Hello! I am a designer, researcher, facilitator, and educator working for equity and social justice.
Design as Activism Symposium
I am serving as the co-principal investigator and project lead for Design as Activism, a two-day public symposium on Sept. 13-14, 2024. It will include a day-long activation across the city, followed by a second day of invited speakers, workshops, and an evening panel/event at the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech. Invited speakers will include Chicago-based activists, design practitioners, scholars, commentators, and experts from diverse backgrounds.
Welcoming new arrivals to Chicago
In spring 2024, I led a team of researchers at the Institute of Design who sought to frame the migrant “crisis” in Chicago through a design-led systems perspective. The project’s goal is to develop effective systems frameworks to help decision-makers and on-the-ground workers meet the needs of new arrivals while also addressing the overall well-being of everyone in our community.
Working with design clients: Tools and advice for successful partnerships
“Working with design clients: Tools and advice for successful partnerships” is a practical guide to help design students and educators manage and operate student-run design firms in higher education. To be published in October 2024, I co-wrote this textbook with Meaghan Dee, Associate Professor at Virginia Tech University.
Clean Energy Community Initiative
Since 2022, I have been developing community-led strategies and co-design workshops for UW-Madison’s Clean Energy Community Initiative. Key community partners include MTERA (Midwest Tribal Energy Resource Association) and the Great Lakes Environmental Justice TCTAC (Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center). I have also developed and facilitated workshops to foster faculty-led large-scale collaborations in UW’s Grainger Institute for Engineering.
Anti-oppressive design framework
This conceptual model functions as a scaffolding for bringing a critical awareness of power into design methods and can support designers to take action in their daily design work.
Radically hopeful visions of anti-racist futures
During a final phase of an anti-racism team training at an arts and media college, Hillary Carey and I facilitated a collectively futuring process for the team in which we imagined an anti-racist future of the college. Our article about this project, “Radically hopeful visions: Futuring for institutional anti-racism work” was published in Futures journal in February 2024.
An angry assemblage of algorithmic accountability
This critical visualization examines a case study of bias in a medical algorithm which under-identified black patients for high-risk health prevention program by making the data set “color blind”.
Designing Equitable Futures
Systemic racism has always been embedded in the structures and institutions of the United States, yet it often operates invisibly and unchallenged. At this moment, the infrastructures of inequality and inequity have been laid bare. To create equitable outcomes, we must recognize race and acknowledge those inequalities, and design with them in mind.
Innovation & Impact: Cultivating Food Equity
Using entrepreneurial thinking to generate ideas that imagine a more equitable future food system, students learn to recognize and cultivate opportunities for a range of innovative projects such as business ventures, social and civic services, and creative projects in media, arts, and design. Designed as a transformative DEI educational experience, the class offers structures for students to assess, leverage and add to their own skills sets through transdisciplinary collaboration and proactive self-evaluation practices.