Nav Pawera🇸🇬

About Nav Pawera

Head of Design at Jiva Ag

I live in Singapore with my little family. Here I spend my time building and running design teams across the region and advising design studios. I ran a design studio for most of my time in Singapore and now head a design team across Singapore, India and Indonesia.

I also cycle wherever and whenever I can! 🚴🏽

Born in India, I spent 4 years freezing in Norway before moving to Singapore.

——

MY DESIGN JOURNEY

When I moved to Singapore in 2010, I had been a Product Manager at Opera in Norway, spoken at conferences in 20 countries and had decided to move my career to focus on design.

Over the first 3 years here, I pushed and pulled to work on design projects — which led me to take over a Singapore based design & dev studio. I ran that studio for the next 6 years, growing the business while working with some of the biggest clients in Singapore (Mercedes, Audi, Scoot, Singtel, Tupperware, NEA to name a few). I even got to open and run a new office in Vietnam — which was great fun!

I then joined the ex-IDEO team in Singapore to work on some large scale ecosystem/service design projects focussed on designing the future of healthcare.

I now lead design at a profit for purpose where we are creating services towards providing a better life for farmers in developing countries.

——

TALK TO ME IF THIS RESONATES WITH YOU

I grew up in India and design wasn't really a "career option". So over the last 2 decades, I've had to find and make my own way here. For 5 years now, I've been sharing my experiences to help designers who're starting out in their careers. I can talk about design for hours, but I especially like to talk about things that designers don't talk about much. For instance…

• Career: How does one grow as a designer — what does that even mean? What does it take to progress in your design career? Which company or consultancy should I work for?

• Learning: What skills/tools should I be learning & how? Does a designer need an MBA? What should I learn about besides UI/UX/Research/etc…

• Salaries: How much should I be paid? How does one negotiate salaries? Should I be saving?

Expertise

What mentees say

“Nav was kind to give me a perspective from the view of someone who is more experienced in the creative industry, which was very eye-opening. It was a very helpful conversation. He speaks in a really warm and positive way, it was a very nice session.”

“Nav has great and diverse experience within the design industry. He was able to help me break down the concepts and helped me achieve clarity on my next steps. I am super thankful to have spoken to Nav and I recommend that you do too!”

“I had a delightful time speaking with Nav. Nav is an experienced designer with vast knowledge of the design landscape in Singapore / APAC. We talked about our experience having both been working and living in Singapore for the past decade. Nav also offered his insights on being a product designer and how to find my next step in career. Thanks for your wisdom Nav!”