Jessica Necor

FAQ

 

My Story + FAQ

Hi, my name is Jessica Necor and I’m a first-generation Filipino American born and raised in the Bay Area. I live in Portland, Oregon with my husband, Andy, and our Sheepadoodle puppy, Frances. I’m currently a senior digital product designer at Nike on the Commerce team.

What was your design journey like?

I went to the Oakland School for the Arts for high school where I commuted over two hours a day by train and bus to and from school, but it was worth it for my studies in Visual Art and Digital Media. I graduated Valedictorian and got a full ride scholarship to the Laguna College of Art + Design. Coming from a normal Filipino family that didn’t fully understand a creative career path, it was up to me to figure out how to pay for college.

I majored in Design + Digital Media in college and loved my time at LCAD. I worked throughout college, interning at the Peter Blake Gallery in downtown Laguna, as well as at Hurley on their digital team in the summer of 2014, and Vans as a footwear designer for Women’s and Kids Active in 2015. I also freelanced for small brands. A pivotal experience in school was the Honors Lab class field trip at LCAD. We took a field trip to Portland junior and senior year where we visited Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon and 2 design agencies in town. It was an influential experience and made me fall in love with the small city vibes of Portland and high-caliber design community.

One of the agencies we visited was R/GA, a world-renowned digital agency, and I interned there after college for 6 months as a Visual Designer. I loved my team and eventually was offered a full time position where I worked on projects that pushed me as a designer for over 4 years total. The majority of my client work was for Nike, I worked on pitches, campaigns, digital activations, product design, and internal tools. Working in advertising was a grind. There were long nights but the team wins were rewarding. I spent 6 months on an embedded team at Nike HQ working on the Apple Watch Nike Run Club app, one of the highlights of my career. Other notable clients were Innovasport and Innvictus, and these ground-up redesigns cemented my interest in pursuing a more product design-focus (combining UI and UX) in my career. I wanted to spend longer on projects and properly build them, with user insights and research to validate our work. I wanted to build experiences that last more than a few days, and be able to iterate on them instead of handing off a project to a client after the duration of our contract. 

At the end of 2019, I was contacted by a recruiter for Nike contractors (Art + Science) for a product design position on the digital Flagship team. It would be a risk, leaving a full-time job with benefits for a 6 month contract with no benefits but significantly higher pay, but I had a good feeling in my gut so I went for it. I loved my team there and was doing product design work I was excited about, and my contract got extended. 

In 2021 I was offered a full-time position at Nike and so far it’s been over 5 years since I started there. I am glad I took the leap. I’ve been on multiple teams and have touched most of the digital experiences in our ecosystem. It means a lot to me to work somewhere where diversity is important, many women lead teams and their/our voices are heard, female athletes are championed, and equity and inclusion are the standard. It is invaluable.

I now work on building best-in-class digital commerce experiences that bring the Nike brand to life and help bring sport to athletes everywhere. We do a lot of design research, talking to our users often and getting feedback on things big and small. Every day is a little different, but every day I get to work with talented peers and cross-functional partners (design x engineering x product x brand x marketing x geos). I work remotely most of the week and go to the office once a week to see my teammates in person.

I definitely credit my success to having amazing mentors along the way, many of them are women, women of color, and LGBTQ+ leaders. I owe them a lot for guiding me and being an example of successful women in design. I’m still always learning.

What advice do you have for young designers?

  • find your advocates and mentors

  • don’t be in a rush for titles early in your career but know your worth and ask for what you deserve

  • remember your “why” and come back to it often

  • study accessibility and usability deeply

  • do fun things outside of design that fill your cup

What advice do you have for people interested in roles at Nike?
Check careers.nike.com for open roles. Have a killer portfolio that makes an impact in the first few seconds. Put your best work first, make it really clear what problems you’re solving and how you know it’ll be successful. Big beautiful impactful visuals. Show your process. If you don’t have real world work, build your own passion projects that showcase your skills, design thinking, and process.

Nike internships are also a great way to get your foot in the door. I’m a big advocate for people doing internships early in their career, and Nike often recruits from unconventional schools and underrepresented communities.

Can you refer me to an open position at Nike?
Unfortunately, I can only give references for designers I know personally.

Any specific questions? Feel free to email me jnecor@gmail.com or message me on LinkedIn

Thanks for reading!
- Jessica