I was Ilmo’s first manager at Facebook. When Ilmo started working at Facebook, I was told by my boss at that time that I had to “talk to this brilliant guy” and see if I can hire him into my team. I immediately knew Ilmo would not only be good at this role, but would add so much fun and warmth to our team. Every single one-on-one meeting I had with him, easy ones, hard ones, was one where I left energized. But the memory that sticks out that summarizes the sprit Ilmo brought to work is the time with the rubber hand.

At the time, our desks were not too far from the executives, and one late Friday afternoon (long after most people have gone to happy hour and/or home), I remember Ilmo walking over to my desk, out of blue, holding a cardboard box, and a rubber forearm. He then proceeded create the rubber hand / visual illusion experiment right there at my desk, with the security detail of the executives looking truly puzzled about what was happening. I honestly don’t remember much about the experiment but what I remember is the out-of-blue distraction I so needed at the very end of a long week. Since then I often wondered what made him come to his manager’s desk with the rubber arm and the cardboard box that day. If I were to guess, Ilmo knew that whatever I was doing at that exhausted state was less productive than some fun human interaction. As he often was, he was right.

Funda Kivran-Swaine