Announcing the Spring 2020 Lecture Series!

We are delighted to announce our Visiting Lecture Series lineup for the Spring 2020 season. Read more below about Liz Jackson, Cameron Tonkinwise, Sally Rumble, Mariana Prieto, and Danny Alexander below! And if you want to attend one of these events, just reach out!

Liz Jackson

Liz Jackson is the founder of The Disabled List, a design organization that engages in disability as a creative practice. She is also a curator at Critical Axis, a community driven project that collects and analyzes disability representation in media. In 2018, Jackson created The WITH Fellowship, which partners disabled creatives with top design studios and creative spaces for three-month fellowships. You can learn more about Liz in her personal website, The Girl with the Purple Cane. 

Cameron Tonkinwise

Cameron is the Professor of Design Studies at the University of Technology Sydney. He is Director of UTS’s Design Innovation Research Centre, which focuses on the design of social systems that support participatory governance, especially in relation to fostering safe and diverse communities and services. He returned to Australia after being the Director of Design Studies and Doctoral Studies at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design, and the Associate Dean Sustainability at Parsons The New School for Design and co-Chair of the Tishman Environment and Design Center at the New School in NYC. Cameron has a background in continental philosophy and continues to research what design practice can learn from material cultural studies and sociologies of technology. His primary area of research and teaching is Sustainable Design. Cameron is widely published on the ways in which Service Design can advance Social Sustainability by decoupling use and ownership – what these days is referred to as the ‘Sharing Economy.’ He has also been a strong advocate for the importance of critical practice-based design research. Cameron’s current focus, in collaboration with colleagues at CMU and an international network of scholar-practitioners, is Transition Design – design-enabled multi-level, multi-stage structural change toward more sustainable futures.

Sally Rumble

Sally Rumble is a community building specialist, designer, and creative activist. She helped CreativeMornings founder, Tina Roth Eisenberg scale a globally distributed event and speaker series for the creative community from 40+ cities, to 180+ in 63 countries, as Chief Happiness Officer. A former industrial designer, Sally applies her human centered design methodology to her community and activism work. Last year she partnered with the Obama Foundation after helping to launch and produce the We Love You project, a portrait project challenging the mainstream media's negative depiction of Black men in America. A civil rights activist with a focus on anti-racism, she has worked with Justice League NYC, a criminal justice reform focused organization and initiative of the Gathering for Justice founded by Harry Belafonte, Color of Change, the United States' largest online racial justice organization, and Children of Promise, embracing children of incarcerated parents & empowering them to break the cycle of intergenerational involvement in the criminal justice system. Last summer she joined the Resistance Revival Chorus, organized by national Women's March organizers, and sings regularly at venues from neighborhood speakeasies to Carnegie Hall, spreading the message of freedom, equity and justice, through song.

Mariana Prieto

Mariana Prieto is a designer for wild animals by supporting wildlife conservation organizations through design thinking. Previous to her work in conservation Mariana was Design Innovation Lead for the International Rescue Committee where she led teams working on innovative solutions for the Ebola crisis in West Africa and the redesign of the refugee resettlement process in the United States. She was named TED Resident in 2018 and 2019 and IDEO.org Global Fellow in 2013. Mariana graduated as a product designer from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and has taught at USC Marshall School of Business and been a guest lecturer at Berkeley Haas School of Business, Stanford University, Parsons School of Design, Art Center College of Design and Caltech University and speaker at TED HQ in New York.

Danny Alexander

Danny Alexander is the Co-Founder and Chief of Product & Purpose at Who Gives A Crap, the world’s most delightful toilet paper company. He oversees the creative, product, and marketing teams, and as an avid toilet user, is also passionately involved in guiding the direction of the company’s donations (over $1.3 million donated to help build toilets to date!).

Prior to Who Gives A Crap, Danny spent several years as Senior Designer at IDEO.org, the non-profit sister company of the acclaimed design consultancy IDEO. While there he led the organization’s sanitation portfolio and developed his deep love of toilets and for working with communities around the world. He's led projects with organizations such as Marie Stopes Zambia, PSI Tanzania, Sanergy, Unilever and others, working primarily in East Africa and Asia.