Design Challenge
How might we spark powerful conversations and forge alliances to end poverty and injustice?

Partner
Opportunity Collaboration

Project
Co-design, coaching & facilitation for Opportunity Collaboration

Role
Firetender

Outcome
This is an ongoing engagement.

Opportunity Collaboration is an annual gathering - affectionately described as an unconference (in the best sense of the word) - that ignites transformative connections between people, ideas, and initiatives dedicated to ending poverty and injustice.

Unlike traditional conferences, its agenda is fully co-created by Delegates, who convene and facilitate sessions on the topics most vital to their work. The result is a dynamic, living space for honest conversation, creative collaboration, and cross-sector exchange.

As Firetenders, our role is to ignite and nurture the spark within this self-organizing community. We support Catalysts - Delegates who host and facilitate sessions - by helping them design meaningful conversations, manage group energy, and create environments where real dialogue and insight can flourish.

In many ways, we serve as facilitators of facilitators - tending the collective flame of curiosity, courage, and collaboration that powers the gathering. From lighting the first sparks of connection to keeping the fires of dialogue constructive (and sometimes cooling things down when they burn too hot), Firetending is about holding space for emergence - helping ideas catch and spread without consuming the room.

Number of Participants
300+

Duration of Engagement
Fall 2025

Acknowledgements
Firetending Team: Nora Jeanne Joseph, Jessica Loman, Topher Wilkins

Design Challenge
How might we develop a common understanding of the WEE team’s strategic vision and near-term priorities?

Partners
Gates Foundation - Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) Team · GRID Impact

Project
Co-design, coaching & facilitation for the Gates Foundation

Role
Senior Strategic Facilitator

Outcome
In partnership with GRID Impact and the Gates Foundation’s Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) Team, I co-designed a multi-day gathering to build alignment, connection, and shared understanding across the team’s global and India portfolios.

Through a blend of design thinking, participatory methods, creative facilitation, and intentional play, the gathering cultivated collaboration, deepened trust, and enabled collective learning while aligning the team on 2025 priorities and strategic direction.

Key Outcomes
Built trust by connecting more deeply with one another and the work.

Learned from internal and external partners to strengthen understanding of the WEE India portfolio - progress, lessons, and insights for other geographies.

Developed a shared understanding of the team’s strategic vision and direction.

Strengthened cross-team collaboration to deliver collective impact.

Number of Participants
50+

Duration of Engagement
Fall 2024 - Winter 2025

Acknowledgements
Design Team: Alex Fiorillo, Molly Alexander

Design Challenge
How might we catalyze cross-team collaboration to amplify the Foundation’s impact in Nigeria?

Partners
Gates Foundation · Nigeria Country Office · GRID Impact

Project
Co-design, coaching & facilitation for the Gates Foundation

Role
Senior Strategic Facilitator

Outcome
In Summer 2024, I partnered with GRID Impact and the Gates Foundation’s Nigeria Country Office (NCO) to design and facilitate a cross-team gathering focused on strengthening collaboration between the NCO and Program Strategy Teams (PSTs).

The purpose of this convening was to identify and leverage opportunities for greater synergy across teams - with the aim of amplifying the Foundation’s impact in Nigeria.

Through a blend of design thinking, participatory methods, creative facilitation, and intentional play, the gathering created space for new connections, deepened relationships, and alignment around a shared vision for collaboration. It culminated in a set of concrete actions and commitments to initiate and strengthen cross-team partnerships.

Number of Participants
40+

Duration of Engagement
Summer 2024

Acknowledgements
Design Team: Danny Vannucchi, Alex Fiorillo

Design Challenge
How might we model the change we wish to see in the world?

Partners
Oxfam International · GRID Impact

Project
Co-design, coaching & facilitation for Oxfam International - an international confederation of nonprofits.

Role
Facilitator & Co-Lead

Outcome
In 2024, I partnered with GRID Impact and Oxfam International to co-design and co-facilitate a week-long, confederation-wide gathering in Nairobi, Kenya.

The purpose of this gathering was to catalyze operational leadership, confidence, alignment, and capacity as strategic enablers for advancing Oxfam’s commitments to feminism, anti-racism, decolonization, and its broader mission and values.

Through deep reflection, guided connection, and participatory work sessions, operations leaders from across the confederation collaborated across functions and levels. Together, they diagnosed organizational misalignments and co-created an action plan to bring greater congruence between Oxfam’s external impact and its internal ways of working - across people, processes, and technology.

