What Brought Me Here: Vanessa Xie - Connect The Dots
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03 Dec What Brought Me Here: Vanessa Xie

Posted at 20:32h in Insights by
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Vanessa comes to Connect the Dots with a background in design research, analysis, and futures thinking to help make engagement more structured and supported in data for the public to invest in their own futures.

What work were you doing before you arrived at Connect the Dots?

Right after undergrad, I worked in jewelry design for two years in New York, but realized it wasn’t for me. When I moved back to Philly, I got a sales position job at a lighting rep agency and spent about four years there, up until the Covid pandemic. I really liked the business-development side of the job—being on the road, meeting people, building relationships, but didn’t love the sales part, especially the pressure around hitting numbers. It started to feel disingenuous, and I knew it wasn’t something I wanted long-term. I was already exploring the possibility of going to grad school so when I got laid off during the pandemic, I took it as a sign to pursue grad school.

A room with many people in it going to different stations to learn about the project

A scene from the Eastwick Open House that Vanessa helped to facilitate.

I looked into different programs, like architecture, industrial design, UX/UI, all kinds of things, and kept feeling like none of them were quite right. Eventually, a colleague told me about Drexel’s Design Research program. I met with the program director, and that was it. It offered exactly the flexibility and mindset I was looking for. Those two years were really fun.

My focus there was on how people interact with technology—specifically cryptocurrency and blockchain because it was such a hot, confusing topic at the time. I was really interested in the different perspectives people had and how misinformation shaped them. My thesis looked at how people understand crypto and how frameworks could help them debunk misinformation.

After graduating, I started exploring different directions that I could take those skills. Hiring at the time was pretty strange, but I focused on roles that weren’t strictly UX/UI—more about understanding people and behavior, just in different contexts. I eventually found a job as a temporary contractor for a consulting company and taught a Design Thinking class at a local arts college in Lancaster. I also began partnering with a former client-turned-friend who launched her own design-education venture for different opportunities and worked on some exciting community and design based projects. These experiences were exactly what I needed to confirm that I was headed in the right direction. 

What drew you to Connect the Dots?

staff members are engaging with community members and talking to them about the project

Vanessa talks to the community about the Chinatown Stitch project at a pop-up event.

I attended a local Creative Morning event and ended up sitting next to Sylvia (our Managing Principal). It turned out we had both been invited by the same friend to attend!

Sylvia and I met for a coffee chat soon after and through our conversation we realized that we were in a similar field but Connect the Dot’s focus was specific to community engagement and outreach across different industries. After the coffee chat I googled projects that Connect the Dots was on and was impressed with the creativity and the dedication to reach communities of different backgrounds and ethnicities. 

A few years later I saw that Connect the Dots was hiring. I hadn’t previously thought of community engagement as a career option, but everything about Connect the Dots checked the boxes: working with people, creative collaboration, building thoughtful processes, and helping communities imagine better futures. It aligned so closely with why I got into design research in the first place. So I applied, went through the interviews, and was really excited to get the offer!

 

What do you hope to grow in, expand more of the work that Connect the Dots does or that you do specifically now that you’re here?

Gluing printed images on boxes for an activity at an open house

Vanessa assembles materials for an open house event.

Personally, I think one of the biggest areas I want to keep growing in is the kind of mindset I’ve been developing through Dragon Boat racing. It’s a sport I never expected to get into, but I love it because you can’t win alone. You need the whole team moving together. Being part of a group that works hard but still has fun has really shaped how I think about collaboration. It’s taught me discipline, consistency, and the importance of not taking things so seriously that the joy of going through the process disappears. I want to bring more of that energy into how I work with others like staying grounded, staying supportive, and remembering that things go better when we’re enjoying the process.

For Connect the Dots, I’d really love to deepen the research side of what we do. I also want to keep exploring how futures thinking can play a role here. I’m still figuring out exactly how it fits, but I think there’s real potential to bring those frameworks into our projects especially around place, community, and urban environments. It could help expand our approach and open up new ways for communities to imagine possibilities.

 

 

Vanessa is an Associate with a background in mixed-methods research and participatory design and she supports projects through organization, design, logistics, and community relations, with a strong emphasis on data collection.