Announcing New Faculty for 2020-2021!

We are thrilled to welcome six amazing new faculty to Products of Design for the 2020-2021 year. Meet them below!

Erika Lindsey

Erika Lindsey will be co-teaching the Design for Public Policy course alongside Shanti Matthew. Erika is a designer and user researcher with a background in advocacy, urban planning and social change initiatives. As a Design Research Lead at Public Policy Lab (PPL), she contributes to the project management, design, user research, analysis, and storytelling for human-centered design research projects. Prior to PPL, Erika worked as a Senior Policy Advisor for the New York City Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency (ORR), where she led initiatives aimed at strengthening social infrastructure and neighborhood-level emergency and resiliency planning in communities across New York City. Erika also taught ArcGIS to nonprofit leaders, and conducted spatial analyses for an environmental justice organization in New Delhi, India. Erika is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.A. in Sociology. She received her Master in City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.

Liz Jackson

Liz Jackson will be co-developing and co-teaching the brand new course, Disability Studies: Liberatory Design Practices along with Alex Haagaard. Liz is the founder of The Disabled List, a design organization that engages in disability as a creative practice. She is a curator at Critical Axis, a community driven project that collects and analyzes disability representation in media. As a perpetual outsider, Liz has consulted on disability strategy while maintaining a critical distance from such behemoths as Google, The New York Times, Volkswagen, failed political campaigns and more. She has also spoken everywhere from the (Obama) White House to the Sydney Opera House. And while she continues to receive countless requests to speak, most venues where she has spoken would never invite her back. This is her greatest source of pride. You can learn more about Liz at her personal website, The Girl with the Purple Cane.

Sloan Leo

Sloan Leo will be co-leading this year’s Design & Politics Workshop, along with Jennifer Rittner. Sloan is the Director of Social Innovation, at The VAID Group, a social innovation & consulting firm focused on projects that advance equity, justice and inclusion.In their role they lead the consulting and executive learning practice. They approach their work with organizations, with the understanding that they are a type of community. Sloan builds community capacity to have hard conversations, and make equitable, durable and inclusive progress. In Spring 2020, they were the inaugural Designer in Residence at the School of Visual Arts, Design for Social Innovation Masters Program. Sloan Leo’s work at the school considered how social innovation as a design practice can connect more deeply with social innovation as it is practiced by movements, institutions and people seeking justice. They have taught Managing Public Service Organizations at NYU Wagner’s Graduate School of Public Service since 2016.

Alex Haagaard

Alex Haagaard will be co-developing and co-teaching the brand new cours, Disability Studies: Liberatory Design Practices along with Liz Jackson. Alex has consulted on disability-led design methodologies with companies including the New York Times, Washington Post, Volkswagen and Google. They earned their Master of Design from OCAD University in Toronto, studying knowledge gathering practices of emergency medical professionals for the purposes of healthcare information design. During this time, they also increasingly struggled with what one doctor derisively described as “a myriad of nonspecific symptoms,” rendering publishing and networking as an early career researcher a challenge. In 2016, they began to work full-time pursuing a diagnosis and medical care, an experience which they describe as the “world's worst paying, least prestigious design research fellowship.” After two years of fighting to access care, they realized that if they wanted effective treatment, they would have to make it themselves. Researching the neurophysiology of histamine and identifying novel plant-based compounds, they successfully produced their own sleep cycle in 2018, and began working at The Disabled List in the role of Research Dork. Their research interests include anarchist biohacking, design for institutional bypasses, and speculative accessibility. 

Suma Reddy

Suma is an impact-driven entrepreneur and advisor with deep expertise in cleantech, agtech, microfinance, social justice and community-development. As co-founder and COO of Farmshelf, a smart, indoor farming company, she led internal strategy and operations with a focus on product, manufacturing and Plant R&D. Previously, she co-founded an organic waste-to-energy company and was a Managing Partner at a renewable energy fund that developed greenfield utility-scale solar, small hydro, anaerobic digestion and battery storage projects. Prior to that, she was a Communications and Program Director at SKS Microfinance in India, contributing to 200%+ annualized growth, and eventual $330MM IPO and $2.2B acquisition. Suma started her career as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali. She is a Co-Director of Asian Pride Project, a LGBTQ arts + advocacy group, for which she was awarded the White House Champions of Change Award. She has served on the board of of the South Asian Queer organization of NYC (SALGA-NYC), and spearheaded the launch of DeQH, the first LGBTQ helpline for queer South Asians. She is a graduate of The Wharton School (MBA), Flatiron School (iOS Development), General Assembly (UX Design) and University of Rochester (BA).

Jamie McGhee

Jamie McGhee will be developing and teaching the brand new course, Thesis Synthesis and Writing. As a writer, Jamie McGhee believes that revolution begins not with the stories we tell, but with the way we tell stories. She approaches narrative as a site of resistance and experimentation, where writers should feel empowered to overlap genres, cross mediums and break from convention. Jamie’s work centers people who are queer, who are gender-nonconforming, who are immigrants, who are of color—those who are often overlooked. With Duke professor Dr. Adam Hollowell, she co-authored Praying with James Baldwin, an interrogation and celebration of James Baldwin’s work in the era of Black Lives Matter. Additionally, she is the author of two nonfiction books and a graphic novel (Macmillan Publishers); all three works highlight minorities who have pioneered their field. For her fiction, Jamie was named a James Baldwin Fellow in St-Paul-de-Vence, France and a Sacatar Fellow in Itaparica, Brazil. She has also been awarded artist residencies at Blue Mountain Center in New York, Zentrum für Kunst Urbanistik in Germany and Sa Taronja Associació Cultural in Spain. As an editor, she focuses on the field of design, looking at how narrative and design intertwine in the realm of social change. She currently serves as an editor for Princeton Architectural Press.