Women in Leadership: April Durrett

Welcome back to #TeamTuesdays and our penultimate article in the Women in Leadership series! Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the chance to attend some fantastic leadership events and even give my own leadership presentations (more on that soon!). This week, you’ll learn more about the kind of leadership it takes to set that tone!

Please join me in celebrating April Durrett the eXperience / X Team’s Senior Director at Verizon Connect ! She leads our team in a way that not only allows but actively encourages our members to get out there, share our voices, and grow not just as people leaders, but as thought leaders, too!?

Basking in the Sun: April's Energy

April started with our team just over a year ago, but it honestly feels like we’ve been working together since the beginning. When I think about what it’s like to be on her team, I think about what it must be like to be in the Sun’s orbit!

April has a bright, fiery energy, and collaboration with her feels like you’re in an inspiring gravitational pull. These aspects of April’s personality are so powerful, and they seem innate, built into her very fabric.

Interestingly, that’s something that April confirmed right from the get-go!

“I actually had to think about my first leadership role because I’ve had a lot of leadership roles, even going back to high school,” April reflected. “I was captain of my softball team. At that time, I didn’t even understand what leadership was, but I naturally liked bringing people together, and I liked understanding what people needed. It’s interesting because that’s still true in terms of what I like about my role now.”

Just like the Sun, April provides our team with nourishment, connection, and perspective. She starts every meeting, whether it’s a big group meeting, a small group meeting, or a one-to-one meeting, by asking what’s top of mind for us. She is always focused on our needs – not just as employees, but as people. She always finds a way to connect with others, and she has a galactical capacity to hold empathy for everyone. And she does all of this while still keeping everything in her orbit as balanced as she can. She brings in new viewpoints and explores new questions, while still maintaining our fundamental team identity and purpose, and energizing us in all of our pursuits!

Forming Brave New Worlds: April's Change and Growth

Part of what comes with being the powerhouse that fuels a team is terraforming new experiences, and stepping into completely new spaces.?

One example of creating a brave new world is how April took on new responsibilities. April’s work experience echoes that of many UX professionals. She started with various jobs in which she led projects and workstreams. So many of us can relate to those early experiences, where we are sometimes teams-of-1.?

“Two or three jobs in, I had a proper leadership role,” April recounted. “It was a bit intimidating because I was young, and it was complicated.”

Though many leaders experience new challenges when taking on these kinds of leadership roles for the first time, and in more official settings, April shared more nuance about one particular factor that made this role challenging.

“I was telling people who had more experience, and who were older than me, what to do,” she explained.?

To strengthen the ground underneath her as a new leader, April needed to take some steps to fit into the already-established culture.?

“I wore makeup and dressed very business-y. That was so that I could look a little older than I was, so that I could be taken seriously in a way that I didn’t think I was,” she shared.

We all can feel imposter syndrome getting its claws into us from time to time.?

We can all also relate to the feeling of needing to change ourselves in order to fit into corporate or work spaces.?

Here’s a great example from Carol Stewart MSc, FIoL LinkedIn; in her piece, titled “Are Women Taken More Seriously as Leaders When They’re Suited and Booted?” , Stewart offers her reflections of the nexus between male-normed appearances (e.g., suits), women’s adaptations of those appearances (e.g., to what degree we downplay or express femininity), and how those women are perceived in the workplace (e.g., are we seen as more or less serious?).

But what if we like wearing clothing that is more feminine? What about clothing that is more casual? What about clothing that comes from our cultural roots? What if our clothing doesn’t ascribe to any particular gender, age, or other construct?

Take for instance this fantastic work by Kelly L. Reddy-Best , entitled, “LGBTQ Women, Appearance Negotiations, and Workplace Dress Codes” . These case studies investigated how people would constantly need to choose between revealing their true selves or concealing their true selves, depending on comfort, confidence, and potential outcomes.?

So, perhaps we’re talking about something bigger here.

Perhaps what we’re really talking about is authenticity.

As new leaders, young leaders, women leaders, or previously-invisible leaders, how do we incorporate all of this information while also truly bringing our authentic selves to work, without sacrificing respect in the process??

