fail, or the people around them feel like they failed and they're not engaged time.

So it's really that sweet spot of like. Have the vision of where you wanna go, but you gotta start with like a very achievable

Verda: next step. That's great advice for all of us designers as well. I, I know I talk with designers about trying to change our practice to design more sustainably, and it can be so overwhelming if you try to do everything all at once.

Jane: Oh, exactly. Yeah.

[00:14:00] [00:15:00]

Verda: All. Well, let's shift a little bit to our topic for the season, women in Design. What opportunities do you see as a woman in industrial design?

Jane: What I'm seeing is that over the course of my career, it does feel like I'm seeing more and more women in leadership, um, than I was at the beginning. I'm seeing more women in different positions, so, um, I'm kind of showing my age a bit, but when I started, I would say I was, if I was talking to.

People about manufacturing a product. I was usually the only woman at the table and I was sitting at a table where like and differently.[00:16:00]

You know, and even when I first started in sustainability, that was also the case where we were looking at more sustainable manufacturing and the idea that, okay, you're gonna come and tell me to do it differently, and I've already been doing this job for many years, you know, there was that sort of dynamic.

I'm seeing a lot more, I. Um, as I mentioned, women in leadership, more women in engineering that I'm seeing like, like a lot of the women engineers that I know, they're, they're younger than me and they, they're not the, um, ones that are like five, 10 years older than me, for example. So that's kind of nice because when I was in the earlier years of design, sometimes there was an attitude that like.

The men would do the engineering and the, you know, you can make it stylish or you can like look at the sort of softer, um, sides of things. And I think some of that is, is starting to merge a bit more and it's not such a, a line in the sand as it had been, as what I had been experiencing. So I think that that's great because.

Think differently. There are men who are excellent stylists, there are women who are very, you know, very [00:17:00] technical and really enjoy thinking through that, the technicalities of, you know, mechanisms and whatnot. So, so it's nice to see that, that, um, a little bit more even.

Verda: Yeah, that's really encouraging news.

But I, the statistic that we provided last time, and I think our, listen, our regular listeners are gonna have this ingrained in their brain, right? Uh, only 19% of women practicing today are industrial designers. Even though. Half of those going to college are women. So it's still a pretty small amount. And of course a lot less are in leadership roles.

Jon: Yeah, definitely. I wonder if the stats are a little bit different with manufacturers in the industry than it is with design firms. Mm-hmm. It could be. Mm-hmm. We don't, you know, we don't really know. But

Jane: yeah, that's interesting. When I think about my career and experiences in, as an industrial designer, I do know there is a certain amount of like pitching your idea.

That lands, I mean, the way that I would say men and boys are, you know, are expected to act or, or [00:18:00] tend to act, um, is more conducive to ha holding the floor, presenting your idea with confidence. Um, talking as though you're, you're a force to be listened to. I would say that that is not never happens for women, but it is something that, um, women have to.

I guess maybe I'll just share a story that when I started working in sustainability, coming off of design and, and I had a great design team I worked with at Humanscale, lots of fantastic designers. I worked with some great people. Like this is not a slight to any, my, my previous comment wasn't a slight to any individual person.

There's, there's a lot of great. A lot of great people I worked with, but as I was moving from design to sustainability, this was something I was, um, really passionate about. And I mean, I love design also, but sustainability kind of hit me in the, like, this is sort of like a calling almost, or it's more of like, this is what I wanna do with my life.

It's not that I didn't wanna do design with my life, it's, um, I enjoyed design, but I didn't see it as like [00:19:00] my forever job, my forever calling, whereas this like really resonated in a. So I really wanted to be able to make stake. In order to be listened to in meetings, I decided to try to become a person who would be listened to.

So I like watched how men sat and tried to mimic how they sat and tried to like mimic their body language. And I also took opera lessons. I'm a terrible singer. Absolutely terrible. But, um, the reason I took opera lessons,

Jon: well, you don't get paid for it, so that's okay. Yeah,

Jane: yeah. You and my kids are like, um, can you stop singing?

