Your Life After Tech

Ep 012: Kristina Kennedy: From UX Research to French Pastries

• Life After Tech • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Kristina Kennedy's career journey takes us from the familiar terrain of tech layoffs to the total yum of French pastry kitchens. Having worked seven years in user experience research, her professional path took an unexpected turn when she was laid off. Rather than immediately jumping back into the tech job hunt, Christina paused to reconsider what truly brought her fulfillment.

During the isolation of the pandemic, Kristina discovered baking as a source of presence and joy. She then pursued internships in both boulangerie (bread making) and patisserie (pastry making) in Lyon, France, where she currently lives. While financial realities have temporarily paused her full transition to becoming a pastry chef, the seed has been planted for a future that looks dramatically different from her tech career.

Find Kristina on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/KKENNE or reach out directly via ActionInsights.net, the research agency she co-founded focusing on e-learning products.


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Debbie Levitt:

Welcome to the your Life After Tech podcast. This is episode number 12. I'm Debbie Levitt. Don't forget to check out our lifeaftertech. info multiverse, including our book, Discord, community coaching, live events and more, Because you might be done with tech, tech might be done with you, or you're thinking about adding non-tech work to your tech career. Today's guest is Kristina Kennedy, K-R-I-S-T-I-N-A-K-E-N-N-E-D-Y from ActionInsights. net. She's working on adding being a French pastry chef to her UX, research and linguistics work. Let's get to know Kristina.

Kristina Kennedy:

All right, cool. So hi, I'm Kristina. I'm currently living in Lyon, France.

Kristina Kennedy:

Most recently, my full-time position was as a senior user researcher at Planet Labs, but unfortunately I was laid off from that role almost a year ago, along with 20% of the organization.

Kristina Kennedy:

So, following with that, I really had to think about my career and my values and my future and how I was going to move forward, because the market's just not what it used to be. Two years ago, if you had met me around two months ago and we were having this conversation, my plan was roughly to retrain as a baker and work as a pastry chef here in France, which is something I still might pursue, but it's not really feasible at me for the moment because I have to make enough money to pay my bills and I live alone right now. So in the meantime, I'm working as a fractional researcher at a company called SignLab, which is a language learning app, and I'm likely going to pursue a master's degree in the fall in linguistics and language acquisition and try and relate my work as a researcher at SignLab to my master's dissertation. But I'm still trying to figure things out.

Debbie Levitt:

So Aren't we all? Yeah, thank you for that. So remind me again how long were you working in tech?

Kristina Kennedy:

Overall, I was working in tech for about seven years. I started as a customer experience specialist at a small startup in Atlanta, georgia, and then I moved on to become a user researcher at Babbel in Berlin, and I freelanced on and off for a little while until I ended up at my last full-time role at Planet Labs.

Debbie Levitt:

Got it, so I can certainly start to see the language focus in some of your worlds coming together.

Kristina Kennedy:

Absolutely yes, I love it.

Debbie Levitt:

So thinking about going from the universe of languages or the universe of research into the universe of delicious pastries universe of research into the universe of delicious pastries? Tell me more about that.

Kristina Kennedy:

Yeah, it's really interesting.

Kristina Kennedy:

It's something I realized I was passionate about during the coronavirus pandemic, when I think we can all relate to this feeling that everything was really stressful and there wasn't a lot of joy at that time and I started baking really avidly in order to have my mind focus on something, and I found that it's something that really made me feel present in the moment and fully engaged my attention and allowed me to continue learning, because one of the things I know about myself is that I love continuously learning and working on a skillset.

Kristina Kennedy:

So actually I was lucky enough in France after my, after I got laid off, I did a short internship in a bakery here in Lyon and I did one in boulangerie, which is more bread, and I did another one in patisserie, which is more pastry, and I found that, given the option between the two, pastry chefing has a little bit more. Given the option between the two, pastry chefing has a little bit more rhythm to it. It's a little bit less of the same thing every single day and there's a bit more fine skills to work on. Of course, they're both skills and I have the utmost respect for bakers and that's when I started to pursue this path that I still might pursue one day, of being a pastry chef.

Debbie Levitt:

I'm going to ask you a little bit of a side question. You sound American to me and you're living in France, and I think a lot of people. We're recording this in April 2025. I think a lot of people might be curious about moving to Europe or dreams of going to France. Did you speak French before you moved and how's your French? France, did you speak?

