EPIC Circles
EPIC Circles are groups created and sustained by EPIC Members as focused, dedicated spaces for peer learning, mentoring, growth, and reflection. During Learning & Networking Week, you’ll have the opportunity to learn about and join a Peer Circle or Learning Circle. All sessions and Circles are FREE for EPIC Members.
Peer Circles connect EPIC Members and organize small groups for peer mentorship, learning, and professional growth—you develop the topics or areas of focus.
Learning Circles are facilitated cohorts of EPIC Members dedicated to peer-supported learning around a topic. This year: Automation, facilitated by Melissa Cefkin, and Material Culture, facilitated by Rita Denny.
Peer Circles
Come join EPIC’s second year of Peer Circles! This program connects EPIC Members with shared interests and organizes small groups for peer mentorship, learning, and professional growth. All topics are welcome, whether you want to explore specific methodologies or areas of expertise, career transitions and challenges, or anything else.
In these Learning & Networking Week sessions you can learn more about Peer Circles and sign up to be part of a new one:
- Orientation: get an overview of how Peer Circles work.
- Meet Your Peers & Demo: discuss your interests and try out a mini-circle-session with folks who share them.
As ethnographers, we believe that community is essential to fostering tangible, sustainable growth as professionals and people. Peer Circles develop the community-centric commitment we have to each other. They may build on our resonant community connections, extend those EPIC moments of inspiration and affinity we experience during EPIC events, or create something entirely new.
If you’re interested in Peer Circles but cannot attend one or two of these sessions, please contact peership@epicpeople.org so we can include you!
EPIC Peer Circles 1: Orientation
Tuesday, May 7, 11–11:30 am US Pacific Time
Hosted by:
Raquel Valverde, Consultant & Coach; Founder at DUCTIL
Samantha Gottlieb, EPIC Board Treasurer; Independent Researcher
Tuesday, May 7, 5–5:30 pm US Pacific Time
Hosted by:
Julia Prior, Head of Innovation & Software Development Strategy, WiseTech Global
Samantha Gottlieb, EPIC Board Treasurer; Independent Researcher
EPIC Peer Circles 2: Meet Your Peers & Demo Circle
Hosted by:
Raquel Valverde, Consultant & Coach; Founder at DUCTIL
Samantha Gottlieb, EPIC Board Treasurer; Independent Researcher
Thursday, May 9, 5–6:00 pm US Pacific Time
Hosted by:
Julia Prior, Head of Innovation & Software Development Strategy, WiseTech Global
Samantha Gottlieb, EPIC Board Treasurer; Independent Researcher
SAMANTHA GOTTLIEB (she/her) is a science and technology studies anthropologist, and a New Yorker living in California. She most recently led Fitbit’s mobile wellbeing UXR team at Google. Sam combines her education in philosophy, gender studies, public health, and anthropology to bring a multi-disciplinary lens to her work. With over 20+ years of health technology expertise, she has worked as a consultant in biotech, digital media, public health departments, and health care startups.
JULIA PRIOR is Head of Innovation & Software Development Strategy at WiseTech Global. Julia’s work focuses on fostering a thriving software development culture as the path towards effective practice, innovation and high-quality enterprise software products. She is an ethnographer, software developer, innovator and researcher who loves working with multidisciplinary teams on cryptic issues characterised by uncertainty.
RAQUEL VALVERDE is the founder of DUCTIL, helping brands and teams shift for growth. With an international background, Raquel leverages 20 years of professional experience driving change and growth in organizations. Raquel has been lucky to work with top brands as a brand lead (at Unilever in Barcelona and Pandora in Paris) and as an agency lead (at Wavemaker in Miami and Wunderman Thompson in Madrid) and now helps individuals and organizations reach their goals as a coach
Learning Circles
Learning Circles are facilitated cohorts of EPIC Members dedicated to peer-supported learning around a particular topic. During Learning & Networking Week, we invite you to join one (or more!) of these orientation sessions to find out how Learning Circles work, meet the facilitators, and connect with some of the EPIC people who will make the group lively and valuable.
If you decide to join a Learning Circle, your group will meet three times in 2024. In advance of each session, participants will read assigned articles, then gather for lively and provocative discussion about what they took away and how it intersects with their own projects, challenges, and areas of expertise.
EPIC Learning Circle: Automation
Tuesday, May 7, 10–11:00 am US Pacific Time
Friday, May 10, 4–5:00 pm US Pacific Time
Circle Facilitator: Melissa Cefkin
Circle Support: Jamie Kim
Automations shift work, decision making, and pattern finding between people and mechanized systems, with profound implications for society and everyday life. Over 20 years, EPIC members have created an extensive body of expertise on this topic, and it is an immensely valuable resource in our library for anyone seeking to understand, build, influence, or critique automations. But…where to start?
This circle focuses on the Automation Collection, a set of resources in the EPIC Library curated by Melissa Cefkin, along with supplemental materials.
MELISSA CEFKIN (she/her) is a consultant, researcher and educator who applies human-centered expertise to technology and organizational design. She has held positions at Waymo, Nissan-Renault, IBM, Sapient, the Institute for Research on Learning and several institutions of higher education. She helped establish and lead EPIC in its first decade of existence, and has served on task forces and committees for the National Science Foundation and the National Academies of Science. A Fulbright grantee, she is a frequent presenter at conferences internationally, and is the editor of Ethnography and the Corporate Encounter (Berghahn Books 2009) and numerous other publications. Both her B.A. (UC Santa Cruz) and Ph.D. (Rice University) are in Anthropology. Her birth sign and several planets are in Capricorn.
JAMIE KIM lives in the Greater Seattle area and is working in UX Research Operations. Before UX, Jamie earned a bachelor’s in IT and a master’s in HCDE at the University of Washington. Jamie hopes to learn from many great researchers and contribute skills to the EPIC community.
EPIC Learning Circle: Material Culture
Tuesday, May 7, 4–5:00 pm US Pacific Time
Friday, May 10, 10–11:00 am US Pacific Time
Circle Support: Jose Lara, Partner, Crowe Horwath CR
The objects all around us are pathways to more systemic understanding of social, economic, and ecological worlds. Treasured keepsakes, throwaway remnants, an imposing centerpiece, an ignored backdrop—all are repositories of meaning and thus crucial sources of insight. Over 20 years, EPIC members have contributed an immensely valuable body of expertise on material culture to our library. It explores how to conceptualize, study, analyze, and wield material culture to create insights that mobilize people, products, and organizations. But…where to start?
This circle focuses on the Material Culture Collection, a set of resources in the EPIC Library curated by Rita Denny, along with supplemental materials.
RITA DENNY applies anthropological frameworks to consumer behavior across the globe, calling on linguistic, semiotic and symbolic traditions for interpreting attitudes, perceptions and practices. Rita’s work supports strategic development of products, services and brands as well as communications strategies for Fortune Global 500 companies, government agencies and public institutions. Rita was EPIC’s first Executive Director (2019-2022) and co-chaired EPIC2017 (Montreal). With Patricia Sunderland she is the author of Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research and editor of Handbook of Anthropology in Business. Rita holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from University of Chicago. She is a dedicated Lake Michigan swimmer.
JOSÉ LARA started working with CROWE, an accounting and consulting firm in 1987 in the supply chain consulting services department. For the last 20 years José has been providing large multinational companies with services in sales and operations planning, logistics and manufacturing operations. He is an industrial engineer by training and has applied ethnographic methods in organizations to improve performance and effectiveness of managerial teams in accomplishing business goals.