Evan Samek
I delight in bringing the insights of learning theory and science into how we consider the people, tools, and systems of our lives. I do this through my parallel work in the fields of both education (mostly for children) and the future of work (mostly for adults).
Day-to-day I am a product manager at Fin, where we are turning rich data event streams into comprehensive, real-time insights for customer-facing operations teams to tackle the challenge of continuous improvement. If you want to learn more for your team, get in touch.
Learning is one of the universal human experiences. I explore the various ways theorists and scientists describe how our minds work, especially the dynamics of collaborative mastery and the mechanics of active, prolonged engagement while solving tough challenges. Many theorists and practitioners inspire my work, including Carl Bereiter, Kieran Egan, Lev Vygotsky, Howard Gardner, Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, and the Reggio Emilia preschools in Italy.
People are at the heart of my work, and I'm dedicated to helping as many people as I can to discover their underlying purpose and unlock their own creative potential. I'm fascinated by how each one of the over seven billion people on this planet have their own unique set of experiences, hopes, desires, and beliefs. Yet we as humans are incredibly similar in how we seek meaning through experiences of connection, autonomy, and competence through our work.
Tools invented to augment existing and grant entirely new abilities are a central part of how humans became such a dominant species. Our tools are increasingly digital, and as a result are now being used at a level of scale and ubiquity in human life than ever before experienced. I believe product ownership - being at the center of this conversation about the design and functionality of our tools - is a high leverage place to have a overwhelmingly positive impact on society.
Systems reflect the broader context in which people and tools interact. Whether the organizational design of our companies, knowledge management processes, broader cultures of learning, or other standardized sets of expectations and protocols, our systems must be designed to unlock the latent potential of our people and our tools. This is an often overlooked element of product ownership - and a critical part in realizing the transformative nature of our tools.