There has been a growing emphasis lately on how to bring one’s authentic self to work. This Harvard Business Review article and this Forbes article share some thoughts on how to adapt work and leadership styles to different contexts in order to be mindful about how to show up to work, i.e., when to be fully transparent, when to be judicious with what you share, and when to hold back completely. This Berkeley piece by organizational researcher Patricia Faison Hewlin discusses that in addition to appearance and attitude, other aspects, like sharing our personal interests or more about our family lives, can be ways that we integrate our professional and private selves.??

This brings up a great question: how does how we show up at work impact our team dynamics?

April was starting to realize that while physical presence does have an impact on how people perceived her, what actually impacted people’s perceptions of her was her brain presence and her engagement with people. It takes additional awareness and metacognition to navigate these questions.

“Had I done my homework?” April asked herself. “Was I actually listening? Was I taking the time to understand people, and to be the leader they needed in, in a way that was also authentic to me?”

As April recounted the consideration of all of these factors during this early leadership career experience and leading this already-established team, I couldn’t help but feel that it must have been overwhelming to constantly negotiate, having to, at any moment, choose between being likable and competent, or between her newly-cultivated leadership persona and her authentic self.

What April shared in our chat next especially aligns with what we’ve heard from newer leaders, including women as well as other individuals from various spaces.

“I kind of felt like I was on the back foot often, or that I had to defend myself,” April stated. “I got accused of being defensive often. It was interesting to reflect on that, what I learned, and how I interacted with people. I had to get a lot of people aligned, and this taught me the skills that I still use today. In difficult situations, and in good situations, how can I lead people in the way they need, and in a way that makes them successful?”

Research highlights how this issue plays out for women in particular. Take for instance the studies cited in this Forbes article by executive coach Katy McFee. In fact, one particular study, run by researchers at The Wharton School , identified that women often have to choose between being seen as competent or likable.?

Moments where women must face that choice can turn out to be extremely tough experiences. This process as a whole speaks to another aspect of how creating a brave new world means cracking the foundations of older ones. With new growth comes volatile transformation that can shake you to your core.?

“Someone yelled at me in the street about my leadership. Literally yelling at me, in front of all these people. And that stayed with me for weeks,” April admitted.?

That incident highlights so many factors that show the negative outcomes that result from people holding to and operating from stereotypes of women and others from similarly underrepresented or disenfranchised spaces.

However, with time, and with great personal reflection, April was able to make her own meaning from this and other incidents. She pointed out, “Those types of learning experiences helped me develop into who I am now. And one of those things is learning how to detach emotionally from that part of the work.”

It makes sense that if you have passion for your work, you link aspects of your purpose and identity to that work. But having such strong connections is often unsustainable. There are decisions or outcomes that are out of your control that may impact the work that you are doing in a way that you were not expecting. And that can be challenging at times. Finding a healthy way to engage sometimes means transforming that kinetic energy into something else.

“If someone’s feeling fired up about something, I detach my Self from it,” April emphasized. “Because I do that, I can get through some really, really tough moments.”?

April showcased a truly wise and mature adaptive coping mechanism that I recognized from clinical psychology, especially object-relations theory . Without getting too into it, object-relations theory hypothesizes that people make meaningful connections with internal (e.g., ego) and external (e.g., other people) “objects”.?

By separating her self-identity from these momentary incidents, while also giving grace to the people who were reacting negatively, April was able to see past any personalization that might come up from an emotionally reactive situation, and could hold empathy for others even when they were frustrated.

“It’s not about emotionally detaching from people. It’s about emotionally detaching from The Thing,” April detailed. “The Thing that’s Pissing Them Off, or The Thing that They’re Mad About, is not about me. And I think that’s a big difference between when I was first entering leadership compared to now.”

Here is where April’s unique leadership shines through. Over time, she has experienced how those tumultuous moments can also be teachable moments, and she models that for our X Team every day.

“I think that over time, developing that patience and the stamina to be able to sustain a lot of challenging moments and complexity, helps you develop this emotional maturity that allows you to really work anywhere, for anyone, in any situation,” she noted. “You could really throw me on any team, and I’ll probably be alright.”

Aligning the Stars: Places Where April Thrives

Having had meaningful and powerful discussions about the early challenges that April grew from, I also wanted to know what made April thrive.

“I thrive when we have a good product,” April shared. “It’s such a simple thing, but when I think about our products at Verizon Connect , or other products that I’ve worked on in the past, I notice that I can get a lot of energy from that. If it’s something that’s interesting, that has a roadmap, where there’s a lot of research that we can do, where there’s a lot of really interesting users… I feel like even when we’re not being successful in some of the things we’re trying, if I’m still interested in the product, then I can have a pretty long runway.”