No, no. Bedtime lullabies, please. But the reason I took opera was so that I would learn how to my voice and be to like speak at meeting, to be to. So I kind of consciously [00:20:00] tried to mold myself into being someone who could be heard at meetings and have my ideas taken seriously. And, you know, if they're gonna be rejected, it would be because that's not the best idea, that's totally fine.

But if it's because I wasn't able to like, get it out of my voice and I couldn't like, get my voice to say it loud enough that people could, could really, you know, hear it and understand it, or somebody else could just start talking over me, that would be. I think that is kind of an experience. I don't know that a lot of men have that experience of having to actively try to become a different version of themselves, um, in order to be listened to, in order to have their voice heard.

And I think that that's the kind of thing that, I mean, it did make a big difference in my experience.

Verda: It is a thing that people with deeper voices are, are thought of as more knowledgeable, listened to,

Jon: I think. That unfortunately, the default is always, you know, we're always designing [00:21:00] for white men, we're always accounting for white men, so I don't think white men have to think about re posturing or repositioning their message in a way that they feel it's gonna resonate.

Right? Mm-hmm. I think as a woman in a leadership role, I think that you are more cognizant of that, and so you are actively trying to frame your behavior and your communication in a way that you feel it's gonna resonate for the male community in the room, which is, which is it's. Fortunate, but it's probably a disadvantage to the men in the room that they don't feel that they have to frame themselves in a way to account for the other 50% of the population.

Right. Yeah.

Jane: I think you're right. In some ways that. It's an advantage to have to go through that process because then you have to picture what the world is like or what, how this is gonna land from somebody else's point [00:22:00] of view. And as a designer, that's what you're doing all the time. Unless you're just designing your own stuff for yourself and you're your own client and that's it, which is I think nobody's experience.

Then you have to be trying to understand what is your client looking for? Who is experience this? For me, it's a product, but maybe for interior designers, it's a space, like how are they gonna be interacting with it? What is the way that they're seeing the world and how does this resonate with that? Um, and I think that experience of having to really develop that sense of, it's not like empathy, but it's more like having to understand somebody else's perspective and point of view and how they're thinking about things.

I think that that is a great gift in designing because it'll be able to design better for if you, the better you understand where somebody else is coming from.

Verda: Yeah. That actually rolls right into why. Why is it even important for us to try to position women in leadership roles in design [00:23:00] firms, and what does that bring to the design process?

And I think you're. Starting to answer that,

Jane: you know, um, white and, and English is my first language and there's a lot of perspe, other perspectives I don't have. But I think that that is the value of having different perspectives there that can see different things, um, potentially come up with different ideas 'cause they're making different connections, potentially be able to frame things in a different way or just see how something might land that, that somebody else might not, if.

You know, how are you gonna understand that design and, and and the choices you're gonna make.

Verda: Yeah. We're designing for everyone, right? The, the chairs that we sit in, the spaces that we create are not just for men, they're for everyone and people with, with all kinds of issues and all kinds of different walks of life, right?

Jane: Yeah, exactly. For everyone to be able to experience and. A lot of times if you're mass producing products the way we do with industrial design, that's, we're definitely designing for a broad swath of [00:24:00] people. Um, but even if you're looking at one specific interior space and you're like, well, it's for this particular group of people, if you're not very good at.

Seeing things from their point of view, you might not be the best person to design that space for them, even if they're a very limited group of people. So I think it does both, like it can reach a large, broader population, but it even could just make you better at designing that one specific, uh, design.

Jon: Knowing what you know now, Jane, what you know, what kind of advice would you give a young female who's. Breaking into our industry, your experience both on the industrial design side and on the manufacturing side.

Jane: So I don't know if the world has changed and this advice will be no longer that like applicable.

