Author, public speaker, and coach for managers and leaders across the tech industry.
Blog Posts
Swanson -> Hogan
tl;dr: My given name is Lara Callender Hogan. A while ago, I got married, and changed my name to Lara Callender Swanson. I was divorced two years ago, and have recently decided to go back to Hogan. I still answer to “SWANSON!” :) read more
Modeling advocacy
Note: this post was written by my father, Bill Hogan. I asked him to share his thoughts on how he approached parenting two daughters, given that we ended up well-equipped to confront sexism and other tough challenges for young women in our respective industries. Dad focused on a particularly great anecdote from our childhood, which I heard about a few years later. For me, hearing how he gracefully challenged sexist attitudes modeled how important it is to stand up for what’s right, regardless of how deaf those ears may be. My parents gave my sister and me the strength and tools we needed to stay strong in our careers, and to support others in doing the same. read more
Quantifying the book writing process: my first draft
The first draft of Designing for Performance is done! There is still a ton left to do: get feedback from reviewers, incorporate the feedback, then go through all of the publishing steps like proofreading, getting the figures redrawn, etc. But in this brief pause in the process as I wait for reviewers to take a look, I decided to analyze the first draft writing process, inspired by Ilya Grigorik’s retrospective on his own writing process. read more
On unsolicited criticism
I had a new experience a few weeks ago when I was speaking at Velocity. I gave a keynote to 2,000 people; throughout the following day, a half-dozen strangers came up to me to supply unsolicited criticism of my presentation tone. read more
My presentation workflow and challenges
I was asked to write about my presentation-creation process the other day on Twitter. I thought this was really interesting – I would love to know how other people approach developing, editing and improving on their presentations and public speaking skills! So here’s my whole process, including what I’m really working hard to improve upon. read more
Live tweeting from Keynote
A version of this post originally appeared here. It’s now updated with more recent resources! read more
We’re all equally drenched
I was recently reminded of a big reason why I love working at Etsy. read more
There’s nothing “pink” about interviews at Etsy
There’s been a bunch of really great, thoughtful responses to this Forbes.com article by Meghan Casserly on hiring practices at Etsy. The crux of what’s wrong with that article, to me, was summed up nicely by my coworker Rafe Colburn: read more
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