How does the field of design play a role in organizational change, innovation, and addressing the serious issues of our time? Our team partners with public and private sector entities to deliver actionable knowledge on complex challenges.

What does strategic design practice development look like in a traditional academic studio? How does strategic design situate itself between the public and private sectors? At the newly founded RISD Center for Complexity we create and run extended design sprints to develop strategic design capabilities for workers across skill levels and job titles in partnership with medium and large corporations. Our process is rigorous without being packaged. We develop both sensibility and capability in the strategic design process.The center at large pursues inquiry into systemic complexity, and delivers designing interventions that drive these systems from their current states to a preferred state.

Broadstreetstories.comParticipatory design in public space, addressing heritage and contemporary culture.

Strategic design advising for this regenerative design startup

: Select Projects :Riverzedge ArtsHow might a long standing youth-centered creative arts studio reframe its role in its community? How might this reframing advance their goal of diversifying and stabilizing their resource streams?Get Cities : ChicagoMentoring a team of innovation fellows in the process of early stage insight development, resulting in the founding of a new social enterprise.Designing and facilitating workshops to demonstrate value and prime for future engagements.Social Enterprise GreenhouseConsult with incubator and accelerator fellows in early stage ideation for their social enterprise. Emphasis on systems thinking to discover new opportunities for small businesses.BackrsThis startup is seeking to disrupt the charitable giving space by linking donors and mentors directly to the youth who will benefit from resources offered. Currently in limited release beta testing.

Adjunct professor for MGUY 2704 - Design Thinking for Creative Problem Solving How might engineers on a management pathway prepare for a career where design is playing an increasing role?

Part time faculty for Professional CommunicationPGTD 5230How might designers who sit outside of or across disciplines communicate their capacities as they evolve from their design education to their new professional practice? Returning to my alma mater and my MFA program, Parsons Transdisciplinary Design.

: Select clients & projects :Girls In Tech x Motivate DesignWomen around the world founded regional offices of GiT to develop capacity and strengthen networks. I facilitate 2-3 day workshops from ideation to prototyping. We tackle major social issues and create compelling cases for new approaches to complex human challenges. Participants receive a robust studio experience and a discursive foundation in strategic design. Havas Health Plus How might a pharma strategy and marketing firm integrate strategic design, human centered design, and service design into their work? How do established tech and innovation practices integrate HCD and operationalize SD into a large, mature organization? Testing new methods on client-facing projects, incubating a new experience design team, and contributing to leadership-driven organizational change.Mayor's Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety : NSTATBy the Center for Court Innovation, for the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, we combine participatory innovation and government accountability to reduce crime and improve quality of life at 15 NYCHA sites across 5 boroughs. NYC x Co-Lab : BrownsvilleA collaboration between community based organizations in Brownsville, Brooklyn & The Mayor's Office of The Chief Technology Officer, asking how might smart cities tech be human-centered and bottom-up? Neighborhood scale prototypes, community oversight, youth engagement and academic partnerships. Best of Brownsville Photo ProjectHow might youth change the way people talk about their neighborhood? Producing a public photo instillation, teens intervened in their public space to visualize how they experience their neighborhood, while the press uses their neighborhood to represent intractable urban issues. The project sparked an intense engagement online and in the press, leading local leadership to seriously consider the aesthetics of revitalization and gentrification in new ways.

Developed and executed the digital creative collaboration process of a 20 campus consortium of over 200 content creators for the States of Incarceration website and traveling exhibit. Recruited and managed the team responsible for populating our website content and quality assurance. Executive leadership consulting services included guiding digital project management practices, graphic design, and public engagement framework design.

As the Service Design Network 2015 Global Conference manager I supported a local team of service design experts in the content and experience design for the conference, while capturing and executing input from the international executive management team. Sole responsibility over the 30 graduate students who supported the presentations and workshops from global leaders in service design.

Working with creative technologists to design and develop engagement strategies, we increased the number of collaboration opportunities available to students through a combination of in-person events and online services. Deliverables included building an institutional knowledge database, designing the framework of a peer collaboration networking platform, and founding a live meetup series.

Designing and executing qualitative research on civic engagement practices and operations at The New School, our team of researchers was supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The study concluded with a report on how to retain innovative practices without overhauling the university's operational architecture, delivered to to both the university’s president and provost. Our report was circulated across the campus for the purposes of developing innovative teams.

An operations role on a startup team within a new incubation division of Technicolor. Responsibilities included recruiting specialists, managing capital expenditures and acting as a liaison between the team and the parent company’s executive offices and operational divisions.

This startup set its sights on being first to market on the then new iPad platform. I managed art asset production, maintained the relationship with dev partners assigned to develop a digital pipeline, delivered UX design and story assets, managed story development, supervised and executed public relations/marketing materials and managed usability testing. The end product was an interactive graphic novel app titled Operation Ajax which was subsequently ranked number one among comic book apps for iOS.

This first to market mobile game company was built at a time when we were asking “will smartphone users buy apps?” and “what does mobile technology have to offer in the space of games and play?”Here I specialized in co-produced mobile game development with outside partners from concept to launch. Working with a global developer ecosystem, stakeholders in the creative visioning process and business development executives to bring entertainment products to market.

This project was my first step into the field of design. Using the medium of motion picture I sought to engage and scaffold from present state to future state. While delivering assembly edits to the filmmakers for story development I also crafted short vignettes to engage the subjects and visualize their ecosystem in new ways. This resulted in a shift in the care partnerships and a transformation in behavior and quality of life for the films primary subject.Funded by ITVS, this feature doc investigated the interdependence between disability, family and living an engaged creative life. As assistant editor I was responsible for logging all footage and building assembly edits to help the director and editor shape the story as it unfolded. As associate producer I became embedded in the care ecosystem and advanced the access to the people and issues through participatory service and advocacy.