Making Humans More Human

It’s been a long time since I put myself out there thinking about the future. For most of my 20+ year career, I’ve speculated on the future and commented on trends while crafting thought leadership that delivered engagement and leads.

After living in the extreme present through my daughter’s cardiac condition and as a StrengthsFinder Futurist, I miss imagining what’s next.

In the early years of her diagnosis, I wished someone would create a podcast for families navigating my daughter's rare condition. Finally, as she got more stable, I grabbed the microphone and made it happen. What started as an act of advocacy became a lesson in what it means to create possibility when certainty isn't available.

Since launching Navigating PVS, the podcast has been listened to more than 1,000 times across platforms and has found an unexpected audience among clinicians, researchers, and others working to improve outcomes for patients and families.

While I am leery of creating content that doesn’t garner engagement, I was recently inspired and I’m taking that leap of faith again today.

Making Humans More Human

When I was in the agency space in the early 2010s, human-centered design was more than a trending topic. While companies like IDEO and functions like UX weren’t new, we saw increasing traction in client conversations and throughout the agency’s scope of work.

We hired, we upskilled, we invested in more research to deliver better design with humans at the center. We thought it was about designing better products and services.

But maybe we missed the most critical question: could we make humans more human?

Going Upstream

Just last month, we saw a major signal that academia is shifting toward that mission. Boston University’s College of Communication launched its first dedicated human centered design (HCD) program within its Department of Mass Communication, Advertising and Public Relations. Decades after the idea of human centered design first appeared.

Perhaps this shift was best explained by a recently released TED conversation titled “Why the Future is Human … Plus AI” with psychotherapist Esther Perel and Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy and TED board member.

Perel and Khan share incredibly rich perspectives, and the excitement and engagement between them is enjoyable. It's a masterclass in thoughtful exchange, and it’s definitely worth the 20-minute view time (or faster if you like listening to squirrels at my husband’s desired playback speed!).

What starts with discussing the shift to “mastery based education” focused on what you know vs. how long you sat in a chair (you don’t get to be an expert violinist through osmosis), quickly pivots into a discussion of the skills that make us human. And how AI is shifting the reality.

“Relationship skills and relational intelligence, even in the workplace, [have] always been considered soft skills,” says Perel. “Soft skills used to be seen as feminine skills, and feminine skills are often highly regarded in principal and disregarded in reality ... that is fundamentally changing now.”

Khan adds that as he talks to employers, they’re now calling them durable skills: communication, collaboration, creativity, listening, and relationship skills. “These are human skills,” he adds and wisely points to them being considered the new vocational training.

I’m seeing that play out in my own conversations as I’ve explored full-time and freelance engagements where I've enjoyed lengthy discussions around the value of listening and my experiences creating feedback loops.

Living with Uncertainty

The TED conversation ends on a topic close to my heart: uncertainty. Perel talks about the loss of mechanisms like religion to help us deal with the ethical and existential dilemmas of our lives.

Khan goes on to point out that for most of human history, we dealt with much heavier uncertainties and offers the example of people potentially accepting their child might not live until they’re five years old. “Most of those things aren’t our concerns,” he concludes.

He’s right. For most people. I’m not those people.

While my example as a medical parent is extreme, I think more of us will need to balance possibility and probability. That tension is something I’m exploring as I think about the future.

I’ll be thinking about that as I watch The Good Place for the fourth time through, providing the comfortable laughs one enjoys while engaging in the known. And exploring the idea that we’re all just trying to be the best versions of ourselves through this moment in time where we are called upon to lean into our humanity.

This post was originally published on LinkedIn in October 2026.