About—
I work in the space of speculative design, design fiction, and applied pataphysics. My primary interests are in regenerative futures and more-than-human (life-centered) design. Using world-building and design imagination, I am actively engaged in practices that conjure new thinking about what the future can be.
I lead the creative charge in the M.S. in Design + Innovation (MD+I) graduate program at UW-Madison where I tell stories, invoke imaginations, and teach interdisciplinary design, speculative design (and design fiction), life-centered design and engaged practice as part of one of the MD+I capstone practicum classes. I lead the MD+I Summer Futures Studio.
Previously, I was part of the faculty in the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), where I taught Design & Visual Communications, with a focus on speculative design and critical design research. I was also a Lubar Entrepreneurship Center (LEC) Teaching Innovation Fellow and acted as the Principal Investigator (PI) on a Collaboratory grant project called Tending Tomorrow with the Center for 21st Century Studies at UWM. The project used speculative design techniques to look at the future of living well, mutual care, the good life, and how we live and thrive in increasingly uncertain times.
Before all this, I had a 25-year career in advertising where I worked as a writer and creative director, leading creative teams to develop multi-channel, integrated brand campaigns. I have
worked with and at agencies in Birmingham, San Antonio, Greensboro, Jacksonville, and now Milwaukee.
Education:
MFA, Fiction; The University of Tampa
BS, Sociology; The University of Alabama - Birmingham
My CV is here