Number of Participants
80+

Duration of Engagement
Spring - Fall 2024

Acknowledgements
Design Team: Molly Alexander, Shin Renn, Karen Vinalay, Alex Fiorillo
Images: Oxfam International

“Thank you for the way in which you have so deftly led us through both sticky conversations and sprinkled fairy dust in our plenary space. You led, challenged and created spaces for us to play. We are changed for better through your interventions.”
- Leela Ramdhani, COO, Oxfam International

Design Challenge
How might we envision a world where technology strengthens people’s voices and power, and centers human rights and social justice in its design and use?

Partner
Luminate Strategic Initiatives (LSI) Team · Luminate

Project
Co-design and facilitation for the Luminate Strategic Initiatives team, part of the Omidyar Network.

Role
Strategic Facilitator & Designer

Outcome
As a distributed team, Luminate Strategic Initiatives (LSI) sought to gather to celebrate accomplishments, reflect on lessons learned, and chart a shared path forward in light of Luminate’s evolved strategy - one that supports people, organizations, and movements challenging Big Tech’s unchecked power and the misuse of digital technology by governments.

Through a blend of participatory design, systems mapping, and creative facilitation, the design of this gathering created space for connection, alignment, and action.

The convening led to several key outcomes:

Surfaced strategic directions for LSI’s 2025 portfolio planning within Luminate’s updated framework.

Identified key insights and learnings to share across Luminate teams.

Clarified shared values and opportunities to strengthen integration and collaboration.

Number of Participants
20+

Duration of Engagement
Fall 2024

Acknowledgements
Design Team: Danny Vannucchi

Design Challenge
How might we catalyze partnerships and investment to close the gender-digital divide?

Partners
The Gates Foundation - Gender Equality & Digital Connectivity Team · GRID Impact

Project
Co-design, coaching, and facilitation for the Gates Foundation’s Gender Equality & Digital Connectivity team.

Role
Senior Strategic Facilitator

Overview
In 2023, I joined GRID Impact, a collective of independent consultants who collaborate as interdisciplinary teams using design for social change.

Our first engagement together focused on designing and co-facilitating a four-day retreat for the Gates Foundation’s Gender Equality & Digital Connectivity team. The purpose of the gathering was to catalyze cross-foundation partnerships, nurture mutual learning, and identify opportunities for co-investment that advance gender equity in digital access and inclusion.

Through a blend of design thinking, participatory methods, creative facilitation, and intentional play, the retreat offered a capacious and thoughtfully structured space for reflection, relationship-building, and collaboration. The experience fostered new partnerships and deepened alignment toward shared goals of closing the gender–digital divide.

Number of Participants
45+

Duration of Engagement
Fall 2023 - Spring 2024

Acknowledgements
Design Team: Danny Vannucchi, Alex Fiorillo

Design Challenge
How might we put some fun back in FUNdraising?

Partner
Opportunity Collaboration

Project
Co-design, coaching, and facilitation for a global convening of social impact leaders.

Role
Catalytic Coaching · Facilitation

Overview
The Funding Model Jam is a game I designed for social-sector organizations to playfully imagine, explore and experiment with non-traditional ways to resource their work outside traditional grant-based systems.

Developed from over a decade of professional and lived experience working with nonprofits, startups, and foundations, the game was created in response to a persistent gap: while “funders” often urge partners to find financially sustainable models, few spaces exist for organizations to safely explore how to do that with creativity, collaboration, and fun.

The Funding Model Jam:

Creates a shared lexicon for alternative resourcing across organizations, movements, and collectives.

Challenges participants to imagine funding and value-exchange models beyond grants and investment.

Is biased toward action - encouraging play, iteration, and experimentation in a low-stakes space where there’s no failure, only learning and joy.

I typically run this Idea Forge workshop for individual clients, but most recently facilitated it for delegates at Opportunity Collaboration, where I was invited to attend as a fellow. Participants included nonprofit leaders, funders, impact investors, social entrepreneurs, and educators - each exploring how to unlock abundance in their own contexts.

If you’re interested in hosting a Funding Model Jam for your organization or team, get in touch!