Kristina Kennedy:

French before you moved, and how's your French? Oh, this is a great question. I kind of spoke French before I moved. It was my mother's first language. She's Vietnamese by descent, and so I had the ear for it. But actually, before I was living in France, I was living in Berlin, germany. I don't speak any German. I never spoke any German during the four years that I lived there, unfortunately to my great shame. But I did start learning French when I realized I wanted to live in France instead, and part of my motivation to move here was completely founded in pastry and baking.

Debbie Levitt:

So yeah, Got it Definitely helps to know the local language.

Kristina Kennedy:

Definitely In France, for sure In other countries where there's a strong Anglo influence, I would say you don't have to learn the language to get by. It's, of course, better if you do. It's easier for integration. But, for example, in Berlin, 20% of the people that live there don't actually have a German passport, so the lingua franca really is English, and it takes an enormous amount of effort to learn german got it.

Debbie Levitt:

Uh, thanks again. I'm sure we have lots of curious listeners out there who might, might be poking you um, but then you also have your own company, I think, which is actioninsightsnet. Tell us about that. Uh, when did that start?

Kristina Kennedy:

yeah, so, like I said I I've been freelancing on and off for the last three years and I fully dipped my toes into freelancing after my layoff. I founded it with one of my closest friends and business partner, slash former manager, rachel Lynch, so it's a women-run research agency and we hope to hire more people going forward. We primarily focus on e-learning products right now. So we've done work with like I work personally. I work with SignLab, but we've also worked with Lingoda and Babbel, also as freelancers, not as full-time employees, and there's good and bad to being a freelancer. It's kind of hard to find clients and get a rhythm going with your work to make it consistent and predictable, but it's good if you want freedom and Time to figure out what you want to do in the future, which is my priority right now personally.

Debbie Levitt:

And I wanted to ask you just back to the patisserie kind of direction that that hopefully you'll be able to continue soon how would you say that that type of work or possible career matches your core personal qualities, who you are?

Kristina Kennedy:

This is such a great question it's difficult to answer. The way I feel when I'm baking and working in a bakery is alive and fully engaged with the work that I'm doing, which is something that I didn't really feel when I was working full time in tech. I mean, to an extent, being a researcher was always one of my dreams when I was a young kid. I was really interested in science and specifically psychology. But as you pointed out earlier, I'm from the US and when I got into a master's program there I couldn't actually afford to go. So tech and being a researcher was the next best option and I do really like the work.

Kristina Kennedy:

But I've noticed recently in the industry there's been kind of a shift from the user experience to the product experience and to me that seems to reflect a broader movement of how businesses begin to prioritize people's experiences versus the overall overarching business goals, which are often at odds with one another. And of course I understand that working within a business really requires balancing user needs with strategic priorities. But I can't help but wonder, as you move away from explicitly centering the user, do we also risk creating products that feel impersonal or bloated or antisocial? And it may sound a little bit stupid, but for me, pastry is exactly what people want and always makes people happy and is really focused on the customer. Even though the fields are very different, it's a lot more personal.

Debbie Levitt:

User-centric pastry.

Kristina Kennedy:

For sure.

Debbie Levitt:

So, thinking about some of the path that you've taken and including the the pastry direction that you started, because you said I think you had an internship and you're trying to go go back to school for it looking back, is there anything you feel was a mistake or a regret?

Kristina Kennedy:

yes, it's a lot of.

Kristina Kennedy:

It is based on French bureaucracy actually, and because I'm foreign and because I'm figuring out French bureaucracy by myself for the first time, a lot of things took a long time to happen, and so, in short, I'm lucky enough to have the support of France Travail, which is our unemployment office here in France, but I didn't know what options were available to me regarding a career change or retraining, and it took me months to start that process and figure it out for myself, which is part of why I'm not able to go to a pastry culinary program in this month, which is unfortunate. And I think my biggest regret is maybe not looking at that earlier on, or when I felt that that layoffs were coming, because I think a lot of people at companies that are not doing so well, at that time at least, can feel that the layoffs are coming and are starting to think about what's coming next, and I wasn't really in that headspace at that moment. I was a little bit all over the place, so I wish I had looked into that earlier.

Debbie Levitt:

That's a really interesting point and something I keep bumping into both in doing these shows and just gestures broadly at everything you know, life in general, which is that even when people are struggling a bit with their tech job, or they find it or they've been laid off, they still don't feel ready to think outside of that sphere and wonder if some or even all of their income could come from outside tech. You don't have to agree with that statement, but any thoughts on what I've just said?

