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Chris Kalani
Wake

Chris is the founder and CEO of Wake. He started his career at Jive Software nearly 10 years ago. He later worked for various agencies where he focused on building products for companies like Microsoft and Nike. Before starting Wake, Chris was a designer at Facebook where he worked on the growth and engagement team, graph search and Messenger.

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I think designers need to realize the power they have to influence things, sell ideas, and have a massive influence on a company at the highest level.

Recent Interviews

Adobe Creative Cloud: From Designer to CEO: An Interview with Wake Founder Chris Kalani

Recommended Articles

Forbes

How To Become A Designer Founder

It takes more than just a desire and a great business idea to be a great designer founder. Forbes interviews Chris about his path to becoming a founder and how he uses his design background to lead.

Medium

Design, Process, and Collaboration at Stripe

Ludwig Pettersson on Stripe's organizational culture, the state of our industry, and design collaboration.

Wired

A Smart New Tool to Demystify the Design Process

Wake, a piece of software coming out of beta today that attempts to change how designers share work in progress.

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Kate Aronowitz

My first interaction design job, a project manager would write all the specs, and I’d just go build the wireframe. It’s not that way anymore. People are looking to designers to really be leaders.

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Based in San Francisco

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