Duration of Engagement
October 2023

“Our team LOVED this jam. It gave us space that was generative and allowed us to explore so many possibilities before narrowing down to models we’re excited to test.”
- Manon Vergerio, Head of Data & Advocacy, Unlock NYC

“Your session was great - awesome structure, plan, fun, and energy! Thank you! I’d love more info on the deck and would be interested in purchasing it.”
- Anne Maloney, Educator & Social Impact Consultant, Scott Center for Social Entrepreneurship

Design Challenge
How might we decolonize our practices?

Project
What began as Decolonizing Design - a community of designers (loosely defined) and change alchemists learning and unlearning together - has since evolved into The Playground, a living space for exploring what it means to become good future ancestors.

Here, we tend to the cycles of growth, harvest, and rest that sustain collective transformation - creating room for reflection, reciprocity, and repair.

Design Challenge
How might we build alignment, excitement, and action toward our mission?

Partner
Unlock NYC

Project
Co-design, coaching, and facilitation for a New York–based feminist technology collective.

Role
Design Lead · Coaching · Facilitation

Overview
Unlock NYC is a feminist technology and community-building collective that designs tools to fight housing discrimination while centering the experiences of people seeking safe, affordable homes.

I partnered with Unlock to co-design and facilitate a series of strategy sessions and remote design sprints that helped the team align around a shared vision, clarify priorities, and chart a clear path forward for implementing its bold mission.

Through guided facilitation, reflective coaching, and co-creative exercises, the collective was able to articulate its long-term strategy and define a north star to guide future decision-making - balancing ambition with focus, and reaffirming its commitment to place-based, justice-driven impact.

Duration of Engagement
January - July 2023

Acknowledgements
Image: Unlock NYC

“You provided an excellent container for us to take a step back from the day-to-day work, think at a high level, and make strategic choices together!

The work was particularly helpful in getting us crystal clear on our north star, geographic footprint, and value proposition. Our theme for 2024 - ‘inch deep, mile wide’ impact - reflects our decision to double down on our existing work in New York City, rather than scaling too fast.

All around, thank you, Kavya! You really expanded our horizons and provided such a nurturing, caring space for our team to dig into juicy, sometimes thorny discussions.”
- Manon Vergerio, Head of Data & Advocacy

Design Challenge
How might money flow more freely - nourishing the commons through many tributaries - rather than being stockpiled in reservoirs?

Partner
Yoxi

Project
Co-design and facilitation for The Current, a speculative inquiry and prototype exploring new models of wealth redistribution.

Role
Service Design Lead · Coaching · Facilitation

Overview
The Current is a radical exploration into the future of investing - reimagining how money might circulate in ways that regenerate, rather than extract from, the collective good. Guided by the question of how capital could move with greater reciprocity and joy, the project invites a deep rethinking of value, wealth, and return.

The inquiry was grounded in three provocations:

What if investing could be rooted in mutual stewardship, regeneration, ease, and play?

What if ROI were not a measure of compounding wealth, but an invitation to share and return value in its many forms?

What if money could be both free and freed - circulating through non-traditional, trust-based flows that nourish the commons?

As Service Design Lead, my role was part explorer and part builder: guiding collaborative exploration of radical alternatives to investing, and prototyping new service models for equitable wealth redistribution.

After validating proof of concept, this work is now being advanced by Art.Coop under the working title MoneyPot.

Note: The term investment is broadly defined here to include philanthropy, impact investing, and wealth management.

Duration of Engagement
June - December 2022

Acknowledgements
Design Team: Oona Eager, Catherine Woodiwiss, Elisandra Diaz, Anne Leahy, Sharon Chang
Image: USGS

Image Description
A conceptual visualization of financial systems as living ecosystems - where money flows through nourishing tributaries that sustain the commons, rather than pooling in stagnant reservoirs.

Design Challenge
How might we build on what’s strong and invest in community-led, people-first public health approaches that increase demand for COVID-19 vaccines?

Partners
Common Thread · Private Foundation

Project
Co-design and facilitation for a behavioral design organization engaging diverse stakeholders to develop innovative, community-driven approaches to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates in Pakistan, Kenya, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire.

Role
Strategic Design · Coaching · Facilitation

Overview
Common Thread is an emerging leader in behavioral design for global public health. The organization integrates behavioral science, design thinking, and anthropology with local expertise to create human-centered approaches to public health challenges.

