Kelle Link

Digital Strategist and UX Director (consultant)
https://ie.linkedin.com/in/kellelink

Brought up in Tokyo, I was exposed to design and craftsmanship within a high tech culture from an early age, and my design career started at a studio in Tokyo where we created sculptures for high end department stores. I moved on to New York in the early 90s where I became a self-taught HTML coder; that, combined with my undergraduate degree in Visual Communications, allowed me to become a seasoned Art Director and Interaction Designer during the heady dot.com years. The industry matured, and design thinking has become crucial in organisations that need to constantly innovate and ride technology trends and ever changing consumer demands. Cognisant of this, I undertook at MBA program in Dublin to learn the lingo of the business world. This was also a way for me to come to terms with how I had to date been involved in alternative communities, be it artistic ones of those related to yoga and buddhism. I had trained as a yoga teacher, and lived in Buddhist communities in Europe (mainly in the UK) and meditation was a regular part of my life. Combining my personal life with my professional life as a digital strategy consultant for multinationals ranging from Thomson Reuters to Fidelity Investments was not a struggle but those two worlds did seem dyssynchronous. I can say today that after many lessons learned, and conversations with like minded people over many years (some well known and published, some quietly doing their own thing – I will introduce them through interviews), those two sides of my life and hence my psyche are like the two surfaces on a hand, no conflict at all. The Buddhist world may seem to emphasise the inner world, and the business world may seem to emphasize external activity and projection, but really they are compatible and in fact highly effective when seen as aids to each other. I’m looking forward to sharing my stories and lessons with you.