Facilitators
Laurie Racine, Co-Founder & Managing Director
A seasoned entrepreneur and change agent, Laurie has started or secured funding for a variety of transformative nonprofit and for-profit enterprises. She is a founder of dotSUB and was a principal at Eyespot, two tech start-ups in the media space. As a funder, Laurie managed a private endeavor endowed by the founders of Red Hat where she helped launch Lulu Press, Creative Commons, ibiblio and Public Knowledge. In addition to her history as an entrepreneur and dealmaker, Laurie has previously held leadership roles on several boards: co-founder and chair of Public Knowledge, chair of Teachers Without Borders, and president of DocArts, the corporation that produces the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. She was also a senior fellow at the Norman Lear Center of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communications and executive director of the Health Sector Management Program at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. Currently, Laurie is a director on both for and non-profit boards including Creative Commons, the Tribeca Film Institute, Fractor and Open Road Media. She also serves on the advisory board of Road Trip Nation. Laurie received a B.A. from New York University and conducted graduate work in human genetics at University of California, Berkeley.
Diana Rhoten, Co-Founder & Managing Director
How is existing knowledge shared? How is new knowledge created? As a researcher and strategist, Diana has dedicated her professional life to exploring these questions and testing out answers. Diana has been designing and evaluating educational policies and programs, organizations and technologies since she began her career as an educational analyst in Massachusetts. Over the last decade, Diana has been faculty at the Stanford School of Education, co-director of a nonprofit research institute dedicated to interdisciplinary collaboration, and consultant to a host of large educational institutions seeking to innovate. She has also been the founder of three different programs focused on the future of learning at both the Social Science Research Council and the National Science Foundation. Diana has published in numerous journals and most recently co-edited a volume on the future of higher education called Knowledge Matters. She earned a Ph.D. in Social Sciences and Educational Policy and an M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University, as well as an M.Ed. from Harvard University and an A.B. from Brown University.
Phoenix M. Wang, Co-Founder & Managing Director
Phoenix has spent her career enabling people to achieve and lead transformative change. Adept at strategic, product and operational plans, Phoenix has spearheaded a range of initiatives, from corporate systems integration to new media ventures to systemic change in urban school districts. She spent her early career in business as a team leader on large-scale organizational change projects at Accenture Consulting and, later, as vice president of Strategic Operations at iVillage Inc. Since joining the field of education, Phoenix has been a relentless advocate for using technology to better serve students and bring about equality of opportunity. Phoenix was formerly an education program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, directing investment strategies aimed at improving instructional practices and using digital media to enhance learning. Phoenix’s passion for social change began with grassroots organizing while pursuing a B.A. from Williams College and M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
IDEO
Duane Bray
Duane is a Partner at IDEO, where he heads the firm’s Global Digital Business. He joined IDEO in 1995 to lead and develop the discipline of interaction design, now one of our most sought-after capabilities. Duane’s experience includes the development of major software and hardware programs and the integration of emerging technologies into human-centered products and services. He routinely explores the intersection of technology and people, revealing and elevating the emotional connections that we forge with digital media.
Duane has led or contributed to scores of design projects, including product interaction, interactive exhibits, and software for desktop PCs, the Web, and mobile devices. His most recent endeavors have focused on larger clients and strategic programs, such as design-language initiatives that address a range of platforms and customers. He assisted SAP in forming a human-centered division for sustained innovation and has worked closely with Microsoft for more than a decade. His client list also includes AT&T Wireless/Cingular, BMW, Texas Instruments, United Airlines, and Xerox.
Prior to joining IDEO, Duane worked for Pentagram Design, where he established an interaction design practice in its San Francisco studio. He holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of Florida and, as an alumnus, received an Outstanding Achievement Award. He counts bubblegum pop music and his customized Mini Cooper among his leisure-time passions and pursuits.
Alex Castellarnau
Alex is a senior design strategist at IDEO, focusing primarily on service and experience design projects. Alex is passionate about collaborate design as a means to solve complex systemic problems.
Since joining IDEO, Alex has led, managed, and contributed to a range of programs with clients in education, healthcare and finance. He has tackled challenges ranging from organizational design to customer experience.
Alex has contributed to the development of the IDEO’s design for learning group, developing key strategic relationships with leading academic institutions. His work in this domain has focused on the design of learning platforms that merge the digital and the physical into compelling learning experiences.
Prior to IDEO, Alex worked in design and innovation in Europe, where he led projects in telecommunications, retail and consumer goods. His work has spanned various geographics and cultures throughout the world.
Alex holds two degrees one in Economics and one in Humanities from the University of Barcelona (Spain). He has recently replaced his morning cofee with orange juice and spends part of his weekends hunting for mushrooms.
Meghann Dryer
Meghann Dryer is a Business Designer at IDEO, focusting on new product development, brand experience and innovation strategy. Meghann is passionate about the merger of business and design principles, and she enjoys helping clients explore new opportunities and means of expressing value for customers.
While at IDEO, Meghann has worked on organizational design, customer experience, brand strategy and other projects in technology, retail, consumer products and entertainment. Prior to IDEO, Meghann spent many years in consumer goods and entertainment. She has held positions in product management, and marketing at Casio, Stride Rite, and Harrah’s Entertainment.
Meghann holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BS in Interaction Design from Stanford University.
Kristian Simsarian
Dr. Kristian Simsarian believes in the power of design to simplify, enrich and transform our lives and the world. His work focuses on bringing innovative human-centered design and strategy to meaningful fruition for companies and institutions, from pixels to processes. He brings a deep, diverse, and international background to his project work and to teh creative teams he leads that span from healthcare to high-tech. In addition to his own publications and patents, Kristian’s work has been featured in Business Week, The New York Times and Metropolis Magazine, as well as being highlighted in business books on innovation and interactive design.
Kristian started at IDEO in 2000, later co-founded the Software Experiences practice at IDEO and is currently practice director in the Systems at Scale practice with a afocus on creating innovative organizations. Recently Kristian has led design innovation initiatives for two of the world’s largest brands. He is also adjunct professor at the graduate school of design at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. He lives in a fixer-upper Victorian in San Francisco with his psychologist wife and his obsessively-tuned biodiesel VW Golf.
Sandy Speicher
Sandy Speicher leads IDEO’s Design for Learning domain, which brings human-centered thinking to systemic challenges in education. Her work helps educators use design tools and methods to work in new ways, to prepare for future challenges, and to transform their organizations and communities. Much of her focus has been with school teachers, students, and administrators, exploring how design thinking can contribute to education systems. Sandy has also led and contributed to programs in the areas of telecommunications, health care, and social innovation.
Prior to joining IDEO, Sandy—who collects all things Mona Lisa—taught visual communications at Washington University in St. Louis (Mo.) and design thinking to fitth-graders at a public school in San Francisco. She launched her corporate career at MetaDesign San Francisco, where she worked with the Denver Art Museum, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Palm, Netflix, Ernst & Young, Wells Fargo, and other clients. At IDEO, Sandy focuses on identity systems, interactive design, and environmental design for clients such as Washington University School of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, The Paine Art Center and Gardens, and AT&T.
Sandy holds an MA in education from Stanford University and a BFA in visual communications from Washington University. She currently serves as a strategic adviser for the K-12 Lab at Stanford’s d.school and a member of the advisory board for the university’s Learning, Design and Technology program.
