Hello! I am a designer, researcher, facilitator, and educator working for equity and social justice.
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.
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.
Anti-racism Transformation Team at Columbia
As a member of the Anti-racism Transformation Team at Columbia College Chicago, I collaborate with 24 other students, staff, faculty, and administrators as we collectively develop antiracist strategy and action at the college.
Anti-racism community of practice at ID
In 2020, following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor as well as the increase in anti-Asian discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic, I helped start an Anti-racist Community of Practice at IIT Institute of Design, through which we are examining our curriculum, policies and practices across the school.
These are Love(d) Letters
I created the graphic design and imagery for this book that investigates the rhetorical form of the love letter through visual and textual exploration. The cover and book design was named a winner at Association of University Presses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show 2020.
Politics of Design
This course examines the interrelationship of the politics of design across individuals, practices, organizations, institutions, and systems. By politics, we mean political beliefs, actions, practices, and policies as well as the arrangements of power and authority between actors (human and non-human) in society, not whether you identify as Republican or Democrat. How do design and designers intersect with social and cultural sources of power and authority?
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.
Paper Violets, Vellum Prose
In 2017, I worked with my colleague and frequent collaborator, Ames Hawkins, on her project, “Paper Violets, Vellum Prose.” My contributions to this multi-component art piece consisted of design refinement and execution of a wallpaper design, design for a window installation, and design guidance for a needlepoint quilt. The installation piece was exhibited at the “Ill-At-Ease” exhibition at SUNY-Buffalo, Spring 2017.