I hope that's the case, but I would've told a younger me to be more confident to actually work on the presentation, not just [00:25:00] of the ideas, but of myself. Earlier, and then you get kind of the clout to be able to push things further and have people are used to listening to you, then they start to listen to you, and you don't have to be loud.

You just have to say things with confidence and you have to expect to be listened to. Which is kind of tricky, but you can hear people who are, have a fairly quiet voice, get the whole room's attention, but you know, when they're talking, they're expecting to be listened to. So that's one thing I would suggest.

And then it might be unfortunate that you have to be more determined and more. Like, you might have to be better than your counterparts in order to prove yourself, but I still think you can do it. It's still not, it's not impossible. It's still worth trying. It's not worth giving up. And I think it's more and more possible these days as people are seeing, um, are getting more used to seeing women.

Verda: Further, that kind of goes back a little bit to what you were saying about, um, I think you were talking about how we de we're designing for white [00:26:00] men, but I, I actually think that the leadership or women in leadership issue is more about just the fact that, that all the leaders are mostly men and they see each other and it's hard for them to kind of see beyond that.

And we have these gender stereotypes where we think of women as, as softer, as more communal, more nurturing, more org, more organizational, less, um, strong, less assertive, less about winning. And, and we, we, we take those stereotypes and we, we. Into the workplace and, and when we evaluate, you know, the, we've been reading the same book, you know, when we evaluate or even when we, when we're interviewing a woman or a man, you know, we'll bring those.

Preconceived notions into our, our thought process. Mm-hmm. Right. And the problem with just women even trying to [00:27:00] get a promotion or get a raise or whatever, is just these challenges. And if you, you know, you have to walk a fine line, Jane, I'm sure you know, you don't, you can't seem. Too assertive, right?

Because then yes, then it's, it's the woman, the angry, the angry woman, right? It's just this balance and it's, I think until we really start to reevaluate what leadership means in firms and, and open up that definition. Sadly, I feel like we're going in the other direction right now where I know a lot of, especially like these tech bros are talking for the need for more masculine energy in the workplace.

And I, and I don't know if we're going in the right direction necessarily. I'm, I'm hoping that. Maybe that's just a, a, a trend in certain certain industries. But if we think about leadership as being broader and so many different, [00:28:00] that there are many different ways to lead. And I think there's been a lot of, John, you were looking for some, some articles about female leadership and how they fare compared to male leadership and there's.

Definitely a lot there in terms of the benefits, not necessarily that one is better or than the other, but just that, that there are, they can be complimentary and there can be advantages.

Jon: One of the challenges is that, uh, the gender bias is. You know, it sounds really negative to say that, that there's a gender bias.

There is a, a gender bias, but it's such a systemic problem that, um, I mean if you look at something just like, you know, Verta, this book that we're reading, you know, when they talk about, um, caring right? How women, I. Really, um, handle the bulk of all of the caring that has to happen in a household, starting with with daycare to elder care.

It all falls on women. And you look at, you know, [00:29:00] men in the workforce, we may say, I'm treating Jane and Virta equally. I'm treating them just as if I had two other males on the podcast with me. But that's how I'm treating. Jana Verta isn't really, I think. The bulk of the problem. The bulk of the problem is that there's just so many policies that are in place that.

Work against women in the workplace right now that have to be addressed and verta? I think you're right. It's, you look at what's going on right now, I don't know that we're heading in a very progressive direction to, to, to tackle some of the issues. Daycare, maternity leave, family leave. You know, these are big, these are big problems that stack the deck against women in the workplace, and it's really unfortunate.

Mm-hmm.

Jane: Yeah, definitely. I'm lucky enough to be in Canada where we do have good maternity leave and, um, it makes a world of difference. Um,

Jon: yeah, you get a year up there, right?