Kristina Kennedy:

Yeah, I mean, for me it's almost like I had to grieve the loss of my tech career because, like I said earlier, it wasn't my number one choice. It wasn't what I was planning my whole life to do, but what it had promised me, or what I had thought it promised me when I started and I was a younger woman. It was stability, and that stability was more or less taken away from thousands of people in the last year or two years very rapidly, and I think a lot of people get stuck in the grieving cycle because it's like, oh, this thing that I was promised, with secure income and career progression, I don't have it anymore. It doesn't exist anymore. But I really I want it to exist and I don't know what else I can do. But there's so many options, truly so many options for people.

Debbie Levitt:

Yeah, thanks for that. And another great point, and I feel like people get caught up in that feeling of, well, this can't be the way it's going to continue being. Surely it's going to go back to all the good things that I happen to remember. Are you seeing that in yourself, or maybe some of your friends?

Kristina Kennedy:

I know so many unemployed people right now, not just UX professionals, but tech professionals at large and, yeah, I think we're all asking ourselves these questions. It's like this, quote unquote traditional career in tech isn't working out and we have to figure out something as fast as possible. I mean my own brother, my big brother, was laid off from his QA job a year ago and it took him five or six months to find another job, whereas that used to be, you know, you could just handpick your job two, three years ago. And I think he and I talk a lot about what's coming up next in the future for him and for me and for him. He wants to go be an electrician, because that's future-proof job, people are always going to need it and he's interested in it.

Debbie Levitt:

Yeah, that's been something I brought up in my Life After Tech book, which is that in many ways the stability we thought we had with tech was really with the services and things that we can't do without you talk about. Everybody will eat some pastries, they'll eat some bread. I think about a story my grandmother told me during. I said what was it like during the Great Depression, you know of the 1920s? And she said Our family were bakers, but we didn't sell, we ate.

Kristina Kennedy:

Oh, wow.

Debbie Levitt:

Yeah, so I think about some of the, the professions that have lasted, and I tend to think of electricians and plumbers. Sorry to have interrupted you, go ahead.

Kristina Kennedy:

Yeah, no, no, no. And to think of electricians and plumbers. Sorry to have interrupted you. Go ahead. Yeah, no, no, no Same. Actually I had a high school teacher tell us I went to an all girls high school. She told us to marry a plumber. She said they'll never be without work.

Debbie Levitt:

So true. And I remember, a few years ago, an up and coming UXer that I met on LinkedIn. We got to talking one day, I think, on a video call, just us, and I was curious and I said, well, can I ask what your husband does? And she was. She seemed so embarrassed at the time and she's like he's a plumber. And I was like what are you talking about? He's going to have work forever Like this is. He's made of gold, you know, and again, I'm not encouraging anyone to break any laws, but in many cases that's a put a cash in your pocket business.

Kristina Kennedy:

Totally, totally. Yeah, I think these professions that people feel shame about, I don't like want anyone to feel shame about, but like gardeners, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, those professions are so cool to me because you're making something with your hands and you have something to show for your work at the end of the day. And I can't tell you how many times I've done weeks, months of work, even to create a research report that's presented one time to a thousand people and then never talked about again never talked about again.

Debbie Levitt:

Yeah, but I'll still tell you about the time they came and fixed my water heater and my house had hot water again. Want to hear that story Like, yeah, it's almost funny, we've come full circle. We thought that our work was going to live forever on this golden podium and everyone was going to always talk about the amazing design or research work we did, and now we find that sometimes it disappears, like the the morning mist. Did you ever feel like that?

Kristina Kennedy:

yeah, you know, what's funny is that I had a colleague at a previous company I worked with who worked at twitter when it was still twitter and his team worked on 2fa and the the second Elon Musk, took over Twitter. All of that code was deleted. It was like years of work for this person. And he said to me, or when he was telling me this, I thought to myself like it is years of your life that can just be deleted like that in an instant. You know, and this is a company that's still in business. There's a lot more companies that fail, and this is a company that's still in business. There's a lot more companies that fail. And it really made me ask myself this is even before the layoff, before I knew that was even on the horizon for myself. How much of myself do I want to give to something that might not exist in three years, five years, ten years?

Debbie Levitt:

Spicy. It's a good question. Let me mirror that back to you if I can. How much of yourself should you give to some of these tech jobs when the uh appreciation isn't always there or whatever you feel like you're missing?

