LadyDrinks Member Spotlight: Farah Khan, Principal & Creative Director at House9 Design
This year, Farah Khan, Principal and Creative Director at House9 Design in Montreal, interviewed me on her podcast, the House9's Art & Humanity Podcast. Her company created this podcast as a listening and learning tool for the business.
Now we flip the spotlight and I interview her as a LadyDrinks member.
Who is House9Design?
House9 is a collaborative graphic design studio. While working with local and international artists, researchers, non-profit organizations and cultural institutions, we develop dynamic projects in all areas of print and interactive design. We do communication and content Strategy. We offer Creative Direction, Art Direction and Graphic Design, Web Design and Development, User Experience Design (UX), and User Interface Design (UI), and Illustration, Animation and Motion Graphics.
Our 8th floor Plateau, Montréal studio houses a diverse (78% women, 45% queer, 30% people of colour) and multilingual (English, French, Icelandic, Spanish, Bengali) team, and Eli, the cutest doggo of all time.
We collaborate with organizations and individuals whose missions align with ours, striving to represent their name and content in sustainable, useful, unexpected, and joyous ways.
In our day-to-day, it's important that we be a fulfilling, safe, inclusive, flexible and democratic place to work. I truly adore each and every member of my team; they are a very big reason I do what I do.
You founded a podcast as a learning tool. Tell me more
Yes, Thank you for being a guest earlier this year. Over the past few months, we’ve had the privilege of speaking with some truly insightful minds working in the areas of art and humanity. We’re so thrilled to bring these conversations to you here. It helps us to innovate our approaches to design and the creative process. We are interested in learning about clients' challenges and successes. We are also interested in learning how art and design can support and be informed by humanitarian and environmental causes.
How are you being a better advocate for yourself in your work?
I trust my team implicitly, which gives me the confidence to advocate for us. This past year has been one of incredible growth, both personally as a leader, and as a studio. We are starting to trust ourselves and our instincts more, allowing ourselves to be riskier but more intentional. It's an exciting moment!
We are hosting an International Women's Day dinner in Montreal Feb 13th. What are you most looking forward to?
I'm looking forward to meeting new people, new allies, and growing my leadership support system. When one of us succeeds, we all succeed.
LadyDrinks is a leadership development platform South Asian women executives. We create programming and events 4 times a month to bring like minded professional women of a certain cultural background so we may create support systems for success. The five-year plan is to host an event in every city of the world.
To become a LadyDrinks member, go to www.ladydrinks.com