Lizz Westman

‘I must have been really young cuz I remember…I have a freaky memory, like I was a creepy little white kid, umm, I was so creepy. I tried to sabotage my parents moving to the suburbs for two years and I would and I would like put little like cards that were like just like: “Don’t…don’t buy this house” and I would like…this is like peak Children of the Corn era and I had bright white hair and I would literally look at them with my big ass blue eyes be like:\N”I come with the house.”

Lizz Westman is an IT design and production strategy consultant based in Portland, Oregon, and has two decades of experience working on The Information SuperhighwayTM. She has helped shape how online content and digital media interacts with its users – for better and for worse – since the very early web 1.0 days and always with the intent to make room for others. A former journalist and satirist, her voice and work have been featured on CBS News, ABC, Comedy Central, G4, IFC, and was openly mocked by South Park twice. Lizz went full nerd about a decade ago in part because her attempts to make room for others were not very well received in major entertainment and news venues and now works at making infrastructure, design, content, and production styles less obnoxious, aggravating, and tedious for those involved. And regardless of work titles or places, Lizz spends most of her time drawing together connections in our society and culture, especially at the intersections and points of reference where history, science, and storytelling tend to meet. And as the last elected student chairperson of Grinnell College’s American Studies department, she is adamant about working on dismantling and deconstructing the myriad of racist, self-serving, and overtly harmful myths, half-truths, and blatant lies that weave the tattered fabric of this farce of a democracy has been built upon. Lizz is vehemently pro-metric and would love to dismantle even more of her own house in a further attempt to decolonize more and more of the shared and sacred spaces she is honored to be a part of – even as or if she is pointing out the flaws and needs for improvement immediately.