Design (Copy) — PORTFOLIO

SUSTAIN TOMORROW

I founded a design thinking firm called Sustain Tomorrow that uses the power of collective creativity to fight climate change. Sustain Tomorrow provides pop-up innovation labs, expert design thinking facilitation, and consulting services to help companies quickly meet growth targets while fighting our climate crisis.

As the founder and CEO of the company, it’s been an amazing process of learning, visioning, wearing multiple hats, and growing. I constantly practice leadership and project management in this role — I hired and trained an interdisciplinary team of facilitators with backgrounds in design thinking, environmental science, renewable energy engineering, psychology, education technology, music, project management, and improv to bring the workshops to life. I also care deeply about bringing aesthetically pleasing design to the environmental space. I’ve brought UI/UX design skills to Sustain Tomorrow through creating a website and associated materials such as 2-pagers and marketing materials. To grow the business, I conducted empathy interviews with over 150 sustainability managers, energy consultants, philanthropies, and university professors around the world to better understand pressing challenges within the environmental sector. With a better understanding of the needs in this space ranging from packaging to gaining buy-in from leadership, I was able to develop tailored design thinking curriculum focused on sustainability.

#entrepreneurship #femalefounder #lgbtownedbusiness #womanownedbusiness #designthinking #sustainability #circulardesign #facilitation #esg #consulting #innovationlabs

DESIGN THINKING & SOLAR- ROCKY MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE

Solar has the potential to work amazingly. Costs have declined 80% over the past ten years and technology has become more commercially viable. Yet, we see solar is only 1.3% of the US’s total energy consumption. So what’s going on? We have the technology. We have the economics. What’s missing? What’s missing is the human component.

When I worked at Rocky Mountain Institute, I spearheaded a design thinking project called the Solar Procurement Framework, which was intended to help utilities successfully develop 1–10 MW solar projects. I interviewed over 50 utilities over the country to better understand their needs and motivations. Leveraging insights from these empathy interviews, I create a website focused on learning and community. The Solar Procurement Framework provides easy-to-use, step-by-step guide for utilities by outlining solar procurement steps, best practices, and access to resources. We also held workshops that allowed utilities to connect and learn from each other. Watch the video above to see how we used empathy to design solar with users in mind.

#solarenergy #utilities #distributionsolar #communitysolar #community #playbook #sustainability #cleanenergy

DESIGN FOR PARKINSON’S ACCESSIBILITY - POWER FOR PARKINSON’S

I partnered with Power For Parkinson’s– an organization that provides free exercise classes to Parkinson’s patients and caretakers to create a website and app for the organization. Watch the video to explore how we used design thinking to design for accessibility, community, connection, and physical and mental health.

#parkinsonsdisease #parkinsons # exercise #accessibility #uiux #webdesign #appdesign #innovationlabs #designthinking #health #caretakers #community