Episode 13: That’s Special (with Betsy Kniffen)

My guest this week is Betsy Kniffen. Betsy is the Project Director at Willow Research, the market research firm we both work for. She’s been a colleague and a friend for 10 years, and she has a clear-eyed, no-nonsense approach to her life and work that I absolutely prize. She’s also the mother of the sweetest two-year-old boy, and, as you’ll hear in a few moments, she raises being ‘normal” to a form of lived art. Betsy is also an artist and a creator of gorgeous doodles…one year for Christmas, she made calendars of her designs that we could color in. The lines and shapes were so interesting, I couldn’t bring myself to do it…I wanted to keep it exactly so.

Today, Betsy and I are talking about the beauty that can be found in efficiency and order, how people are always more complex than they seem, and appreciating really great design work in very ordinary places.

A hammock in LaPorte, IN. It just looks like a bridge.