Design to bridge connections. Be it the classroom or the workplace, there's always the potential to further social and intellectual connections. These projects demonstrate design's power in building that bridge.

VergeNYC

Co-founded and directed this Parsons conference in April 2015 with Kate McEntee and Mollie West.

VergeNYC is a three-day design event organized by Transdisciplinary Design students, along with design and community partners. We bring together leading thinkers, field experts and change makers to galvanize a movement towards Transdisciplinary Design. The experience is intentionally intimate – less than 150 people – to foster deeper exchange between practitioners and learners. Traditional conference-like lectures are paired with multi-day afternoon conversation breakout groups to focus on one specific topic with a top design firm and subject expert.

In our inaugural year, we brought in design firm partners including frog, Continuum, Gensler, Smart Design and Thoughtworks. Experts from the UN, Stanford d.school, Mayer’s Office, Rainforest Alliance and INSITUM added content to the conversations.

My main roles as co-founder and co-director were to manage the logistics of launching a brand new event at Parsons, handling the marketing and communication to the public, and keeping pulse on the energy of the six-student team.

BuckyChats

Designed in Fall 2014 with Stephanie Lukito and Kate McEntee. In partnership with Riverdale Country School.

As part of a design research class, my group of three took on the complex world of elite college admissions. In a system that prioritizes test scores and quantitative measurements, how can high school students show off their soft skills such as grit, determination and leadership? At what entry point can high schooler's focus on these valuable skills and have colleges actually listen? The entry point: the college essay.

Our solution: lead a workshop in which students are prompted to generate brief narratives from tough questions. Have them record these answers of pieces of paper that can collaboratively be constructed into a buckyball. By marrying introspection with a sharing group activity, students have the opportunity to build self awareness of their strengths and experiences.

Around the Agency

Directed from June 2011 to May 2014 while at Team One advertising agency in Los Angeles.

I conceived of and executed a monthly speaker series at my Los Angeles ad agency called "Around the Agency" in which we interviewed senior-level employees from our Team One office as well as the global network of Saatchi & Saatchi (for which Team One is a subsidiary). The overall theme of this two-year series was travel, and as such, all posters, gifts, decorations, and even souvenir passports took on this cohesive theme.

I led a team of six people and managed all the details and logistics for each event. Duties included, but were not limited to: arranging and preparing the featured guests, writing promotional copy, creating print posters, hand-making personal passports to receive stamps at each event,, designing graphic thank you gifts, coordinating and arranging food, and interviewing the speakers in front of crowds of 60+. This speaker series was so successful that the global HR director consulted with me in an effort to spread this framework to other Saatchi offices around the globe.