Jake Kahana designs
products, brands, and experiences.
He is currently looking for full-time work in product design leadership.
He is the design c0-founder of Caveday, a community built around deep work. Most recently he led the redesign of the customer dashboard and onboarding experience. In its 8 years as a company, he also designed the website, brand, and over a dozen workshops.
He’s spent nearly a decade building products and leading design teams for companies like Johnson&Johnson, MetLife and Chase Bank. He’s had the privilege of creating social impact experiences for Selma Online, The White House and Facebook. And he’s designed the brands and products of early-stage startups like Simply Home, Goodie, and Palabra.
Before that, he spent 8 years in advertising as a creative director and art director at 72andSunny and DeutschLA launching brands like Samsung Mobile, HTC, and Skylanders.
See design work here →Teaching and Facilitation
As a founding US faculty member at The School of Life, Jake regularly facilitates workshops for corporate teams on topics of emotional intelligence. He’s led offsite and workshops for teams at The LA Phil, URBY, Target, Day 1 Agency, NYTimes, Spotify and over a dozen others.
Previously, he’s been an adjunct professor teaching design, writing, and creative process courses at City College of NY in their graduate branding program, Parsons School of Design, Miami Ad School, OTIS College of Art and Design and 72U.
Speaking
He’s also had the fortune of giving talks all over the world. He talks about creative process, personal projects, productivity, career planning, and more. Most recently, Jake gave a talk on procrastination at ETC conference in Minneapolis in August 2024.
see a list of SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS herE →Now
Currently he lives in South Orange, NJ with his wife and two kids. For a more up-to-date update, see what he’s up to now.
Writing
Since December 2018, he has written monthly editions of The Email Refrigerator. He chooses a theme and writes short essays, poems, and curate art on the topic. Sort of like a podcast in your inbox.
He also writes about improving our work, energy, and attention for Caveday’s blog and newsletter. For people like you, he writes articles about community, purpose, and creative process. He says he’s not on substack because he wants to keep his art and moneymaking separate. For now.
Fine Art
Speaking of art, Jake is a classically trained painter and illustrator. He’s held an artist residency in Greece, and won grants here in the States including one to create VR films for senior citizens.
A series of political portraits he painted made the news and one of his personal favorite projects is 100 of his favorite albums in 100 days.
He spends a lot of time documenting his life through projects like The List Maps, People In My Life, and The Life Reader.
See More personal projects→If you want to book him for freelance work or talk about full-time work,
send an email.
If you also wanted advice, a new friend, travel recommendations in Crete, Bangkok or Tel Aviv, hear about wedding crashing stories, ask about a talk or workshop at your org, or anything else, really…
you too can email him.
jakekahana [at] gmail [dot] com
The least creepy ways to follow him:
Press Featuring My Work
ABC News, AdAge, AdWeek, Billboard, Business Insider, CBS News, CNBC, CNet, CNN, FastCo, Forbes, Fox News, Gizmodo, Huffington Post, Mashable, NY Times, LA Times, NBC News, NPR, Politico, Reddit (Top 10), Rolling Stone, Time, The Today Show, The Tonight Show, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Wired