Be comfortable being uncomfortable:
Reflections from the MS SDM Peer-to-Peer Panel

Starting a new academic year invites fresh questions about what strategic design looks like in practice. We opened the semester with a Peer-to-Peer Panel designed to meet those questions head on, pairing an opening conversation with Professor Edward Cardimona with a student panel that traced real paths through the first year of MS Strategic Design and Management.

The brief for the session was simple, be specific, be honest, and share what actually helped. What emerged was a clear through line, growth follows discomfort, and strategic design is a practice you build by showing up, testing, and iterating with others.

How we structured the session

We began with a focused conversation with Professor Cardimona on bridging creativity with business. He underscored a mindset that travels across projects and roles, stay open, adapt to context, and keep learning through action. We then moved into a moderated panel featuring five MS SDM students who spoke from distinct vantage points, early-stage startups, large organizations, independent ventures, and campus roles. A short audience Q&A and informal mixer closed the afternoon.

Five vantage points, oneshared muscle

Ritu Pant described building Crafted, a craft tourism venture shaped through the Impact Entrepreneurship Fellowship. Her prompt to the room was to keep a broad mind, treat community partners as co-creators, and iterate in the field. Growth takes rigor and regular testing, not just inspiration.

Meenu Jain compared founding a fashion startup with interning in Amazon Operations. At a startup she didn’t have much room for error and moved as a close-knit team, inside a large system she learned to tailor communication to different stakeholders and to earn trust quickly. Her takeaway was clear, leaning into uncomfortable situations is where you build capacity.

Nakshi Shah mapped a path from architecture to branding to experience strategy at BCG BrightHouse. The thread was storytelling and facilitation across disciplines. Her advice was to embrace being a beginner, speak up, read the culture of the room, and let varied experiences compound into strategy.

Yash Sonwaney shared how a startup environment accelerated experimentation. With a small, AI-forward team he prototyped and deployed ideas fast, from partnership concepts to service refinements. His point for strategic designers, use AI to lower the cost and time of testing early, then bring systems thinking to what should scale.

Ren Hasuda reflected on a career that moved from advertising across Japan and China to a community-building role at The New School. Her focus is creating supportive spaces for international and local students, a reminder that strategic design includes care work, communication, and peer networks.

Across these stories, a few habits kept repeating, practice your pitch in different rooms, build muscle by attending events and asking questions, and match your message to the people in front of you. The form may change, the discipline of showing up does not.

What Professor Cardimona reminded us

Professor Cardimona framed strategic design as a bridge between creative exploration and business outcomes. He challenged us to stay adaptable, ground ideas in evidence, and keep experimenting. The call was not to chase perfection, it was to build momentum and learn in public. His biggest advice to the students was,’be comfortable being uncomfortable.’

Quick practical takeaways:

• Treat discomfort as training: speak at events, ask for feedback, and iterate in short cycles. 
• Adapt your communication: tailor a three minute version of your idea for associates, managers, and directors, each will listen for different signals. 
• Prototype with purpose: use lightweight tools, including AI, to test assumptions early, then bring structure to what works. 
• Read the culture: every team has a cadence and language, learn it, then contribute to it.
  

Co-create with stakeholders: When your work touches communities, design the relationship, not only the deliverable.
Thank you to Professor Edward Cardimona for the guidance and generosity throughout the session. Thank you to our panelists, Ritu, Meenu, Nakshi, Yash, and Ren, for sharing candidly and making space for first-year voices. Deep appreciation to Nyasia Thomas for steering operations and logistics with care. And thank you to everyone who joined, asked questions, and stayed to connect.

What comes next

This panel is the start of a year of conversations that sharpen practice. We will continue with alumni talks, workshops that define what strategic design means across BBA and MS, and more sessions that bring students, faculty, and partners into the same room. If you have ideas or feedback for future programs, we would love to hear from you.

MS SDM Events and Communications, School of Design Strategies, Parsons School of Design.