Design + Anthropology

for Social Good

I head a collaborative social impact storytelling and design research studio. Melding design thinking, the social sciences, and mindfulness practices we help businesses, change makers and social impact organizations define and communicate their stories better.

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We connect the dots between research, data, design, and public media, and we help organizations and individuals more effectively share their stories with the world. We especially love working with community and educational organizations, non-profits, museums, and cultural institutions that want to spread public benefit through media.

Services include discovery and exploratory research, experience analysis, digital production and design, branding, cultural strategy, and communication and content creation.

In collaboration with independent and alternative news and information platforms Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ) and MuckRock, I’m excited to announce the release of Make FOIA Work.

Make FOIA Work is a news literacy project that reimagines journalism through design-oriented, participatory and collaborative journalism pedagogies.

Working across classrooms, design studios, newsrooms and employing participatory design and data visualization tools, participants created collaborative data-driven and engagement-based stories that developed from successful FOIA requests. The project explores how data visualization and participatory design can change the way we create stories, gather news, or produce local reporting?

I teach courses that help emerging professional designers and civic practitioners understand who they are designing for, how to understand their own values as designers and to apply them, to question universalizing claims, and to contextualize designs in cultural specifics.

I also teach methodologies, techniques, and tactics for design research including observational research, empathy building, ideation, validation and prototyping.

I designed and manage the Business Anthropology Community website, a thriving initiative the brings together the best of business practices, design, career networking, teaching, and visibility for anthropology in business. The community is a venue for sharing knowledge and resources and for enlarging the discussion on the value of business anthropology both intellectually and as an applied practice.

Following my design values of simplicity, attention to detail, and information clarity, my portfolio demonstrates some of my aesthetic inspirations with clean lines, breathable space, and inviting visual design. I regularly consult with users and stakeholders to iterate and improve site mechanics and interaction experience.

As a field anthropologist and research fellow working in Peru, I ran and coordinated the 2015-2016 Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation Services (PACS) program with six Aymara and Quechua communities, which supported the cultivation and conservation of five endangered varieties of quinoa. Across 2 years, I conducted a broad cross section of interviews, focus groups and observational and live-in research among farmers, scientists, government employees, chefs and international development organizations.

I designed and carried out surveys, framed economic field experiments and total economic value surveys aimed at understanding and measuring topics like how people share agricultural and scientific knowledge, make decisions about what food to grow, and willingness to pay for conservation.

Early Client Scouting for food startup, Problem and Product Definitions, Observational Research, Fact Checking

Specializations: Design Anthropology, Biodiversity Conservation, Food Studies, Science and Technology, Climate and Environmental Change

My work as a Cultural Anthropologist and PhD Candidate focused on researching, designing and implementing conservation methodologies for at-risk Andean crops in southern Peru. Working between academic and applied realms, I combined ethnographic methods, design anthropology, participatory research, conservation best practices and market studies to improve communication and insight between government ministries, international NGOs, agricultural agencies, entrepreneurs and farming communities to improve farmer livelihood, ecosystem maintenance, and food security outcomes.

Dissertation: Designing the Future of Food: Quinoa Agrobiodiversity in 21st Century Highland Peru