About Gen Z Tarot

Scott Bergman’s journey to Millennial Tarot began while he was working as a UX designer at Apple and developing a side project called Mindstream, a tool to help people visually interact with their thoughts. This project made Scott want to leave Apple to pursue Mindstream, knowing it would be a long journey. Around the same time, a Bumble date with someone who treated Soul Cycle as a near-religious experience sparked an insight: Millennials may have left traditional religion, but they still crave spiritual structure. This led to The Soul Cyclist tarot card. Millennial Tarot became the perfect side hustle aligned with his overall goal of making the esoteric more accessible and concrete.

Scott left Apple, packed his Subaru Forester, and spent eight months doing van life across the Pacific Northwest, staying in two Buddhist monasteries and learning off-grid home-building. When he returned to New York just as the pandemic hit, he met his now fiancée, Nicole, on Hinge. After five FaceTime dates, they hit the road together, working from Airbnbs. During this time, Scott expanded Millennial Tarot into a fully illustrated 78-card deck.

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Once the publishing deal happened, the idea of a Gen Z version just… made sense. Scott started drafting cards himself, feeling confident. Then he showed early drafts to Nicole’s Gen Z sister and a few other Gen Z and instantly realized he was very off. Turns out being chronically online doesn’t matter if your algorithm is still serving you Millennial content.

Scott brought on Gen Z writer Hailey Alt, and everything unlocked. Her timing, wit, and sense of the culture balanced perfectly with Scott’s structure, symbolism, and overall vision for tarot as a tool for clarity. Together, they shaped the voice the deck needed, which is funny, sharp, emotionally intelligent, and grounded in real tarot meaning.

Hailey Alt’s path to Gen Z Tarot began when a year working in corporate America made her realize she needed… something else entirely. In true Eat, Pray, Love fashion, she moved across the pond from Seattle to London and shortly came across the most intriguing job advertisement: to help create a Gen Z-themed tarot deck. Despite never having had a tarot reading, she poured her heart and soul into writing the most unhinged, Gen Z-coded "Empress" card, and the rest was history. Today, she is subscribed to the tarot mentality and frequently offers anyone and everyone Gen Z tarot readings. She currently lives in Germany with her partner and many plant babies, is finishing her Master’s in global trade, and spends her free time weightlifting, painting, baking, and hiking through the Black Forest.

Scott’s goal is to lift wisdom out of exclusive language, bridging knowledge often buried in esoteric traditions with a straightforward, accessible style. For the expanded deck, he sifted through thousands of Millennial terms, creating 14,000 unique images with AI and refining each over months in Photoshop.

Millennial Tarot became a family project. Scott’s great-grandfather, an immigrant, started a New York printing business that passed to Scott’s father, who printed the first decks. During COVID, Scott’s mom—aka “The Mothership”—handled logistics and shipping from their spare bedroom.

As demand grew, Running Press, a Hachette subsidiary, took on the project, elevating it to new standards. Shannon Kelly served as the editor, with Leah Gordon designing the guidebook and cover.