ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Before you build the solution, how well do you understand the problem and the person you are trying to help?
That question runs through this episode of the TEN Podcast’s Nebraska Women in Tech Summit Special Series with Audrey Crane, Partner at DesignMap and a speaker at the 2026 Nebraska Women in Tech Summit.
Audrey’s path into technology started with an unusual combination: theater and pure mathematics.
That combination helped her stand out early in her career and eventually led her to Netscape during a defining period in Silicon Valley. There, she discovered product design as a field that brought together creativity, empathy, technology and problem-solving.
Today, Audrey is a Partner at DesignMap, a digital product strategy and design firm approaching its 20th anniversary. She has worked with startups and major technology companies including Salesforce and Cisco, and she has also taught design thinking at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In this conversation with LaShonna Dorsey and guest co-host Jessica Olsen, Ed.D., Senior Data Privacy Analyst in AI Compliance at Kiewit, Audrey talks about why divergent thinking matters, especially as new tools make it easier to move quickly from an idea to execution.
But speed is not the same thing as insight.
Audrey shares why great product strategy starts with understanding the people behind the workflow, why customers may need something very different from what a team initially assumes, and why different backgrounds and perspectives can lead to better technology.
She also shares what brought her to Nebraska, what surprised her about the technology community here, and the connections she made through the Nebraska Women in Tech Summit.
This episode is a reminder that as the tools change, curiosity, creativity, empathy and the ability to ask better questions still matter.
The 2027 Nebraska Women in Tech Summit returns April 2, 2027, at Kiewit in La Vista. Learn more: Women in Tech Summit - Aksarben Foundation