In early 2022, Common Thread launched a complex multi-country initiative to strengthen vaccine demand by building on existing community assets and knowledge. I was hired to lead the team through a rapid co-design process, developing tools, frameworks, and facilitation methods to help visualize and synthesize emerging insights from the discovery phase.

These resources served a dual purpose: they were used both internally to support sensemaking and strategy development, and externally to creatively engage communities and key partners in the co-design process - ensuring that emerging solutions were people-centered, contextually grounded, and sustainable.

Examples included:

Ecosystem maps to identify key actors across public health systems.

Stakeholder frameworks to understand motivations, interests, and power dynamics.

Journey maps to surface structural, social, and behavioral barriers along the vaccine journey.

Opportunity maps to identify gaps in funding, capacity, and technical support.

Although developed specifically for this initiative, many of these tools have since been adapted and reused across Common Thread’s other projects - becoming part of the organization’s growing global toolkit for participatory, community-led health design.

Duration of Engagement
Spring 2022

“You really helped us move forward in a short amount of time - I appreciated how quickly you could download our needs and design something close to ready from there. I’m sure we’ll keep returning to your frameworks as the project progresses; you’ve given us good infrastructure to build on.”
- Sherine Guirguis, Director

Design Challenge
How might we reimagine the way we work to build equitable cities?

Partner
Van Alen Institute

Project
Co-design, facilitation, and coaching for a NYC-based nonprofit organization.

Role
Design Lead · Coaching · Facilitation

Overview
The Van Alen Institute began a major institutional evolution with the appointment of a new Executive Director, tasked with making the 126-year-old organization relevant to the 21st century.

Although internal change was already underway, the events of 2020 - a global pandemic coupled with urgent reckonings around race, inequity, and climate - accelerated this transformation. In response, Van Alen redefined its mission to leverage its privilege and expertise in design to create more equitable cities.

I was brought on to co-design, facilitate, and coach the team through a series of strategy sessions and remote design marathons aimed at articulating a clear strategic direction and reimagining programming aligned with this new purpose.

Structured as time-bound, participatory engagements - with guided facilitation, rapid iteration, and continuous feedback - these marathons enabled the team to test new ideas, challenge assumptions, and identify what worked before scaling viable solutions.

This approach also catalyzed a deeper cultural shift: from traditional nonprofit to social impact design studio. By building in-house design capacity, the team began to unlock creativity, move with intention and agility, and collaborate more effectively. The process helped cultivate a growth mindset and embed a design ethos that centers the lived experiences of the communities served - while moving at the speed of relationships and trust.

Duration of Engagement
Spring 2021 - Spring 2024

Acknowledgements
Design Team: Richard Kelly, Deborah Alden, Stephanie Gamble, Catherine Weislogel, Owen Sanderson

“The design marathons have been transformational to the way we work together as an organization.”
- Carla Swickerath, Board Chair

“You are an exceptionally skilled facilitator. I have been so grateful for your work with us.”
- Deborah Marton, Executive Director

Design Challenge
How might we design a program that responds to the diverse, complex, and evolving needs of community partners - both immediately and over the long term?

Partners
Urban Design Forum · Van Alen Institute

Project
Co-design, coaching, and facilitation for a nonprofit initiative supporting small businesses and cultural organizations in New York City impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Role
Workshop Planning · Design · Facilitation · Coaching

Overview
A collaboration between the Urban Design Forum and Van Alen Institute, Neighborhoods Now connected New York City neighborhoods hardest hit by the pandemic with volunteer design firms from across their networks. Since May 2020, the initiative has supported hundreds of small businesses, restaurants, and cultural organizations across the city.

As the focus shifted from emergency response to long-term recovery, both organizations sought to understand how to continue supporting their community partners in ways that are responsive, equitable, and sustainable.

I co-led the design and facilitation of a series of participatory workshops that invited community partners to share their lived experiences, insights, and priorities - helping shape the program’s evolution. These sessions created space for honest dialogue, mutual learning, and co-creation, ensuring that Neighborhoods Now’s future roadmap was grounded in design justice, equity, and inclusive design principles.

Duration of Engagement
Fall 2021

Acknowledgements
Image: Urban Design Forum & Van Alen Institute

Design Challenge
How might we help organizations and businesses go zero-waste?

Partner
Global Nonprofit

Project
Research, ideation, prototyping, and launch of a zero-waste office strategy.

