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I'm Neelu Jain

Creative Recruiter and Strategist. Learn More...

2013 Update

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I’ve had a number of noteworthy experiences over the last months. Many updates to share!

  • Launch of my new blog design this month! Thanks to Ian Armstrong for blog design and programming, Pausha Foley for graphic design, and Anja Epkes for photography.
  • Recruiting for marketing and design is BOOMing. I switched over to the direct hire team at The Creative Group in January of 2013 (from the contract team) and since then have successfully placed people in the following roles: senior level UX, creative direction, multimedia design, graphic design, web design, account management, brand management, online marketing and others. I’m really excited to work at the intersection of design, strategy, product development and talent.
  • I went on a 5-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat at Spirit Rock at the end of last year during the December 2012 Winter Solstice. I had a fantastic experience to sit with such an established meditation center in Northern California. I highly recommend Spirit Rock to anyone who is on the mediation path. I find that the Bay Area has a solid Buddhist influence and after sitting for 5 days, I felt more a part of the spiritual community and more at home, like I could relate more to people and the land. I came away with a message of being more compassionate towards myself. I had prior experience with Vipassana as I had done a 10-day silent retreat at the Goenka center in North Fork, CA in 2005. I also realized that I’d attended or assisted 25 yoga/meditation/energy retreats in the last 10 years. Wow!
  • I visited Poland last summer with dear friends and we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Seemed so important to bear witness to what happened there. I hope everyone would have the opportunity to go, as difficult as it is to think about and see. Here is a photo of friend, Chris Foley, and I in deep discussion at Auschwitz itself: Neelu and Chris at Auschwitz
  • Most recently in April, I also took a trip to India for family wedding. In typical India fashion for me, the trip had elements of family, shopping, connecting with my heritage, food, spirituality, tourism, and sightseeing. We spent time in Delhi and Punjab and had the opportunity to go to Amritsar and see the Golden Temple, a gorgeous pilgrimage for people of the Sikh faith:Golden Temple, Amritsar, India

Good times all around!
Peace,
Neelu

Speaking on Mentors and Apprentices Panel at FIDM

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I had the opportunity to speak about my entrepreneurial and personal journey and how it’s led me to creative recruiting at a panel called Mentors and Apprentices for FASHION+TECHSF several months ago; the event was held at FIDM. Thanks to Owen Geronimo for his excellent organization and for capturing the film clip below. One key point is that while pursuing passions, vision, innovation and dreams, remember to create something of VALUE that people will want to pay money for; something where a person is willing to pay for your particular good or service over the next best option. Continue reading “Speaking on Mentors and Apprentices Panel at FIDM” »

User Experience + Entrepreneurship

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I started a new job as an creative recruiter about five months ago. It’s been a STEEP learning curve but with an awesome team also really enjoyable. I’m focused on the interactive space which means in today’s world, I’m knee-deep in user experience designers, interaction designers, visual web designers, and email producers.

I recently saw this slideshow from the founder of Foodspotting, Alexa Andrzejewski, and thought it combined nicely user experience design and entrepreneurship–two topics very dear to me. Continue reading “User Experience + Entrepreneurship” »

An Honest Day’s Work?

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When executive leadership at the most reputable companies in the world are under fire for poor business practice and lying, I shake my head in disbelief. It’s no longer new news, but I continue to be astonished–primarily because I bought into the lie for so long. How can we as a society have let this continue? Is it simply the way the world works?

With money such a part of our survival experience in modern society, how can we change the control it has on our behavior –so people make decisions that are optimal for humanity as a whole? Continue reading “An Honest Day’s Work?” »

TEDWomen Conference Contest

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TEDWomen and its sponsors (AOL and Blackberry) are running a contest where they will select 4 people to attend the conference based on submissions of their BIG IDEAS in 500 characters or less.

Here is my submission:

Approach business with unconditional love. Many business decisions are acts of selfishness. Conducting business that looks past the self happens when one heals personal trauma and feels positive vibration in the body; life choices become bigger than one’s pocketbook and how decisions affect the greater world is critical. Imagine financial reform guided by love or a criteria to lead national initiatives a combination of motherhood and financial savvy. I am a strategy consultant and yoga teacher.

Musings on Social Capital, SoCap 2010 and Panahpur

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I recently read The Razor’s Edge by M. Somerset Maugham. I loved it. This book was written in the 1940s and touches on many themes that we deal with today in the 2010s — the life journey we embark on, the search for what we feel will fulfill us, our most pressing need — for some the answer is social status, others financial security, others self-destruction and for others simply happiness through finding peace.

We work within the human condition. Our basic instincts and desires while living in society do not change that much from generation to generation — how we express them certainly does and the tools and technologies we have available advance.

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the social capital markets conference, SoCap 2010, in San Francisco, CA. Pretty exciting meeting — a lot of people really committed to putting their efforts behind projects/companies/organizations focused on helping humanity. Continue reading “Musings on Social Capital, SoCap 2010 and Panahpur” »

Six Tenets of Innovation

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Six Tenets of Innovation:

  • One conversation at a time
  • Go for quality
  • Be visual
  • Build on the ideas of others
  • Stay focused on topic
  • Defer judgment

These statements are found written across white board walls in the Clark Center’s Brainstorming Room at Stanford University.Talking about an innovative bio-design course, this article further describes the room:

“All four walls double as floor-to-ceiling white boards where team members can jot down notes and diagram ideas gleaned from their research. A cabinet contains low-tech items that can be used to make rough product mock-ups, unexpected things including sparkly purple pipe cleaners, Play Dough, and even life-sized plastic replicas of a human spinal cord and a leg. For more advanced prototypes they can move next door to the Prototyping Studio to work with glass beakers, drills, cutting forceps, a furnace, and microscopes.”

I love the description of this room; encouraging collaboration, the use of bodies and hands to play with materials, and helping thoughts evolve into visceral experience. Let’s all think with our hands and bodies! Let’s find the opportunity in the un-said, but in the felt; in the electricity of interaction and engagement.

Work as Art

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Is art work? Or, is work art?

At times, I think it’s one and at other times, the other.

I came across SEED Media Group’s logo and the description of its creation:

Screen Shot 2013-06-06 at 10.03.23 PM

Designed by Stefan Sagmeister, our logo reflects society through the lens of science. The logo takes its inspiration from nature’s phyllotaxis structure, a Fibonacci-derived algorithm present in a multitude of settings, from the face of a sunflower to the alternating leaves on a plant to the architecture of highways. Depending on its context, the logo adapts and changes color to reflect its cultural surroundings. Our logo brings “Science is Culture” to life.

This logo, and the inspiration behind it, represent to me several things (1) art in the form of logo design (2) a corporate identity that is infused with meaning (3) the consideration of work as art by intertwining corporate purpose with artful expression.

May we all consider our work, whether in a business, philanthropic, or political context, as art.

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