Experience Is the Breath That Sustains Work
There were decades when “experience” wasn’t yet a defined focus or discipline in the tech industry — whether in how products were built, how customers were served, or how employees experienced their work.
This wasn’t oversight or indifference.
It was the natural order of evolution.
Early technology was shaped by specifications, feasibility, and speed. Builders asked: Can we create this? Can we make it work? Can we scale it? The center of gravity lived in what was possible — not yet in how deeply those possibilities would shape human lives.
As technology matured, so did its reach. Software moved from tools we used occasionally to environments we lived inside. It began to shape not only outcomes, but behaviors. Not only workflows, but identities. Not only efficiency, but energy.
And slowly, experience became visible.
Not as a single thing — but as something that moved through everything.
I’ve spent my career inside that evolution. Not by pursuing “experience” as a role, but by consistently gravitating toward the human layer of the work — often before it had formal language or ownership.
It showed up in how I led teams: prioritizing clarity, trust, and growth over urgency.
In how I built partnerships: grounded in understanding rather than transaction.
In how I developed customer organizations and Customer Success functions: sitting with customers long enough to understand not just what they needed, but how they worked, decided, adapted, and felt supported — or constrained.
Customer Success became a natural home for me because it lived closest to lived reality. It required proximity to real humans using real systems in real conditions. It demanded translation — between what was built and how it was actually experienced. Between intention and impact.
Over time, a pattern became impossible to ignore.
Experience is not siloed.
The way employees experience their work shapes how they show up for customers.
The way leaders experience pressure shapes how teams experience safety.
The way colleagues experience care shapes how collaboration unfolds.
The way partners experience trust shapes whether relationships endure.
Experience leaves a fingerprint everywhere.
It influences whether people bring curiosity or caution.
Whether ambition feels energizing or depleting.
Whether individuals contribute fully — or quietly protect themselves.
This is why experience cannot belong to a single function.
And why it cannot be perfected, standardized, or “solved.”
Experience is soft because humans are soft — contextual, relational, adaptive. Needs change. People change. What supports someone today may not support them tomorrow. Care is not static; it is responsive.
But softness does not mean insignificance.
Experience is the breath of an organization.
Restrict the breath, and everything within it constrains.
People tighten. Decisions narrow. Energy drops.
Work becomes brittle.
Allow the breath to deepen, and oxygen moves freely.
Clarity increases. Trust strengthens.
People bring more of themselves — and more care for one another — into the work.
And experience is never shaped by systems alone.
Each of us arrives with ambition — with energy, hope, expectation, and agency. We bring our own breath into the spaces we enter. The experiences we shape for ourselves, and the ones we help shape for others, are influenced not only by the systems we live within, but by how willing we are to stay present, to advocate, to care, and to participate consciously.
The readers drawn to this work are rarely passive. They are deeply invested in their growth, their contribution, and the impact they want to have. That ambition matters. It is not something to temper — it is something to steady. Because when individual agency meets thoughtful systems, experience becomes something powerful: not imposed, but co-created.
As organizations scale, experience must be tended, not engineered. Held with intention. Revisited often. Treated as a living dimension of work — not an afterthought layered on once systems are already in motion.
This is also why my work continues to evolve — toward the experiences we shape in modern work and life, and the human conditions inside organizations that influence how people show up, connect, and contribute.
When the people within a system are resourced, grounded, and able to breathe, they create better experiences everywhere else — for customers, partners, and one another.
In 2025, I was named one of the Top 50 Women Chief Experience Officers by Women We Admire — an honor I also received the year prior. I hold that recognition less as a personal milestone and more as a reflection of a broader moment: one where leaders across organizations are increasingly stewarding experience with care — for customers, partners, employees, and the human systems that connect them.
The recognition reflects a growing understanding that experience is not peripheral. It is foundational. It is how work sustains itself over time — through people, not in spite of them.
When experience is thoughtfully stewarded, people don’t just perform better.
They relate better.
They think more clearly.
They lead with greater steadiness.
That is the work I’ve always been drawn to — alongside the ambitious humans who are shaping it from the inside.
Not as a title.
Not as a trend.
But as a responsibility — to the energy and ambition so many people bring into their work and life.
EDITOR’S NOTES
This reflection references industry recognition related to experience leadership and the evolving role of human-centered work across organizations.
Works Cited
Women We Admire. “Top 50 Women Chief Experience Officers of 2025.” Women We Admire, 2025,
https://www.prweb.com/releases/women-we-admire-announces-top-50-women-chief-experience-officers-of-2025-302448497.html
