This week, I’m interviewing someone who did the thing many designers quietly daydream about: he left. After years as a seasoned product designer and design leader, my friend Travis chose to walk away from the sprint cycle, ladder climbs, and KPIs to pursue work that felt closer to real human impact. He’s now in an MSW program, training to become a social worker, and learning how empathy, systems thinking, and care actually show up where people live their lives.

In this conversation, we’ll get honest about what it takes to pivot from tech to helping professions: the burnout and disillusionment that spark a change, the practical “how” of returning to school mid-career, and the unexpected ways design skills translate into clinical and community settings. We’ll talk about service design versus social services, “users” versus people, and what Travis is discovering about ethics, evidence-based practice, trauma-informed care, and advocacy that design orgs rarely touch.

If you’ve ever wondered “Why leave?” or, more provocatively, “How would I do it if I had the courage?”, this one’s for you. Come for the candor about design’s limits; stay for the blueprint of a more humane path forward, whether that means leaving the field or changing how you practice inside it.

We’ll cover:

• The breaking points: when craft and career success stop feeling like meaning
• Translating design strengths (research, facilitation, systems thinking) into social work
• What MSW training actually looks like (placements, supervision, modalities)
• Money, logistics, and identity in a mid-career pivot
• What design can learn from social work: care, consent, dignity, and evidence
• A realistic look at impact: casework vs. case studies

Bring your questions. Bring your skepticism. And maybe bring a notebook. See you Thursday at noon ET.