Grand Design

“Begin with the end in mind.”

Like many former Washburn football players, Terell Cobb often thinks about that saying from his former coach, Craig Schurig.

After Cobb’s collegiate eligibility concluded in storybook fashion, with an MIAA title and a trip to the 2005 NCAA Division II playoffs, he found himself at a crossroads. He spent three
months training in Topeka for an NFL tryout, only to be told that at 6-foot, he was too short. His end goal probably needed to change.

“That gave me an option. I could either finish my art degree or continue to pursue football with another tryout for a team in the Canadian Football League,” he said. “I knew design was going to be the best possible path for me.”

Cobb, ba ’06, made his decision with the end in mind, but even he couldn’t have foreseen the career success that followed. The Florida native has spent the past six years climbing the ranks at Microsoft, one of the world’s largest employers. His current role is design lead for Microsoft Dataverse, a cloud-based storage and management platform for business data. The Dataverse supports areas like the Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Copilot Studio.

“It’s a chance for me to lead teams by creating experiences that drive impact across various data management initiatives,” he said, “which means I’m doing a lot of arguing and advocating during the day to make sure the design and experiences are happening in ways that are delightful to our users.”

Before Microsoft, Cobb did design work for other global brands like FedEx and Capital One. But his artistic ascent almost never even happened. Cobb was a psychology major until the middle of his senior year, when a work-study job allowed him to monitor the computer lab in Washburn’s Art Building. He was amazed by the work students were doing.

“I began to understand, ‘Wow, I can make what I draw move? That’s a new concept to me,’” Cobb said. “After meeting with Brian House, I decided to become an art major.”

Cobb had just seven art credit hours at the time. House, then a Washburn art professor, and Marguerite Perret, now in her 22nd year at Washburn, were instrumental in helping him complete his degree. But graduating was just the beginning. The grind that followed is enough to make even an NFL veteran sweat.

“I earned my way into design,” he said. “My schedule every day was wake up at 3 a.m., go to FedEx Ground and unload trucks until 8, then go work at Target on Wanamaker every morning at 9. I’d leave there to work at the Topeka Youth Project Monday through Thursday, and that gave me the opportunity to do an internship at Jones Huyett Partners.”

He landed his first “real” job designing magazines at Ogden Publications in Topeka, then designed as webmaster for South Florida Credit Union in Miami. A connection there brought him to FedEx and then Capital One. He joined Microsoft in 2019, building enterprise sales solutions and traveling the world to help provide mobile service to people without access to wireless internet. He’s led project operations teams and order management teams, traveled to Denmark for a project related to sustainability and now enjoys a role that makes use of all his talents.

“It’s been an amazing experience,” Cobb said. “I get to use my skills of being a product manager, and the design piece of it to brings it all together.”

That Cobb has flourished professionally comes as no surprise to his mentors at Washburn.

“When he came to Washburn, he wanted to go to the NFL,” Schurig said. “But the way the teachers are here, he fell in love with learning, education and expanding the mind, which is really cool to see. His group left a legacy here, and he’s stayed engaged in the future of Washburn and passed that along to the next groups.”

“He was a great student and obviously has done very well since,” Perret said. “He stopped by the art department about a year ago. It was wonderful to see him again. Terell was an outstanding student, very focused and centered. And he talked often about the importance of family and responsibility to the larger community.”

Now, Cobb aims to share his experiences with communities dear to him, including Washburn and design groups like Dallas Black UX (user experience). As one of two Black art graduates from Washburn in 2006, Cobb wants to make more African-Americans aware of potential art careers.

“I’ve always had an understanding that I’m not just doing it for myself,” Cobb said. “Never go it alone. Never create alone. Whether it was being captain on the football team or helping individuals globally discover possibilities in art and design, helping the communities around me has always been a passion of mine.”