I teach the course Creativity, Innovation, and Design. I joined the Keller Center after spending seven years at the design and innovation consultancy IDEO, where I led teams of designers to create new products, services, and experiences across a range of industries and types of challenges. Prior to that, I worked in corporate strategy and finance and strategy consulting. I am passionate about: using human-centered methods to understand people deeply, blending creative, analytical and structured thinking to simplify complex challenges, and crafting elegant, powerful stories. I hold an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA in Economics and History from Dartmouth College.
What will students be able to take away from your classes?
Students will come away with new ideas and tools that they can bring with them through Princeton and their future endeavors. The first half of the course will help students cultivate the belief that they are creative and can actively foster and grow their creativity while the second part of the semester will teach the fundamentals of human-centered design and design thinking. Students will learn through both theory and practice how to apply these different tools and collaborate with others to design innovative solutions to challenging problems, starting with campus life at Princeton.
What attracted you to the Keller Center?
I was attracted to the Keller Center’s commitment to interdisciplinary learning and human-centered design. I believe these skills and methodologies, and the philosophy underpinning them, are critical to solving problems in all fields and disciplines, whether that’s business and entrepreneurship, healthcare and medicine, education, government, or beyond. Giving students the opportunity to both learn and practice new ideas, tools, and values is a great gift and I am honored to get to be a part of it.
What advice would you have for students about getting involved at the Keller Center?
Your four years at Princeton offer a unique, incomparable, and, in the long-run, brief opportunity to learn and grow in ways you will probably never have again. Use this time, and the many incredible resources offered by the Keller Center, to take risks, push yourself out of your comfort zone, and follow your most authentic passions and curiosities - pursue the classes, activities, and experiences that scare you a little bit (or a lot), invest time and energy in something that might fail, try something that you’ve always wanted to, and get to know people completely unlike you.