Jane: Mm-hmm. [00:30:00] Mm-hmm. Which you can share with your partner. And we did, so I took six months and he took six months. And I think that that's a really good experience for, for guys to stay home with the kid and know like, what that, you know, why that's hard work Also, um, it was eyeopening to me to go back to work after my first child.

And any parents might recognize this. Anyone who's not parents, it'll be, hopefully won't scare you too much. But going back to work, my first day I was like, oh man, that is so easy. Like I can't believe we ever had this stereotype that like, you know, I'm picturing like the fifties or I don't know when, 40, 50 something, when like the man comes home from work and it's like, oh, you know, you have to be, bring him a drink 'cause he's had a hard day.

And I think like, oh my God, it was So whenever you. You know, simple things like that where you're like, you have a little infant, you have to take them for

Jon: granted.

Jane: So much, uh, so much to pay attention to, but, and I'm lucky to have a husband who, who is very, um, hands-on and, [00:31:00] and be in a place in Canada where we have maternity leave, which is great, but you're right, it's systemic.

It's not even just the official systems too, it's also our own attitudes.

In of men, women also see things the same way. Like the general group expects the louder, deeper voice is the one that is the authority. That's that's, you know, not just men that think that. And I, I'm not suggesting we would have all women leadership either, like it seems to me. That maybe 30% is where you start to get it to be like, this is a normal reg.

You're just another leader. You're not like a female leader. You're just, you're, you know, like you're a person. And that's where I think we wanna get to where it's like, these are people who are, you know, individuals. And then, then you get to be an individual again instead of representing an entire group.

And then being either saddled with or fighting against a whole set of stereotypes. You can be an actual person and then that's just you having your individual thoughts and ideas. [00:32:00] 30% at a minimum. That's what I think. I think it should be 50%. Honestly,

Verda: if,

Jane: well, I think it'll fluctuate, right? Like either way, like I think it should be at least 30% men and at least 30% women.

And then in between there, I think it'd be okay. Yeah, I did have a job when I was, I think I was like 20 or so. I worked in a library and it was. 14 women and one man. And I would say that was maybe not the perfect balance either. Yeah. So, you know, I, I do think that like anything under 30%, I, I think you get, you, you know, you, you're like the one, the one woman or the one man and

Jon: well, the teams that you're building at Human Scale.

Right? And, and I think one of the really neat things that you've done at Human Scale is the creation of, I don't even know if you still call it sort of like an ambassador program, but you give so many. Um, people at human Scale an opportunity to be a part of your team. Mm-hmm. So many people want to get behind sustainability.

So many people want to have an opportunity to talk about it. They also feel passionate about it, [00:33:00] and not everybody is fortunate enough to, to, to be in the C-suite talking about it like you are. But you know, when you're building your teams, are you, are you thinking about diversity? Are you thinking about this, what we're talking about now?

Jane: I'm gonna say yes and no. I've never done the calculations of the numbers, but I, I do notice if it's like, oh, hey, there's like all of one, you know, and, and I look at it from not just a male female perspective, but like everyone is from the northeast of the USA. Hmm. We're probably missing some perspectives there.

Or like everyone is, you know, like fitting in the exact same mold. Then I kind of do actively sort of see, okay, is there anyone else that. You know, nudge them a bit, they would be interested in joining. I think we're, again, I've not done the numbers, but I think it's a, a good, at least similar to half and half.

I'd be surprised if it was more than 40% either male or female. I dunno which direction we go. And then my direct team we're half and half, were four people. So right now, half and half. [00:34:00] And hiring if people are looking for a position. Nice. Um,

Verda: um, but that's been great. No, that's a great reminder. We need to be looking at a diverse team from all kinds of angles.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jane: And I would also say this is an interesting thing working at human scale in the executive team, is that it's, I'm not the one woman at the table by a long shot. So I, I do the calculations and I forget, but they, I think last year we were over 50% female executives. We, we usually hover somewhere between like 45 and 55%, um, female.