Role
Project Lead

Overview
As global populations and living standards rise, so do waste volumes. The environmental impact is staggering, and progress toward change has been slow. This is a deeply systemic challenge -one that demands transformation at multiple levels of scale. Yet the enormity of the task often leads to paralysis, especially in a world where single-use convenience remains the norm and sustainable alternatives are often costly or inaccessible.

What began as a project to design a zero-waste policy for a global nonprofit evolved into something far more dynamic: a behaviorally designed, people-tested, action-oriented Zero-Waste Checklist that helps any organization move from intention to impact.

By breaking ambitious goals into small, actionable nudges, the checklist succeeds because it is playful rather than punitive -celebrating the journey rather than the destination. The process is co-creative and collaborative, fostering community and shared ownership as people come together to become catalysts for change.

Interested in starting your own zero-waste journey or adapting the checklist for your organization? Let’s connect.

Duration of Engagement
2018 - Present

Acknowledgements
Image: Moyo

Design Challenge
How might we help people stay healthy, active, and connected during a global pandemic?

Project?
Research, design, ideation, and prototyping for a volunteer-run community platform supporting movement, wellbeing, and connection.

Role
Founder

Overview
Pandemics and war zones share a similar truth: both disrupt daily life, livelihoods, and community. Having taught fitness classes to aid workers in Afghanistan, I had seen firsthand how movement and connection can sustain wellbeing in uncertain environments.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, I wanted to extend that same sense of care to my own community - especially to independent fitness professionals facing widespread closures and financial instability.

In March 2020, I founded Fitness to the People, a volunteer-run platform designed to help people stay active and connected from anywhere. The platform hosted live virtual classes and community-driven fitness fundraisers, directly supporting independent instructors and social impact causes.

Within months, Fitness to the People grew into a vibrant global community. One event in June 2020 raised nearly $13,000 in individual contributions for social justice initiatives—proof that movement can be a powerful act of solidarity.

Duration of Engagement
March 2020 - December 2022

Design Challenge
How might we reimagine physical therapy as a way of life?

Partner
KO Physical Therapy

Project
Brand and strategy design for a healthcare startup redefining physical therapy for athletes and active individuals.

Role
Design Lead · Advisor

Overview
Dr. Kerry Ojeda, a competitive athlete and board-certified Doctor of Physical Therapy, sees physical therapy as more than treatment - it’s a lifelong practice of movement, performance, and prevention. Her private practice, KO Physical Therapy, was founded on this belief, guided by her signature approach: Treat - Correct - Perform.

Kerry sought a brand and website that would reflect her distinctive philosophy - something accessible, striking, and easy to navigate in a field often crowded by clinical and impersonal design.

Working closely with Kerry, I led the creative direction, strategy, and copywriting for a new digital identity. The final design integrates bold typography, illustration, and photography with subtle biomechanical motifs, celebrating the body’s capacity to move with strength and intention.

The result is a seamless digital experience that mirrors Kerry’s holistic approach - functional, elegant, and full of life.

Duration of Engagement
Fall 2020

Acknowledgements
Photography: Devonta White

“Working with Kavya was seamless and seriously a pleasure! She delivered on her promise that this process would be fun and non-stressful. Her professionalism, communication and task efficiency were impressive! … She nailed it from web design to artistry and copywriting for my website. Thank you so much!”

“I get so many compliments on the website — people say how nice it looks, how easy it is to use, and how clear the information is. They compare it to other PT sites and immediately see the difference!”
- Dr. Kerry Ojeda

Design Challenge
How might empathy drive innovation in sexual and reproductive health - reimagining how we design with, rather than for, menstruating bodies?

Project
An ongoing inquiry into how reproductive health outcomes might improve when empathy, lived experience, and embodiment are placed at the center of design and innovation processes.

Role
Project Lead

Overview
Throughout history, social and cultural aversions to menstruation have shaped how societies relate to menstruating bodies. Despite decades of scientific research, fundamental questions about menstruation remain unresolved. Up to 80 percent of people who menstruate experience physical and emotional symptoms before their periods, yet the biological reasons behind these variations are still poorly understood.

Scientific progress in reproductive health has often prioritized intervention over understanding - offering ways to suppress or control periods before fully exploring their purpose or function. Rooted in patriarchal systems and political constraints, innovation in this field has evolved slowly, leaving a gap between lived experience and the products and services intended to support it.

