Spirited and driven professional; grounded in social responsibility and creative problem solving. Nick Okafor (he/him), a strategist and design researcher, is a doctoral student in Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University, where his research focuses on the practice and pedagogy of liberatory innovation. Specifically, he explores abolitionist technologies, the rise of urban innovation, and the business case behind responsibility & ethics. Nick also leads trubel&co (pronounced "trouble and co"), a tech-justice nonprofit championing underserved youth to tackle complex societal challenges using data, design, and technology. With the mission of accelerating proximate innovators committed to liberation, trubel&co builds youth power in the digital age by grounding career technical education with liberatory design and experiential learning. trubel&co’s flagship program, Mapping Justice, teaches diverse high school students how to design geospatial tools for social change.Previously, he was a Senior Associate at Sidewalk Labs (Google's urban innovation arm), where he drove commercialization and incubation, piloting emerging products that improve quality of life in cities. As a recovering consultant, Nick was trained through The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Washington, D.C., creating change through discovering data-based insights and building organizational capacity. His experiences include scaling impact at socially-conscious startups and exploring markets for growth. He is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, where he pursued a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Sustainable Development, with a Certificate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.His work aims to incentivize startups, tech firms, and cities to incubate products responsibly, leverage technology for public good, and set a new ethical standard for innovation. Reach out if you'd like to talk more about: liberation movements, responsible technology, participatory urbanism, disruptive education models, maps, abolitionist movements, indie music, or inclusive design. For research interests, please reach out to [okafor@stanford.edu]; if interested in sparking good trubel, send a note to [nick@trubel.co]. Last name pronounced: oh-kah-for ("kah" like cat, not "kuh" like car).