So it's really close to half and half. I'm, I'm very confident that that is not like a calculation people are doing behind the scenes and then filling a role, just, you know, to fill a gap, make a number, look a certain way. Um, but it, the nice thing about that, and this is where I kind of say from experience that like I'm not the one woman at the table.

So it's not strange when I bring things up or say things from kind of a female perspective because there are also a good number of [00:35:00] other leaders at the table as well that are also bringing like different perspectives. So it's, um, it's, I think it's. If you have one woman, it, I mean, it's better than zero, but I, in my humble opinion, I think you need at least 30% to make it, that it's like not the, the token person that's gonna, you know, not the minority

Verda: group.

Jane: Yeah, exactly. You're still kind of get dismissed anyway.

Verda: I wonder what Canadian statistics are with your better policies supporting families. Be interesting to see.

Jon: I would be interested to know, just because there's so many ripple effects to a really good family leave policy. Like there's so many feedback loops.

Mm-hmm. It creates, so it's not just about, you know, letting somebody stay home longer. There's just so much more to it.

Verda: Yeah. The children develop. Mature better, have better success with college and their lives. The men bond better with their children and have better relationships with their families. I mean, it's just, it's just [00:36:00] so positive in so many ways.

Jon: Yeah. It's hard to believe that we're having a hard time. I. With it. It seems like a simple concept, but

Jane: yeah, it's a thing watching on the outside, being Canadian, kind of, I mean, I don't watch all the, the back and forth and the rhetoric and what's going on in the US because there's a lot going on, but I, I get, oh, there is, I hadn't realized.

Yeah. Yeah. You might not know this. But there's a lot going on in your politic. It's hard to leave and we're not leaving Canada out of it, which is bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we're we're trying to move further away, but we can't, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding.

Jon: Welcome to the madness, Jane.

Jane: But one of the things that does seem like I, I can't get my ha my mind around is there seems to be quite an encouragement for.

Women to have more children. And that seems to be really put up on aal. Like that's a great thing for women to do, which is awesome. I, I think it's great women, hard to do, women who are pregnant, who have kids, um, you know. It, it's really, uh, you are like, you [00:37:00] created another person in your body. You're like a superhero actually.

You know, it's like kind of amazing. So that's great. But it seems so strange to me that you wouldn't then like support them with like, what do you need now that you have some children? How should. We, you know, if, if we're gonna take a stance to say that you should have more children or that that's an ideal,

Jon: Jane, that's a whole, that's a whole nother season on break some

Verda: dishes.

Yeah, I agree 100%. It's super strange. It makes no sense at all.

Jane: And then even we bring it back to design. I'm just kind of looping this around and the idea of having kids, like it's mind boggling how much they change your perspective. Both because you have to like stretch yourself to the extreme to be able to, you know, make sure that they survive and, and you know, just basically live.

It's exhausting, but also. It's super rewarding and it brings you such a whole different perspective. 'cause the questions they ask, the way they see the world, like thinking about different perspectives and [00:38:00] ways of learning and, and ways of kind of bringing more to the table as a designer, like having kids is like adding an extra perspective to your, your sort of, um, toolbox of like something else.

And, and I know I'm, I'm currently studying biomimicry and. As I discuss any of this with my 9-year-old, sorry, she just, actually today's her birthday, she just turned 10. It's, it's fascinating to me the kinds of questions that she asks, the things she relates it to, like it's quite different. And so I think, yeah, even if we're just looking at it from a design perspective and being a great designer, like, um, kids can contribute to that as well.

Verda: So, yeah, you spoke about biomimicry. Is that something that human scale is. Is working [00:39:00] on, or tell us more about the circularity program that you recently started or what's on the books?

Jane: Yeah, I might start with the circularity program and then I'll talk about BI a little bit. So circularity has been discussed for a while.