This project emerged as a creative research inquiry into how empathy can reshape this landscape. It asks whether centering the voices, needs, and wisdom of menstruating people can lead to more caring, inclusive, and effective reproductive health solutions.

Currently in the ideation and concept development phase, this work invites collaboration from menstruating designers, technologists, and creative practitioners interested in co-designing a more equitable future for reproductive health.

Duration of Engagement
2019 - Present

Acknowledgements
Images: Unsplash, Lysol

Design Challenge
How might we empower businesses to become agents of change in addressing complex social and environmental challenges?

Project
Research, prototyping, and high-fidelity concept development for an open-source learning platform supporting sustainability-focused businesses and innovators.

Role
Project Co-Lead

Overview
The global economy is undergoing profound transformation. Climate change, widening inequality, and the enduring legacies of colonial and extractive economic systems demand that we rethink how business creates value - and for whom.

Our vision for sustainability is inclusive, reciprocal, and circular by design.

Together with collaborator Chloe Rich, co-owner of the live-events company ATOMIC and home decor start-up SpaceKit, we co-led the design of The Sustainability Toolbox - an open-source platform that invites businesses, entrepreneurs, and innovators to explore, co-create, and share practical tools and insights for building regenerative enterprises.

The Toolbox encourages a shift from doing less harm to doing more good: cultivating accountability, creativity, and shared prosperity through open collaboration.

Duration of Engagement
2018 - 2019

Acknowledgements
Images: Unsplash, Moyo

Play
Learning to Weave was a self-initiated creative project exploring weaving as both craft and metaphor for leadership. Over several weeks, I taught myself traditional weaving techniques, working with sustainably sourced natural fibers to create a small tapestry.

Through the process, I reflected on the parallels between weaving and leadership - how both require patience, tension and release, attention to pattern and rhythm, and a willingness to adapt when threads take unexpected turns.

This project became a meditative exploration of interconnectedness, sustainability, and the quiet strength found in making.

Design Challenge
How might we nurture locally grounded approaches that transform Myanmar’s waste and recycling value chain from one that is linear (take-make-waste) to one that is circular (take-make-reuse) - and ultimately, more sustainable and just?

Partners
Private Foundation · Global Nonprofit

Project
Participatory research, prototyping, and service design to co-develop a pilot initiative supporting small enterprises, community groups, and municipal actors in Myanmar’s waste and recycling ecosystem.

Role
Project Lead

Overview
Before the 2021 coup, Myanmar experienced rapid economic growth, driven by foreign investment and urbanization. This expansion, however, came with an escalating waste crisis - plastic pollution choking waterways, overflowing landfills, and limited recycling infrastructure. With China’s 2018 ban on foreign recyclables, the urgency for locally led solutions grew even more pressing.

Between 2018 and 2020, I led a multidisciplinary team to design and launch Myanmar’s first circular economy pilot initiative. Rather than isolating the private sector, our approach intentionally brought together local businesses, community organizations, recyclers, and municipal leaders to co-create solutions that reflected lived realities.

Through work sessions, peer mentorship, and community engagement, we developed new pathways for collaboration, improving labor and safety conditions, waste segregation at source, and recycling efficiency. The initiative strengthened coordination across the value chain and demonstrated that systems change emerges when those most affected shape the process.

Following a successful pilot, the program was extended for an additional three-year period in 2020, continuing to build capacity and connection across Myanmar’s evolving circular economy landscape.

Duration of Engagement
2018 - 2020

Acknowledgements
Project Team: Karen Hsu, Nay Linn Oo, Naing Zaw Myo, Aung Kyaw Zin, Aye Chan Moe, Wah Wah Cho
Images: Digital flyers for a zero-waste event on World Environment Day (June)

Design Challenge
How might we elevate the positive contributions of refugees to their host countries?

Partners
U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration · Government of Canada · Global Nonprofit

Project
Participatory research, prototyping, and service design for an initiative supporting refugee-, migrant-, and host-owned small businesses in countries including Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon.

Role
Project Lead

Overview
Between 2015 and 2018, I led a team tasked with designing and launching a new kind of programme - one that went beyond humanitarian aid to strengthen the economic ecosystems of refugee, migrant, and host communities.

In regions affected by conflict, we quickly encountered a major challenge: public perception. Headlines and conversations often echoed the same refrain - “Refugees are taking our jobs.”“Refugees get handouts while unemployment rises.”

