I have so many favorite memories of Ilmo – from a team Tropical Thursday hang out over video call where an apricot fell on him from his tree (and of course he made some Newton joke about gravity proven via apricot instead of apple haha), to gvc video calls where he got to meet our new babies! He was so excited, and clearly a loving dad. He was so proud of Cal too, and would tell me stories: from his legos he built that lived behind Ilmo in his video calls, to the 4th grade “mission project” (and his thoughts on it!). But, the story that stands out most for me is when they lived in the UK and Cal had a “DJ activity station” – he said that before Cal could even talk, he swears he had on video a time where Cal went “HIT IT!!!” and then started his “baby DJ set.” His advice to me when I had my baby is to make sure that I back everything up to the cloud or make sure that my devices are compatible because he regretted not holding onto that video since it made him smile so much.

Ilmo was an awesome colleague, full of light, laughter, kindness, and it was an honor to work with him. One of the last things we chatted about is how small the space of UX for ML/AI is, and how we hope we overlap on another team soon since we both liked working together. Thank you Ilmo for bringing kindness and joy to my work, and I hope to bring that joy forward in my future work.

michelle carney