I think it's been getting more and more attention in the sort of conversation and sustainability. And I'd have to say I was at first kind of a skeptical, a little bit, almost a curmudgeon about it. I was like, it's just recycling. But, but for real, this time, like it's not a new idea. It's we, we know we should have been doing it all along.

We've all been talking about it, but we're just not doing it. There's a bit more to it than that, but it's, yes. What I am finding is that it's rec, the conversation now is recognizing that it's not just, you know, putting a recycling symbol on it and calling it a day. It's really about the systems and there's a lot bigger picture thinking.

And it's not easy to do. No, it's not easy to do. It's really not. And at Humanscale are really well positioned because we have been doing the things that you would do. So like if you [00:40:00] wanted to design for circularity, and I hear a lot of that phrase being said, we're designing for circularity, um, these days that you would do is you would use.

High quality materials that will last a long time. You would use simple mechanisms that don't break down and are easy to repair. You would use few different parts and pieces and make them so you could take them off and replace them if you needed to, and you would build a product that people want to use for a long time.

As we talked about like that some, you know, your experience in relationship to the products. You build something that people. Aren't gonna discard 'cause it's outta style now and it's, you know, looks like it belongs to.

Jon: I always thought it was cool when I was with human scale when, when you guys talked about circularity and talking about the things that you're talking about now, you went so deep into the weeds as to even consider, um, you know, fasteners.

Can we use fasteners that can be removed with normal tools? Mm-hmm. Like I don't have to go to the hardware store and find some bizarre metric European lug [00:41:00] wrench thingy. Right? Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah. And,

Jane: and then the other thing to consider is, uh, the ingredients. And so not using toxins, of course, if you're gonna keep this material being used again and again, you don't want it to be full of carcinogen, right?

You don't wanna repair something and keep it Right. Sitting right beside you. Right underneath you, yeah. For the next decade.

Verda: The last piece I would add though, too, is to create and support mechanisms for reuse or recycling. And that, to me, that's the really hard one.

Jane: Yes it is. So as far as designing a product that we have done, all those things have been taken on like two decades ago.

So the Freedom Chair is 25 years old last year. It's a great example of having done that. And so now we're at that next part, which is very exciting, closing that loop. So we're getting the freedom chairs back and other chairs. Um, but we're really highlighting freedom because been out in the longest getting them back.[00:42:00]

Evaluated what comes back from like a refurbisher and it's, you know, they're not using the original parts and pieces. They don't know how, I mean, they, they don't have the original parts or, or they're not, you know, if it's from dec couple decades ago, things may have changed. We still have all the original designs and.

We can bring it up to a, a higher level of quality that then, you know, can be, be redeployed for a longer time in the marketplace and our brand can stand behind it. So that is something we have been doing, which is very exciting. And it's, there's a lot of chicken and egg pieces to it. Like, do we start this?

And then that can take off. And then we don't have a, I mean, there's just, there's just a.

That the world is.

Uh, influential problems. So like, it seems ridiculous, but it's the thing that's gonna stop

Verda: the project from happening. You know, we we're talking about gender [00:43:00] bias. There's also reused furniture bias, right? So there's, there's that as well.

Jon: Well, I was gonna say too, it sounds so easy. Let's just, when the chair comes to the end of its lifecycle, we will take it back and fix it.

Mm-hmm. Wow. Like that's, that sounds pretty damn simple. Yeah. But it's so much more complicated than that. I, so many manufacturers in our industry will tell us that they believe in circularity. And so when their product comes to the end of its lifecycle, they'll give you the one 800 number to anew or to one of these associations that donate product for you.

And I think that's great. That's certainly. Kind of circularity, but it's not. The kind of circularity that you are talking about.

Jane: Yes, that's true. It extends the product's life for a few more years. Right. Um, but then after that it's probably gonna go to landfill. So it's not bringing it back to the manufacturer to really redeploy it and potentially redeploy it again and again.

Jon: Yeah.