It’s important to note that April actively contributes to creating uplifting and nurturing environments that build solutions together. This includes being mindful of how to build healthy and collaborative connections with teams! In our leadership meetings, April is always advocating for team recognition, meeting new groups throughout our company, and welcoming them to our own team rituals. Inclusivity and positivity are two key aspects of leadership that seem to truly inspire April.

“If I can work with cool people, people who like their job and are good at it, then I can navigate some pretty complicated stuff,” she echoed. “So, if I have a good product, and cool people, then I have energy every Monday morning.”

Something that I love about April is her constant self-reflection as a senior leader in particular. As Senior Director, April shows us that we are continually growing and changing, and it’s helpful to be mindful of what shapes us along the way.?

One particular point that April highlighted was the impact of scale. Scaling teams and operations up is a highly challenging task, and it takes the kind of wisdom that April has gained through her more challenging experiences to lead teams through that kind of growth.

To that point, April added, “The things that give me less energy are when we get too competitive or too protective of our spaces, and we can’t be open. When larger teams struggle with that, it’s less fun. That’s when the emotional maturity has to drive things and say there’s a reason they’re being competitive: they’re under stress. So how can we support them?”

Here, I recognized that perhaps April is also like a tardigrade!

(OK, I know that was a weird turn from the space analogy I’m employing in this article, but hear me out!)

Tardigrades are these cool “micro-animals” that are the object of passionate scientific curiosity because they seem to do well in extreme environments. They’ve been able to live in hot springs, glaciers, and even outer space! (See, I brought the analogy back ??)?

In that way, April actually thrives in chaos.?

But even tardigrades have breaking points.

“Honestly, I think I’m really good when times are really tough, and that’s hard on me sometimes,” April expressed. “I’m good when I’m going into a hard problem or tough challenge. That means I have to take really good care of myself, and really good care of my team, because we do a lot!”

At this point, I remembered the research I did for our very first Women in Leadership article , denoting the phenomenon of the glass cliff. Essentially, when women do get promoted to senior leadership levels, it is usually during times of chaos (check out this article from Investopedia for more ).?

Thus, I wondered: is April naturally good at leading teams like this, or did her experiences uniquely set her up to handle these situations?

“That’s a really good question. Was it cart or horse? Which one came first: was it chicken or egg?” April asked, with a curious smile. “I didn’t know that I was good at this until I was thrown into high crisis situations.”

April shared a great story that exemplified this.

She offered, “One example that comes to mind is that in a previous role, I had to replace a very senior designer midway through a project. I had to pick it up like nothing happened. You have to very quickly get up to speed, but you also have to manage the change with the team because they’re going to be really distraught by that. And then you also have to manage your stakeholders. How do you do all those things at once in a way that has people feeling comfortable, even though it might be a while until you feel comfortable?”

Even then, April had to negotiate her leadership identity, balancing how to project confidence and how to acknowledge the strife that her team was experiencing.?

“I had some people say to me, ‘You’re acting so confident. What makes you so confident? This is hard, and I feel like you’re not understanding that.’ And I tell them, ‘That’s my coping mechanism,’” April detailed. “It’s to be that calm, collected, and confident about something because that helps people. It helps them to see, ‘April’s got me. She’s got it. She doesn’t have all the answers yet, but she’s bringing me along on the journey.’ I think as a leader, having that kind of confidence is important. You have to have humility and recognize what you don’t know, but also, you have to say, ‘I’ve got this. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, and I’m gonna see you all the way through it.’ That’s how you can get other people to jump on the train with you.”

April acknowledges that it’s not just about abating her teams’ concerns but also finding ways in which her team can contribute.

“And maybe see where their strength is,” she continued. “Some people are really, really good once the train is calm. Those people need people who can support them through that, to get to the next place, which is where they’ll really shine.”

When thinking about April’s unique vantage point, working closely with our C-suite leaders, and seeing our 70-member team as one dynamic organism of the business, I wondered how April managed through that variance. How does she consistently find a way to show up for all of these groups of people?

“Some of that is about patience,” April replied. “When you know that someone is having a difficult moment, they need to be seen. They need to be heard. Sometimes, they need action, but sometimes they don’t; sometimes they just need a moment to get through it. They may need someone to get them some information, but sometimes, they just need to vent.”

