Workshops & Speaking
I have traveled the world encouraging others to design for sustainability. I have spoken at professional and academic design conferences (AIGA, UCDA, TEDx, and Cumulus), moderated panel discussions, led workshops with design students and practitioners, and visited design classrooms in-person and virtually.
My main speaking topics are:
- Sustainable design and life-centered systems thinking for the design practitioner
- Teaching sustainable design and life-centered systems thinking for the design educator
- Invited undergraduate and graduate design critic and provocateur
List of invited speaking and workshop engagements
Workshops
Systems Thinking for Designers 101 Workshop
This two hour workshop will give you the basics to use life-centered systems thinking in your design studio or classroom.
What?
Life-centered systems thinking is a mindset; a way of seeing the big picture and the details simultaneously by visualizing connections, causes and effects, and relationships between people, the planet, and their actions. In other words, life-centered systems thinking shows how everything is connected and that our natural systems depend on a dynamic non-equilibrium trying to achieve balance.
Why?
Building life-centered systems thinking into a design practice can help enhance the innate problem-solving capabilities of designers while revealing our interdependencies. It can help designers better engage with large-scale complex issues and empower them to ethically engage with undiluted real-world wicked problems and illuminate pathways of equitable action.
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Introduction to Sustainable Papermaking
The three-hour workshop explores Western papermaking with recycled cotton and regional agricultural fibers. It includes a brief history of paper and how to transition to more sustainable practices.
What?
This workshop can travel or occur at the lab. I’ve traveled to Iowa State University, the University of Arkansas, and other regional organizations.
Why?
Everyone needs to get creative and their hands dirty now and then. This workshop does both for your students or your team. Hand papermaking is a very zen experience that leaves you with a sense of satisfaction afterward while holding your finished handmade paper in your hands.