Jane: That's [00:44:00] what we're looking to do is redeploy the material again and again. And we, we now have sourced a lot of our. Operations as well where injection molding and die casting in-house. So there's a lot of things we can do with that material that, that the average. If you just brought it to biggest

Jon: challenge with this refresh program, what would you say?

What would you say it is?

Jane: I could

Jon: guess it's getting the

Jane: chairs back. No, I'm gonna say the chicken and egg this, the series of different things that are like, do we start this or that? And we need them both in place, but we can't, we have to. So that. That's the, that's one thing. And then the other thing is just all the, the systems that are not set up for this, I'm gonna give an example, and I mentioned the, the things that seem unimportant, but they might stop a project.

Um, my example is that the labels that go on chairs that are, you know, usually you cut them off as soon as you get the, but we legally have to put them on the, for new product harm across states label on.[00:45:00]

Product that's been owned before that harmonization work hasn't been done. So we need a different label for different states, and some of them have approve them. Inspect. Is resending it out, which is, it just means that like at the moment, we can only sell into certain states and is literally because the labels that go on the chairs, we're waiting for them to be approved by the regulators.

And you just think like how much easier it is to sell a new product than it is to. You know, sell a, a product that's been owned before, because the systems are just not, there's so many parts of the systems that add enough friction that it's not surprising that it's not, that it's not being broadly done,

Verda: and that's the rub, right?

The systems just aren't supporting or making it easy. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So we're gonna talk about

Jane: biomimicry a little bit. Yeah. I think biomimicry is a very exciting. Approachability. Um, and just in case there's folks listening, what bio is, it's [00:46:00] nature and nature design.

It goes a little bit. I mean, it starts off with learning, say the mechanism or the chemical compounds that that nature is using. A great example would be like Velcro, where you, um, it was I think a Swiss engineer who observed the, the edges of a, of a burr that were able to curl and capture onto to the fabric of many different kinds of fabric.

And he was like, would be an interesting fastener, Velcro. That's an example of like emulating an idea from nature, but it goes a little bit beyond that as well to em. Emulating also the way life exists. So all of the rest of life when it's alive and dies and you know, that whole life cycle of all the other organisms on the planet all create the conditions conducive to life as the every organism is trying to live and thrive.

You know, that's, that's not a problem. But as they [00:47:00] do it, the byproducts are all trying to create the conditions conducive to life. And there are some principles behind that. Uh, some very distinct patterns that happen across all organisms. Um, so that is also embedded into bio as well. So in that way, it's, it's a really, um, great way to learn about sustainability.

If we consider sustainability as creating the conditions conducive to.

In.

So it,

Verda: what I'm most impressed with, with nature is how efficient it is and how nothing goes to waste.

Jane: It uses all material, but if you're thinking about time, it uses time really differently. So a lot of times when we're wasting material and energy, it's 'cause we're trying to make things happen faster.

Oh.

And

Jane: so we would call that like, it's more efficient 'cause it doesn't use a lot of time, but, but nature goes the other way. It, it uses, um, time, not energy and material. [00:48:00] Think about that. Yeah. Gotta

Jon: be patient,

Jane: but, but bio Myography is exciting because there's a lot of solutions out there. Like, I just feel like in sustainability we hear the doom and gloom and yeah, it just feels like that's what, what we're, we see all the time.

And we might see a case study or hear and there of something that's happening. In, you know, you think of all the other organisms in the world, there's millions and billions of, of different ways of solving different problems. And so there's just a lot for us to learn from and it seems like it's nice to be part of that conversation of how do we actually solve these things?

And there are solutions out there that we can learn from that may apply and maybe part of, of, um, helping us interact in. I love that. Just as a short note though, at Human Scale, I have found our executive team is very open to biomimicry. We did do a biomimicry Charette with our design team and came up with a really interesting kind of quirky design for a stool boiler.

