Season Two of NCOMMON invites listeners into the heart of Alison Rand’s new book, Sentido: Finding Sense and Purpose in Design Leadership . “Sentido” means sense—to feel, to understand, to make meaning. This season, she’ll be in conversation with guests whose stories echo the themes of Sentido , asking the questions that often go unspoken about leadership, belonging, and change. Together they will reflect, challenge, and imagine new ways forward—finding clarity in complexity and purpose in…
Subscribe:.rss.atom.json.md.m3u.pls
Live Last read · last published · next check
Saves to your Listen queue, to pick up on another day or another device.
In this episode, rooted in Sentido's El Yunque chapter, Alison is joined by futurist and speculative designer Monika Bielskyte to talk about Protopia Futures — a framework built on the premise that the futures worth inhabiting are neither utopian nor extractive, and that most of the people designing ours are still working from a model of the human that science abandoned a long time ago.
In this episode, Alison is joined by director and cinematographer Soraya Sélène to talk about Who in the Hell Is Regina Jones? — a documentary about the founder of Soul newspaper, a nationally distributed publication that predated Rolling Stone, launched out of a dining room in 1966 by a woman with five children whose name most people still don't know.
In this episode, Alison is joined by Aimee Meredith Cox and Soeuraya Wilson, teachers at The Class whose work is grounded in embodiment, care, and long-standing practice in collective spaces. Their conversation explores what it means to be honest with one another in real time, and how trust is built through presence, attention, and the willingness to stay with what’s uncomfortable.
In this episode, Alison is joined by Corina Ocanto, a workplace strategist who has spent her career translating human needs into environments where people can thrive. Their conversation traces the quiet power of leading from the middle—those moments when influence comes not from authority, but from attention, empathy, and the courage to ask better questions.
In this episode, Alison sits down with Rachael Dietkus, a social worker and designer whose practice challenges the false divide between care and design. Together, we talk about luck not as chance or magic, but as something built through persistence, timing, and the quiet work of showing up for others.
In this episode, Alison sits with her lifelong friends — Norma, Delia, and Vanessa — women who have known her through every version of herself. Together, they trace the arc of friendship that began in the streets of 1980s and ’90s New York City and has carried them through love, loss, and reinvention.
In this episode, Alison sits with filmmaker and storyteller Elaine Del Valle , whose debut feature Brownsville Bred captures the beauty and brutality of growing up in 1980s Brooklyn. In a conversation about persistence, self-belief, and the quiet rebellion of creating without permission, Elaine reflects on what it means to keep going when the world tells you not to.
This episode explores the edges of uncertainty with Jessie Shefrin — a conversation about wandering, testing, stumbling, and ultimately emerging into new clarity. Jessie reflects on the sparks that shape us, those fleeting moments of sensation that accumulate into transformation. Together, the dialogue traces how luck, timing, and openness weave into leadership and design, offering listeners a…
In this final episode of season one, Jacqui and Alison reflect on the times with Quinnton Harris, one of the founders of Hella Creative – the team behind the Hella Juneteenth movement. We talk about his incredible journey, the importance of Juneteenth not just as a day, or a moment, but a call for organizational change. How we can continue to grow, listen, learn, do much better, and make the hire.
Episode 11 is part two of the conversation about Design Operations and where we are heading. In this episode, Jacqui and Alison go broad and extensive (and somewhat meandering ) about future opportunity areas for Design Operations and how we, as design leaders, can lead the charge in laying the groundwork for that future. We charge forward into the unknown with the responsibility to consider…