April denoted that this was especially true when working in UX. As an esteemed designer, April could note how that flux, and that patience, informs how she approaches her work as a whole, and how she models that for our team.?

“Going through those moments between good and bad is tough sometimes, but I get a lot of energy from those moments,” she identified. “Where I lose energy is when things start running smoothly again and it’s quieter. How do you continue to fill that creative cup? Doing stuff like [this interview] does it for me. Talking about our work, reading about our work, writing about our work, reading about what other people are doing – that fills my creative cup up, and it keeps us buoyant through those moments where we’re trying to tie together tough times with good times.”

Exploring the Cosmos: Where April's Going Next, and How She's Traveling with Intention

April is amazing at filling her creative cup! She recently published two key pieces on working in the field of fleet management.?

“One article is with Fleet Management Weekly, and one is with Fleet Maintenance, but both of them are focused on AI,” April shared. “Both of them are teasing out different aspects of this idea of using AI judiciously. I’m really passionate about this because I’ve been an emerging technology and AI-focused designer for about a decade now. I’ve always kind of been at the front and excited about pursuing these solutions!”

Her first article in Fleet Management Weekly is titled AI Outweighed by Fleet Needs in Developing Video Coaching Solutions. Check out the article for a fantastic take on how AI can be used as one tool in a bevy of dashboards and solution systems to help managers and drivers alike ensure that they are lowering the safety risks to their businesses. (Shout-outs to members of our X Team who work in this space, Matthew O'Sullivan , Sarah Dennis , Colin Smith , Stephanie Baione , and Mimi Lu !)

April’s second article in Fleet Maintenance is titled Fleets Should Use AI Judiciously . Not only does April explain more about our team’s work in using insights from AI to make maintenance and operations decisions, but she also gives a couple of really interesting examples of how to truly leverage AI rather than fully depend on it, thereby mitigating the systematic errors and environmental price that comes with AI overreliance.?(Shout-out to Colm Lally , Filippo Valente , Neil Donovan , and all of our teammates working in this area!)

April summed this up by stating, “You have to really think about the consequences of the things we make within the solutions we give.”

Within these two key pieces lies the steady beat that drives April forward, an underlying message that shows how April has set the tone for thought leadership. She models and encourages our team to explore how we can supplement the work that we do for our solutions with helpful insights that are applicable to our fields.

April also highlights a strong and unique factor that Verizon has prompted within her thought leadership.

“In addition to my own sense of the consequences of AI, there’s one thing that Verizon helps me do: it helps me think about how we do things with intention,” April highlighted.

Working in a place like Verizon gives us the opportunity to flex our muscles in seamlessness. As the senior director of the user experience, April always engages in innovative initiatives by ensuring that her work aligns with the brand.

“Verizon is a brand that has incredible awareness, stability, and quality,” she remarked. “People know that Verizon is there for them. When we come out with AI solutions, they need to embody everything that our brand stands for, and not something that’s rushed to market, not thoughtful, or not intentional.”

That intentionality comes from the core principles of human-centered design , something April is squarely rooted in, and something that is also a fundamental principle held by Alicia Nachman in her Women in Leadership profile ! As our leaders show, the human-centered approach is a needs-based approach, and our team’s design practice always begins with an investigation of what customers truly need to resolve pain points in accomplishing their goals.

“We need to be creating solutions for customers, as opposed to just creating AI technologies,” April pointed out. “There are some companies and some brands that start with a solution and find the use cases that fit, and that works sometimes. But for us, and our customers in particular at Verizon Connect, we have to really think about what pains our customers and users are experiencing. How can the technologies that we have access to today help us be better?”

In fact, April is constantly thinking about how this applies not just to our solutions, but also to her design practice, and her leadership impact.?

“In terms of navigating complexity and how I leverage my strengths, AI helps me do more faster, but I have to do it with intention,” she emphasized. “That’s about compassion and the emotional maturity that I have in my own leadership. That’s around the point of view of using AI judiciously, which is really about caring deeply for your customer and giving not just the thing that they’re asking for, or that their bosses are asking them for, but actually giving them the thing that’s right for them.”

April can see this so concretely, describing the potential of what she sees with AI as more of a copilot in the UX design and research double diamond , a well-known UX framework that describes four phases of work: Discovery (broad research and context gathering), Definition (prioritizing and focusing on key issues), Development (brainstorming, building, and testing), and Delivery (releasing a product or solution to the user).

