How I Work: Jaime Lopez, Chief Design and Marketing Officer, Flatiron Health
Jaime Lopez balances meetings with focused work hours. Design by Barbara Cadorna.
As Flatiron Health’s Chief Design and Marketing Officer, Jamie Lopez has a unique role. She leads teams that both solve for the tech burden of cancer care as well as create its brand identity. As the company accelerates its mission to improve and extend lives impacted by cancer, Lopez and team have rebranded Flatiron Health with an eye towards the present and future. Anchoring on the transformational power of prisms, the bright, bold identity reflects the many facets of their work, including the precision of real-world evidence, the generous clinicians at the heart of care, the complexity of clinical research, and their talented teams around the globe.
Here, the Los Angeles-based Lopez shares how she works. It includes turning her backhouse into a new studio space, listening to a wide range of music (and making playlists for team members), as well as the running list of side projects she and her wife are working on.
Jaime Lopez dialed-in her creative home setup to suit her style. Images c/o Jaime Lopez.
Rise and Shine
I’m a new parent to a wonderful one-year-old daughter, Josie, so while my mornings were a moving target for a while, they’ve sort of fallen into a good rhythm lately. A few mornings a week I wake up early and sneak out for a workout at a very cute and queer local gym that I love. Other mornings I eat breakfast and hang out with the fam. On some days I’ll have 5 a.m. meetings with my East Coast teammates. This all means I need to be pretty intentional with getting a view into the week and do a lot more planning to make sure I’m ready for whichever type of day is ahead.
Work Uniform
Moving back to California and getting a little older has helped me land on core essentials that I know work for me. When I was in NYC there was an inherent pull to continually update my wardrobe and be on top of trends. For better or worse, LA will always be more of an easy-breezy staples kind of city, and, as a native, that will always feel most natural to me. But I do like variety. The whole ‘designer-that-wears-the-same-thing-every-day thing’ has never been my vibe. I do like some range, but like any good design problem, the constraints are what’s most helpful.
How I Structure My Day
As my work evolved, I fell into the trap of allowing my calendar to get utterly stacked with 30-minute meetings. And while some of that is productive and part of my job, I’ve been really intentional about getting focused work blocks built into my schedule. I’ve been pleasantly surprised that as I get deeper into my CDMO role, I have more hands-on projects. I need time to do those well and iterate. So my days are: meetings, work blocks, and a hard cut-off in the late afternoon to get some playtime with Josie. Then I’ll wrap-up a few things in the evening after she's gone to sleep.
Playlist Favorites
One of the best benefits of fighting for work blocks in my day is getting time for focused work with headphones on. One of my true joys in life. Music is my first love and what got me into design, and my musical interest is vast. I used to design flyers for my band’s shows, and one day a friend mentioned that I could make that design work into a career. Right now, I’m listening to Beyoncé’s Renaissance, Lil Nas X, Anitta, Boygenius, The Who, Alexis Ffrench, and then I’ll listen to My Chemical Romance or Carly Rae Jepsen because it’s all just so good. I like the new Jonas Brothers’ song “Waffle House”. I’m genuinely hard-pressed to think of music that doesn’t have something great about it. I guess that’s love! I also make playlists for my teammates on the Exec Team. That’s something I never expected to be in my future back when I was a young punk.
Lopez’s office is a great little backhouse.
Tools of the Trade
About a year ago I finally dialed-in my home setup. I got a good standing desk, a Fluidstance board, a big second monitor, and a quality webcam. I realized that a big perk of working remotely is that you can move around a lot while you work. When I’m in the office, I’m in hours of meetings sitting in one place. My workspace is definitely made for movement and flowing through my work. I also may have finally landed on my forever sketchbook. I recently picked up the Edge A5 from a company called Hanaduri run by twin sisters in Seoul. It’s so good. Great size, amazing paper, just the right amount of features, and doesn’t feel too precious. Pens and pencils are a whole other beast, and my wife will tell you that I’m hopelessly addicted. If you’re in NYC, go to Good For the Study on Mulberry and spend way too much money on pencils.
Dream Studio
Growing up, my house was tiny. I never really had my own space until my brother turned our ratty old garage into a teenage haven. We painted on the walls and I got a used, old drafting table for “my” corner. It turned into this zone of expression and exploration. My office is now a great little backhouse and it’s sort of an echo of that same thing. I have design books all around me, tools to make stuff, guitars, and it’s a little unfinished and surrounded by nature. It’s a space that has that same air of possibility. Feels free.
One Unique Thing About My Work Process
I do these abstract grid sketches when I’m listening really closely to a presentation or in big meetings. There’s weirdly something about it that helps me process the info. I’m sure there’s a name for this. And I’m guessing that most of my business counterparts think I’m doing the total opposite and not listening at all, so if you’re reading this please know that I really do care about your quarterly business review!
Mantra
Earn the dream. I never in my wildest dreams could have envisioned the life I have, the work I get to do, and the great people I get to do it with. It probably sounds saccharine but the best thing I can think to do with this incredible luck is to earn it every day.
My Bright Idea that Never Saw the Light of Day
My wife and I have a running list of “$40k ideas”. Things that seem world-changing for the first six hours and then fall somewhere between un-funded shark tank pitch and patent infringement.
To-Do List Item That Keeps Me Up At Night
I’ve been fortunate in my career to take a lot of leaps forward, but the flipside of that is I’m often just out of my depth. It’s a good thing, but not always comfortable. If something’s keeping me up at night it’s usually that I’m trying to learn a big chunk of new skills. I often have a stack of books next to my bed that’s a reference library for whatever space I’m trying to figure out.
If you’d like to read more from Creative Factor, subscribe to our newsletter. Or looking to tell your brand story? Introducing Creative Factor’s Storytelling Studio.
Plus, more great reads right this way…
