This story is from Prattfolio’s feature “Pivot Points,” on Pratt alumni navigating moments of uncertainty, change, and transformation in their life and work.
Action oriented—that’s how Sofia Dumery describes herself, and one thing that led her to study economics as an undergrad. It had a multidisciplinary scope that toggled among her interests, from the historical and political angles to marketing, with good prospects for work right out of college. While those prospects quickly panned out, Dumery’s trajectory was anything but determined.
Her first job was with Kearney, the management consulting firm, in their financial institutions group in New York City. The projects were interesting and so were the people, and there was a lot to learn. “I call it my mini MBA,” she says.
After two years, though, Dumery knew something was missing. “In management consulting, you’re advising people, but they can take your advice or not take it, and [the consulting firm] charges a lot of money,” she says. “I just felt like, am I really creating that worth? Am I expanding the pie?”
Dumery thought back to an article she’d read in college, about people in developing countries who created wheelchairs using repurposed materials like bike parts, training a local workforce, selling the product, and boosting the local economy. “I just thought that was beautiful,” she says. “I thought, that’s what I want to do. I want to do that kind of development.”
Knowing just how was a bit murkier. But when a friend who was studying engineering told Dumery about a class in ergonomics she was taking, it piqued Dumery’s interest. “She said, we design things like an iron—you figure out how to hold it and how it’s balanced in your hand,” Dumery remembers. “It applies to anything. Your toothbrush, your car. I was like, wow. I don’t even know what this field is.”
“Economics was multidisciplinary. Design is even more so. It opened up this beautiful world, and the more you put into it, the more connections you can make.”
The way design could quickly become reality was also attractive. “You could design something that’s out in the market next year. I thought I’d like the fast pace of that, and then I started exploring,” Dumery says, and then she found Pratt. “What attracted me to Pratt was they seemed open to taking people with different backgrounds—there was an openness that I thought was exciting.”
Dumery had always been drawing and making (before economics, she was studying architecture), and she built a portfolio with work she’d made in college and at evening drawing classes she was taking at the Art Students League on 57th Street.
In the graduate industrial design program at Pratt, she saw parallels to her previous experience and also new opportunities: “Economics was multidisciplinary. Design is even more so. You have the visuals, and you can think about the marketing angle, and you can think about innovation and material science. It opened up this beautiful world, and the more you put into it, the more connections you can make. You were given the breadth, the area to explore.” Also, she says, “Pratt was fun. . . It was hard, but it was like I finally found what I loved.”
The year she graduated, 1998, it was a tough market, but “the career center was phenomenal,” she says. Dumery also made connections, “talking to anyone and everyone.” It brought her to some spaces where she gradually uncovered what she wanted to do. She did a stint in medical equipment, where she discovered she wanted to be working more with color and visuals. She worked for a housewares consultancy, with a few other Pratt alumni, but while it helped hone her design skills, she found a similar remove to that she’d felt in her first job—with clients who might take or leave a design.
The next pivot came as a bit of a fluke, the result of Dumery’s networking combined with being in the right place at the right time. It was around the holidays after 9/11, and her design consulting hours had been reduced in the economic downturn. She called on her network from Pratt. Then, at a New Year’s Eve party, a Pratt friend who was working at Crayola met an editor from a publishing house. When she mentioned she was a designer, the editor said, “We need a designer!” And fast—the publisher had landed a deal with a major retailer to sell a line of children’s products based on an author’s work at a major retailer, and now needed the specs to make it happen. The friend recommended Dumery, and she almost instantly got the job.
Advice from the field: Owning your voice
“I questioned myself a little bit. My drawing skills were good, but they weren’t flashy. . . . What really helped me was thinking about being a designer like being a musician. There are so many bands. There are so many different types of music. You just have to find your audience. At some point this thought popped into my head: You don’t have to be Taylor Swift. You just have to be your indie band. And as long as you find the audience for your indie band, you will have success.”
This would be Dumery’s entry to toys, which has been her focus now for more than 20 years, 14 with her current company, a household name for caregivers of young children: Melissa & Doug. Dumery joined the company at a pivotal moment and played a key role in driving its expansion by leading the design team—contributions that have propelled her to her current role as senior vice president of design.
The company was recently acquired by Spin Master, the fourth largest toy company in the world after Lego, Hasbro, and Mattel, and Dumery is in the midst of another, more subtle transition: “I feel like I’ve changed jobs without changing jobs,” she says. “It’s a much bigger company, more exposure, different matrix. They have a huge inventor network that we’ve been able to tap into. It’s been learning from their deep marketing knowhow, their incredible engineering/manufacturing base, and their vast talent network, all the while staying true to Melissa & Doug’s mission of creating open-ended toys. As the head of design, it’s to make sure that that carries through.”
When asked what’s inspiring her this year, Dumery says it’s the inventors, and also the mentee that she connected with through Pratt’s Young Alumni Mentorship Program: “She’s amazing, just the new thinking and what’s going on now in design that’s very cutting-edge.”
It all reinforces what Dumery has learned along the way: “There are so many variables within design, and so many different design jobs,” she says. “Whether you are working for a manufacturer that has a vision that you’re executing, or you’re creating a vision, or you’re working on some niche innovation. You don’t know where that path is going to go, so be open. It’s OK to explore.”
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