Exploring, but we haven't, um, formalized how that's gonna be as a program in the company [00:49:00] yet. So

Verda: working

Jane: on it,

Verda: well, we look forward to seeing the next product that's, that's inspired by biomimicry.

Jon: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. I think that's a fascinating design concept to, to try to incorporate. For sure.

Verda: Thank you Jane, so much for being our, our very first repeat guest,

Jon: Jane. Number three. Yeah. And number. I don't even know what number we're at now. 73 maybe. Wow. Yeah.

Jane: Wow. Wow. Do you have like a group? Like am I in a club now or do we all like get, do you have like a Facebook or a like LinkedIn? You're an alum.

Yeah. Are we alumni? We all get to like, you know, know who each other is. You're a break.

Jon: Some dishes alum, and we just call you broke. Okay. That's now you're just broke. Perfect. Welcome. Welcome to the Broke Club

Virta. That was an amazing conversation, even better than I thought it was gonna be. I [00:50:00] really, really love talking to Jane.

Verda: Yeah, same here. She says, just such great insights, and I think we're, we're just digging deeper, little by little into this conversation and I, I love how we're slowly, slowly peeling away the layers and I felt like the conversation around circularity and biomimicry really related to all of it.

I think just the way nature is more collaborative. Even and, and not about domination or control or, or, or waste, you know, fits in with this whole agenda that we're, that we've been talking about.

Jon: Yeah. Agreed. And I think that Jane has a very calm. Persona, when I talk to her, I feel like she's, she's very wise, you know?

Yeah. I feel like when we hear from Jane, we should, we should listen to what she has to say. And the conversation around circularity was a very honest one [00:51:00] because the industry really does struggle with that. And I think human scale is taking some amazing strides to address circularity in, in a real way.

Um. It's not gonna happen overnight, but

Verda: yeah. And John, we had both agreed to read this book and we mentioned the book in our conversation with Jane, but didn't actually mention the title of the book, so I'm gonna mention it again. It will be in our show notes, invisible Women Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.

And we're both partway through the book and I thought. Maybe thinking about what Jane was saying, I, I loved her story about taking opera lessons and trying to, to, to, so that she would. Be listened to, right? And this gender bias starts at such a young age. And this is, um, out of this book, it talks about kids age five, right?

Girls, they're [00:52:00] just as likely as 5-year-old boys to think that women could be really, really smart. But by the time they turn six, something changes, they start, start doubting their gender so much so in fact that they start limiting themselves. I don't wanna take too much time with this, but just that alone, right.

In an environment where we're, we're trying to, to get to, to roles where we're, have some ownership in. Decision making in a, in a company is a challenge, right?

Jon: Yeah. And I think the correlation between climate change and this gender bias issue that we're talking about is that they are both so systemic.

It's, that's what makes it so hard to fix. So,

Verda: yeah. And, and then I, I guess I would love to end on a positive note. There was an article in the New York Times, uh, this month. It was a study and there's not too many studies done on teenagers, but it's a study on [00:53:00] teenagers where I guess in the, you know, not too long ago, boys were raising their hand more.

They were outscoring girls on math and science tests, and now these teenagers were. We're polled, and more than half of them said that boys and girls are now mostly equal in school. There's hope. There's hope, so I can't wait for

Jon: those teenagers to be out in the workforce. Right. Yeah. Changing things up a little bit.

There's hope. There's hope, but thank you Jane and Abernathy for talking to us today. Thank you. Human scale for making this season possible. What a, what a great conversation we had.

Verda: Thanks to Jane Abernathy for joining us today. We'd love to hear about the issues that you'd like us to address. Be sure to let us know by leaving a positive review Wherever you listen to podcasts,

Jon: break Some Dishes.

Is a surround podcast by Sand Dow Design Group. Thanks to the team behind the scenes. This episode is produced by Rob Schulte and edited by Rob Adler. Thanks to [00:54:00] Master and

Verda: Dynamic for the official headphones of the surround network. You can hear other podcasts like [email protected].