Kristina Kennedy:

I think think it's hard for me to say you should give a lot of yourself to that. I think that you have a duty to yourself, as well as the job that you have to stay true to your values and true to your needs, and I think for some people, their needs are to feed their family and to be the breadwinner of their household, and their work at a tech job is totally valid, um. But if you're pouring yourself into a company that isn't giving anything back to you or just taking as much as they can, then are you? Are you happy? Are you really being feeling fulfilled, or are they taking advantage of you?

Debbie Levitt:

Yeah, and it sounds like and maybe I'm being a little too judgmental, but it sounds like that has to do with the expectations you've built up about the outcomes or what happens next with your work or your report. I think if many of us could do a great job and give that report and then be like, well, they use it or they don't, and kind of brush it off our shoulders, maybe we'd feel better. I don't know. Maybe we'd feel worse, I don't know.

Kristina Kennedy:

Yeah, I think it really depends. I think that a lot of people thought about UX maybe still think about UX as the savior, the voice of the user for the company. And, like I talked about earlier, that's changing a little bit the voice of the user for the company and, like I talked about earlier, that's changing a little bit. But what I found when I was working in an organization is that it's one part of a system UX and also, as I said before, ux is often directly in conflict with business goals, because it's a long-term strategy, not a short-term strategy.

Kristina Kennedy:

You don't see returns very quickly, and there were so many times I thought to myself you know they're asking for research on something, but they already know what they're going to do, so why am I giving my energy to this? And then the answer was well, because they're paying you to, so you can. You can have that sit in a drawer forever, but you have to really figure out a balance between these two things. Like I'm doing this work, this body of work might be a little bit useless for now, but I'm getting paid for it, so let me just try and detach as much as possible and do it as well as I can.

Debbie Levitt:

Yeah, that can be healthy too, I think, while we all want to do a good job at our job, it's a transaction. You pay me, I do the thing you ask me to do, or the thing that needs to be done, or the thing I think we should do, depending upon how much autonomy I have. But it's a transaction and you can do an okay job and take your money and feel good. Yeah, yeah, exactly, option. Explore that optionally. I want to ask you a different question. I know a lot of our listeners are considering either leaving tech or maybe starting to add non-tech work areas or side things to whatever they're doing now. What advice would you give them?

Kristina Kennedy:

If you're working at a company and you're thinking about leaving tech, you're in a really great position because you're already in a secure spot. So you're free to explore the kinds of things that make you happy, and I would guess, or hope, that you already have some idea of what you like to do. For me, it was baking. So explore that side of yourself and start to invest more time in that, slowly, and you'll know when you're ready to make the leap, or the world will tell you when to make the leap, as it did for me. If you're starting to think about starting your own company, there's lots of blogs. Just read the blogs. You can cut that.

Debbie Levitt:

No, I like it, it's it's you know there. There is a lot of information out there, not, not. Not all of it's going to be great, but I think if you can read blogs, watch videos, even people who want to ask LLMs that's not my favorite way to go, but it certainly is going to distill what it's been trained on. And, of course, here I also want to give a plug to our upcoming conference, where we're going to be helping people with that as well. The Delta CX Hive conference is in late May 2025. You can find it at deltacxcom. We're going to help you with that as well. But, yeah, there's lots of advice out there and it's about picking through the good stuff. Any advice on how to tell if advice is good.

Kristina Kennedy:

Oh, that's a great question. I don't have specific advice for that, but I can say any get rich quick advice is not really get rich quick advice.

Debbie Levitt:

everything you do is going to take some amount of investment and and grind yeah, I love the ones that are like save a million dollars in three to five years and I'm like, wait, how do I save 500 a day?

Kristina Kennedy:

yeah, yeah, or a tick tock side hustle, easy passive income stuff. That stuff doesn't work, I'm fairly certain agree, I'm.

Debbie Levitt:

I'm gonna write an entire session about it for our upcoming conference. A passive income requires active effort oh yeah, that's great. I'm really interested in that hey one, come on over to the conference, um conference. I'll talk to you after the recording. So, yeah, thanks for a lot of that great advice, and let's make sure that people know how to get in touch with you. Whether they're just looking to connect or talk about trying some tragedies or or hire your company or have you bake for them, how can people get in touch?

Kristina Kennedy:

Yes, so I don't really have social media, so the best way to get in touch is via my LinkedIn, LinkedIn. com/ in/ KKENNE. Or you can reach out directly to me at ActionInsights. net.

Debbie Levitt:

Excellent.

Kristina Kennedy:

If anyone's considering making a career change or you're anxious about the future, you're not alone and I'm here if you need to talk.

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