To move forward, we needed to shift this narrative. With strong local partnerships, we gathered and analyzed data that revealed the tangible economic impact of refugee-owned businesses - how they were creating jobs, paying taxes, and contributing to vibrant local economies. But numbers alone weren’t enough; perceptions are shaped by emotion, not evidence.

So we turned to storytelling. By centering the lived experiences of entrepreneurs - people who happened to be refugees - we reframed what had been seen as a burden into a story of resilience, ingenuity, and shared prosperity. Storytelling became not just a communications tool, but a design principle that reshaped how we engaged with communities, partners, and the entrepreneurs themselves.

This narrative-led approach built trust, fostered collaboration, and ultimately led to the successful launch of the programme. Today, it has grown into a thriving network of over 2,500 refugee-, migrant-, and host-owned small businesses - each contributing to their communities and redefining what economic inclusion looks like.

Duration of Engagement
2015 - 2018

Design Challenge
How might we address the social, cultural, and systemic barriers shaping women’s participation and leadership in Afghan civil society?

Partners
Government of Canada · Building Markets

Project
Collaborative research, prototyping, and service design toward an initiative co-created with Afghan civil society organizations advancing human rights and gender justice.

Role
Project Lead

Overview
Between 2012 and 2015, I lived and worked in Afghanistan, leading initiatives with global nonprofits, international organizations, and government partners. One project focused on deepening support for civil society organizations advancing human rights and gender equity.

In many professional settings, I was one of few women in the room - often surrounded by men representing organizations whose stated focus was women’s rights. Yet, our data showed that women were present within these organizations, many in leadership roles. Their absence from key convenings raised an important question: what conditions or constraints were keeping them out of these spaces?

To understand this, our team intentionally sought out and listened to these women - inviting them into the design process as collaborators rather than passive subjects. Through these conversations, we uncovered layers of barriers - structural, cultural, and logistical - that shaped women’s visibility and participation in professional life.

Together, we reimagined how learning and collaboration could take place. Our team transformed the organization’s event space into a pop-up digital studio, co-creating an on-demand learning platform offering training and resources that women could access privately and at their own pace. Think Netflix meets Coursera, before either became mainstream.

This participatory redesign shifted how the organization connected with and learned alongside its communities. By expanding access and flexibility, the initiative supported more women to share knowledge, build networks, and lead within their own contexts.

Between 2015 and 2020, this model was iterated and adopted across the organization, becoming foundational to its digital service delivery - enabling continuity and connection even through the pandemic. Today, Building Markets continues to use this model across the countries where it works.

Reflection
In August 2021, the Taliban’s return to power reversed many of the gains made in Afghan women’s public participation and rights. It remains devastating to witness the international community’s failure to sustain meaningful solidarity with Afghan women and their movements. The courage, insight, and leadership of the women I worked alongside continue to inform my practice and remind me that change emerges through collective care, not imposed intervention.

Duration of Engagement
2012 - 2020

Design Challenge
Using panettone as a canvas for exploration, create a food experience that embodies Made by Italy.

Partner
Italia Innovation - Design & Consulting Firm

Project
Research, experience design, and concept development with an Italian design and innovation consultancy exploring the evolving relationship between culture, craft, and contemporary food systems.

Role
Project Lead

Overview
Panettone, the leavened Italian sweet bread, is known for its delicate texture and complex process - demanding patience, precision, and care. Traditionally baked for the Christmas season, it has in recent years transcended its festive roots to become a beloved symbol of Italian culinary artistry worldwide.

This project used panettone as both medium and metaphor for Made by Italy - a philosophy championed by Italia Innovation that shifts the focus from where things are made to why and how they are made. Over fifteen weeks (January - May 2019), our team researched, ideated, and prototyped new ways to translate this ethos into an experience.

The outcome was a series of three concept prototypes:

A TV show exploring stories of Italian craft and innovation.

A food lab connecting design and gastronomy through experimentation and storytelling.

A pop-up food and events space that celebrated the making of Made by Italy panettone.

Italia Innovation has since collaborated with producers and artisans in California to bring the food lab concept to life, extending the project’s spirit of cross-cultural creativity and exchange.

Duration of Engagement
Spring 2019

Acknowledgements
Illustration: Diane Tate-Whatley
Design: Lucia Sorrenti
Project Team: Chloe Rich, Guillaume Girard, Janet Hoy & Jie Zhen
Images: Unsplash, Italia Innovation