When I went freelance during COVID, I didn’t see myself returning to working full-time for one company again. I loved the freedom of designing my time, working from anywhere and variety of working on different brands. But you really never know what’s around the proverbial corner.

In September 2020, I started chatting to Josh Guthrie about a position in the then nascent UK team at Mollie. Two years and nine months later, I’m living in Amsterdam and have this week been appointed Marketing Director (a.i.). I’m so proud, and thankful for the journey until today.

We used to call my granny: “Technogran” because she was so sussed and on top of tech. It seems to run strongly in the family because my mum is a total badass when it comes to web, social media, and marketing.

Tessa Graaff and my mum Fiona run the Montebello Design Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, and they are considering launching an online store as part of a thoughtful and strategic response to COVID-19. I think it’s really smart.

They plan to start small and simply – an online shop for a small range of their own-brand range – and just yesterday they received a proposal which she asked me to take a look at.

[Originally published on Names & Faces.]

Like much of the world we’re working from our homes. Names & Faces was a distributed team with feet on the ground in Cape Town, San Francisco, and London. Now, we’re fully remote.

Zoom was already an important tool for our team but has really come to the fore over the past few weeks. Is it the same as roaming around an office?

No.

Zoom is great – everyone wishes they had shares – but it can be a surprisingly treacherous way to communicate when topics are hot, the pressure is on, or people have not learnt how to listen patiently before chiming in.