Kat Vellos

Background

About Kat Vellos

Kat Vellos is a speaker, facilitator, certified connection coach, and the author and illustrator of We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships. She’s a fan fave on stage at speaking events, and her writing is read in over 100 countries. She helps adults make and keep friends while riding the rollercoaster of modern life, and she helps companies retain staff by supporting them to find belonging and connection at work (no karaoke necessary!) Kat’s methods are rooted in qualitative research and the belief that dedicated creative experimentation can solve any problem that comes our way. In her former career as a user experience (UX) designer, she worked for Slack and Pandora, as well as with the creators of Siri designing their next stealth project which was acquired by Samsung. She was profiled in Forbes for her work as the founder of Bay Area Black Designers which she ran from 2015-2022 as the Bay Area’s largest professional development community for Black UX and product designers. As a UX researcher and designer, she helped millions of people find music they love, enjoy work a lot more, and get more done with greater efficiency. Nowadays, she uses her UX superpowers to battle the loneliness epidemic. While she loved making software more user-friendly, she’s a lot happier now making life more user-friendly. She currently spends her days helping adults create and maintain amazing friendships, healthy work teams, and thriving communities. CREATIONS • We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships • The Better than Small Talk conversation starter cards • The Better Conversations Kit • The Better Conversations Calendar • Connected from Afar: A Guide for Staying Close When You're Far Away • And the viral "Alternatives to How Are You" illustration and blog post SPEAKING AND FACILITATING Kat’s been interviewed all over the place; a few highlights include The New York Times, Forbes, NPR, Communication Arts, The Good Life Project, Design Observer’s The Design of Business | The Business of Design, The Wall Street Journal, Shondaland, and Hurry Slowly. She’s spoken at TEDx Talks, San Francisco Design Week, VivaTech, The Atlantic’s Pursuit of Happiness conference, Rosenfeld’s DesignOps Summit, and many more. Her clients go from A to Z literally — she’s facilitated team bonding events for Adobe, Asana, Workday, and Zendesk, and many other incredible companies in between who care about cultivating connection in the workplace. • Learn more at weshouldgettogether.com • Book a talk at katvellos.com