When I decided to pivot my career, I quickly ruled out going back to school. Not just because it would be expensive, but because I’ve always learned best by working on projects, not by following a syllabus. Finding the community within the Data Visualization Society has turbocharged my transition from product designer to information designer, equipping me with the toolkit I didn’t know I was missing.
Future Fridays and the spark of possibility
I started with Future Fridays, a workshop series led by the brilliant designer Martina Zunica, each edition with a different guest speaker (the Luminary). The creative process Martina structured behind the workshops felt instantly familiar, giving me a soft landing into unfamiliar territory.
The November edition, led by visual designer Alessia Musìo, helped me feel grounded and confident stepping into data analysis with a visual brain. That course became the seed for my first Nightingale article, The XYZ of Stress—and I was hooked.
When the February edition rolled around, I signed up again. This time, the guest speaker was Rudi O’Reilly Meehan, whose engineering background brought a very different flavor to the experience. Rudi challenged us to think in code, introduced us to AI-assisted prototyping, and handed us a 4,000-row-10-column dataset to chew on.
It was the biggest dataset I had ever touched. I realized I needed to level up my scripting skills to process data this large. In just four weeks—the duration of a Future Fridays workshop—I built a rough prototype using Observable. It felt like the beginning of something big.
Mentorship Program and the real adventure
On February 28, just two hours after wrapping up our Future Fridays presentations, the DVS Mentorship Program kicked off. I had applied on a whim, hoping to use the 10-week program to develop my prototype further—and I was paired with Anastasia Stevens, a three-time participant (once as a mentee, twice as a mentor).
I had no idea how profoundly my approach to professionalism was about to change.
I’ve always been a self-starter—independent, organized, efficient to a fault. I showed up to meetings with a tight agenda and a goal of wasting no one’s time. I thought that was being respectful. But Anna, calm and spacious in her style, helped me see what I was missing with that efficiency-obsessed mindset.
From the start, she expanded the conversation. Though her background is in business analytics, when I mentioned my interest in data journalism, she immediately looped in Simran Parwani—a working data journalist and former DVS Early Career Director. Simran shared behind-the-scenes insights with radical candor, giving me a window into newsroom life that no blog post or article ever could.
Anna didn’t just mentor me—she modeled what it means to activate a professional network. When I hit roadblocks building my project in production code, she brought in software engineer Brian Rouse to troubleshoot. I felt a bit guilty at first—shouldn’t I figure this out myself? But the truth is, learning Svelte 5 while trying to incorporate D3 is no small feat. Most tutorials were still written for Svelte 4, and I had zero experience.
Brian wasn’t a Svelte expert either, but his fluency in front-end development helped him navigate the version gaps with ease. He broke down complex engineering concepts, helped me restructure my codebase, and offered best practices for data fetching and file hosting. Before Brian, I was a JavaScript hobbyist. After working with him—I felt legit.
What Anna showed me, by example, was that my self-reliance was slowing me down. Knowing when and how to ask for help is a professional skill in itself. Once I embraced that, I began reaching out more intentionally—asking Anna for help with stats questions, user testing feedback, and design critique.
As the program neared its end, Anna organized a roundtable with her former mentor, Felicia Styer, and two of Felicia’s mentees. We shared our stories, our entry points into the data viz world, and the reality of today’s job market. It wasn’t just inspiring—it was eye-opening. These weren’t random connections. They were real people sharing real experiences. Anna saw these meetups as mutual exchanges instead of favors. She trusted in that reciprocity, and she didn’t hesitate to reach out.
The people Anna brought into our orbit added a rich texture to my learning—one I never would’ve found by Googling. She taught me that while it’s important to focus on goals, it’s just as vital to stay open—because some of the best learning happens sideways, through conversations you never expected.
Anna shared this reflection at the end of our cohort:
“This is my first cohort with a mentee as experienced as Shanfan; I was intimidated at first, but we quickly realized our combined experience allowed us to move fast. Shanfan came in with UI/UX and coding chops, and we dived right into discussions about color, frameworks, and chart types.
“Really, my job was grounding her ambition in reality. She wanted to make a tech layoff viz! And collaborate on a mapping project! And launch a portfolio in 10 weeks! I asked her to consider the time constraints.
“She prepared agendas, asked well-articulated questions, and stayed flexible. I didn’t like missing a single meeting with her — and Shanfan’s dedication ensured we were able to keep the momentum going all ten weeks.
“What impressed me most was her ability to pivot: she started with a dashboard idea, but through our conversations about journalism and reader engagement, she shifted toward a simpler, clearer, narrative essay. In the end, she created not just a visual data story, but a process doc and a portfolio draft. She crushed it.“
It’s heartwarming to hear Anna’s side of this experience. Learning to lean on others didn’t just help me grow, it created space for others to show up fully too. What began as mentorship evolved into a collaboration. I wasn’t just receiving help; I was contributing momentum. This is the essence of professional interdependence:
If we all come with curiosity and a growth mindset, mentorship can be nourishing for all involved.
The communal web behind it all
Both Anna and I are extremely grateful for this opportunity to connect, and to everyone who shared parts of this journey.
For me, the six advisers were instrumental, but the real force came from the invisible scaffolding behind them: the Mentorship Program Manager Kateryna Oviedo, and the DVS Programs Committee, led by Programs Director Zane Wolf.
From Future Fridays to Fireside Chats, from Q&As with Experts to Peer Mentoring, this community is creating fertile ground for everyone to grow, whether you’re just starting out or pivoting mid-career like me.
So if you’re craving hands-on growth, thoughtful feedback, and a tribe of generous weirdos who love charts as much as you do…
Your next mentor, co-conspirator, or creative breakthrough could be just one Slack thread away.
Shanfan Huang
Shanfan Huang is a designer, illustrator, and writer passionate about storytelling in all its forms. From picture books and comics to information design, interaction design, and loop animations, she explores how meaning is derived through visual symbolism. She shares her thoughts and discoveries in her Substack newsletter, Picture, Text, and Numbers. When she’s not crafting visual narratives, you can find her sharing snippets of doodles and half-baked ideas on Instagram
- Shanfan Huang#molongui-disabled-link
- Shanfan Huang#molongui-disabled-link
