Nova Wehman-Brown

Nova Wehman-Brown (she/her) is a queer femme writer, strategist, community builder, and parent who has spent nearly three decades helping people and organizations make better, more human-centered decisions. As a longtime UX (User Experience) and product design leader in both the private and public technology sectors, she has dedicated her career to making complex systems more equitable and accessible for everyone.

Born and raised in the creative chaos of the San Francisco Bay Area, Nova grew up believing that care and community are acts of resistance. She lived outside the US in France and pre-Putin Russia for many years. Her work—whether in community-centered technology, design strategy, or arts-based mutual aid—centers around helping people navigate uncertainty with empathy and clarity.

In Should I Stay or Should I Go, Nova draws on her experience in design thinking, people-centered tool building, and social justice to help guide readers through one of the most difficult questions of our time: whether to build a life within a country sliding toward authoritarianism or imagine a new one elsewhere.

Nova lives with her partner and co-author Grover Wehman-Brown and her 2 amazing children, splitting her time between Massachusetts and the Netherlands.