She excitedly observed the impacts that AI can have for Discovery, articulating, “We understand data in ways that we’ve never understood before. And we understand behavior in ways that we didn’t understand before. We’re leveling up our insights. Imagine how quickly we can do research with 1000 people at the same level of quality that we can really only do with 10 people at a time right now. What would you, as a researcher, do differently? What would you do with that time and insight?”

April similarly sees benefits for Definition and Development, forecasting, “I imagine that I could design an entire system in a week that would take me 6 months in the past. What would I do with that? How would that change my practice? I think that’s where we’re going, in terms of being designers and researchers in the future. How will this change our practice, not get rid of it? We’re around and here to stay. The humans in this loop are important. But we’re here to stay.”

Beaming Even Brighter: Transformational Leadership, and how April Leaves Worlds Even Better than When She Found Them

Throughout our discussion, I realized just how transformational April’s energy has been for our team, and how there is a common thread of transformational experiences that April, Alicia, Michelle, Amelia, and Alexa have spoken about throughout this Women in Leadership series.?

All of these amazing women have shared particularly difficult moments in their journeys. And, of course, April’s stories from her early career experiences were still resonating with me as we were wrapping up our chat.?

I reflected that her level of resilience was very impressive. But April was quick to call out how we as leaders, especially coming from underrepresented populations, should not just be resilient, but also work to actively create positive change in the world.

“I’ve been troubled by that word, resilience, a lot, lately,” April admitted. “Resilience is when we ask someone to cope with trauma. That’s tough. How do we cope through trauma, and how do we support each other? How do we even recognize that what we’re going through is traumatic? There’s something good about being able to get through something difficult because we have to do that as humans, but we shouldn’t expect that there’s going to be trauma in work. We don’t deserve that. How do we create experiences for us and our team that actually limits their exposure to trauma?”

As you can see, one key aspect of April’s leadership that really sets her apart is that she starts every piece of work, whether it is project-based or philosophical, by daring to ask the Big Questions.

How do we support our teams?

How can we show compassion?

How can we empower people to be resilient, but not have to take on so much?

We can be like April and shine like the sun, but we want to ensure that we don’t burn out. We can be like April and adapt like tardigrades do, but we don’t have to consistently brace for the shock.?

April’s voice and vision are particularly apt for our Women in Leadership series. As we’ve learned through our exploration over the past few weeks, it isn’t just women who experience being labeled as part of the outgroup, but so many people from underrepresented populations, experience a unique level of out-grouping. We can serve them by serving like April serves our team, consistently processing her learnings from our collective experiences, and striving to leave the world better than how she found it.

April also doesn’t see this as a role that is just held by UX. Just as she does with our day-to-day responsibilities, she welcomes collaboration and teamwork from everyone!?

“I don’t think that we should gatekeep design or anything that’s human-centered. We need to get people on this train so that we can raise everyone and innovate at the next level,” she encouraged. “If we constantly have to explain why we’re human-centered or why we design based on the problem first, we lose a lot of time that we could be spending coming up with really, really interesting and creative ideas.”

I think that’s the epitome of what makes April such a transformational leader. Her brave exploration of new worlds and spaces takes away the fear of the unknown. Where others see tension, she holds compassion. While others see roadblocks or machines, April never loses sight of the humans at the center of it all.? And for everything that we fear might go wrong, April dares us to imagine what could go excitingly, innovatively right!

Like I said before, it’s crazy to think that we’ve only been working with April for just over a calendar year, because her astronomically transformational leadership has made us feel like we’ve actually been traveling light-years together. That shared journey can be rough and rocky, but our shared eyes on the future make the journey worth it – and we’re so much stronger for it. We are so incredibly lucky to get to work with her, and if you ever get a chance to work with her, you’re in for an absolute blast!

Who do you consider to be a transformational leader in your own journey? Maybe it’s someone who makes you feel like you’ve discovered new planets, or maybe it’s someone who has helped you reach the stars! Take a moment to share your reflections on the impact that they’ve had on you! And keep a keen eye out for our final profile in this Women in Leadership series, when we talk with our Chief Product and Technology Officer, Kinnera Angadi !

Thanks for reading and sharing, and keep tuning in for #TeamTuesdays!