Experience Design Certificate Program Cohorts
2024
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Zainab is a creative living at the interface of charcoal sketches, film, artistic direction, and sustainable development. She is a translator learning to speak the symbolic languages of those from every walk of life. As an artist, her work reflects the search for unity in dissonance. As a program designer, facilitator, and community builder, she hopes to envision the answer to the question, "At what point does the client, the customer, or the service seeker shed their definitions and instead, become entirely our _guest_?"
Zainab believes that the best way to tell a story is around a fire; and the second best way is to place the beholder right in the middle of it all.
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Joni Chan is an Austin-based writer/translator, UX designer, and ESL tutor who dabbles in stop-motion filmmaking, sustainable sewing, and narrative design. Originally from the Philippines, she’s interested in exploring diaspora identities, language, and social/environmental justice. Her mission is to craft storytelling-driven experiences that are inclusive, impactful, and sustainable.
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Bonnie specializes in utilizing architecture to craft immersive experiences. With a background in metal fabrication, she brings a unique understanding of materiality to her design research. Notably she has co-created long term installations at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and the Denver International Airport among many others.
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Smadar Krampf is an Experience Designer and Gamification Expert, specializes in immersive theater, game design, and interactive art installations. In her works, she likes to build detailed worlds that explore the themes of intimacy, vulnerability, and curiosity.
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An experiential designer with a background in architecture. She specializes in crafting engaging environments, ranging from haunted houses to parade floats. Her current focus is on 'Fantasy Funerals,' where she is dedicated to creating distinctive and unconventional funeral experiences. Intrigued by the aesthetics of ritual design, she brings a thoughtful and personal approach to this transformative venture.
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Elena Rodriguez Blanco (she/her), rooted in both Spanish and Costa Rican heritage, is driven by a dedication to reshape business through innovation and social entrepreneurship. Shaped by a childhood in war-torn El Salvador, she infuses her work with profound empathy and resilience. As the founder of Authenticitys, the world's first social impact travel platform and certified B Corp, Elena pioneers transformative experiences aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals across 40 countries. Her passion for regenerative practices extends to academia, where she lectures in over 15+ universities. Recognized globally as a 2x best-selling author, podcast host, and social impact investor, Elena is dedicated to designing a better world through education through her current Regenerative University project in Costa Rica.
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utterly curious, intentionally playful and unapologetically nonconforming 🙃🌈
sparks (they/she) is an experience designer, researcher, artist and multi-passionate human based in Portland, OR. They design experiences that help humans connect—with themselves, with our planet, with each other—in unexpected and delightful ways. Experiences like absurd house parties that inspire guests to engage in deep conversations with strangers or global ideation sessions with fellow creative activists on how to bring more play into the climate movement.
sparks is the Founder and Creative Director of alt-yellow, the Head of Experiences at Creative Quests, and a proud Emerging Talent member of the World Experience Organization.
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Natalie Whelan is a global insights director, creative strategist, experience designer and clown. Past projects include a sensorial innovation funhouse and translating a year’s worth of research into an immersive physical experience. She uses lightness, sincerity, and tenderness to invite the inner children of friends and strangers out to play.
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Sara is a human-centered designer and data-driven researcher with a particular focus on healthcare and education. As an interaction designer at IDEO, she co-designed a space-inspired mental health app, empowered educators through impactful data visualization, and served as a mentor to BIPOC design fellows, fostering inclusivity and innovation in design.
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Marc Chun believes that a good idea is the spark that can change the world, but wonders why it’s so difficult for good ideas to spread equitably throughout systems. He has spent his career hanging out in public schools, nonprofits, think tanks, universities, research shops, design labs, and charitable foundations.
dschool.stanford.edu/k12-lab-network/positive-deviance-for-educators
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Joel is a creator of theatre, museum exhibits, and multimedia spectaculars based in Vancouver, BC. Joel has created projects ranging from interactive theatrical performances to multi-room automated walkthrough shows, to interactive multimedia experiences, to synced music, media, and fireworks shows.
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Simon is a London based theatre director, facilitator and educator. He has collaborated with Punchdrunk, Complicité, Secret Cinema and Katie Mitchell. Simon is a co-founder of Engineer Theatre Collective. Creating immersive and interactive performances, he partners with brands, organisations and causes to help tell new stories. Simon’s work has featured in The Guardian, The Independent, Time Out and The New Yorker.
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Tara is a creative living in Oakland, where she works as a web and interactive designer. She sends artistic experiments through the mail and finds expression through painting. With a fascination in the unexplained, she’s interested in exploring ways to connect with the subconscious through art.
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Chris Sallquist is a Seattle-based artist known for his uncanny portraiture that transcends traditional boundaries. Distinguished by his use of an ordinary iPhone and analog media such as print and paint, Chris challenges the conventional norms of photography, revealing the “otherwise invisible” emotional layers and parallel personalities within his subjects.
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Hey there! 🌟 I'm Letícia, your dedicated community crafter with a mission to spread joy and forge deep connections through transformative learning and collaboration. 🌈 As a proud lesbian woman, I've unearthed my true self in communities that radiate love and laughter. Recently crowned with a global innovation award at Impact Hub, I lead community management with a one-of-a-kind blend of artistic flair and technical wizardry.
Hailing from the vibrant city of Florianópolis, I'm not just a community manager—I'm an enthusiast for learning spaces, an experience designer, and a maestro of collaborative experiences. 🎨
My passion? Creating spaces that groove with continuous growth, connection-centric design, and fine-tuning for a seamless community experience. Contributing positively to society is not just a goal; it's the heartbeat of what brings me joy. I'm all in, committing my talents to a grander purpose. 💪
Wearing multiple hats as a skilled facilitator, I'm here to foster learning and development with a sprinkle of magic. ✨
But wait, there's more to me! I'm all about coffee, meeting fantastic people, and living the good life. I'm on a quest not just for happiness, but for peace, meaning, and a human experience in all its complexity and completeness. ☕ Let's embark on this journey together as we craft communities that burst with creativity, connectivity, and inclusivity. 🚀 Are you in?
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Steven Boudreau is Chief Administrative Officer for the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) and the Department’s Diversity Liaison. He is also convener and Co-chair of the Rhode Island State Arts and Health Partnership - a statewide coalition of individuals working across disciplines to rethink the connection between the arts, art-therapies, and health and well-being for the state.
He provides Design Sprint, meeting facilitation, and strategic planning consultant services to young and socially impactful organizations.
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Rodrigo Correia is a multimedia artist interested in the interconnections between different mediums such as film, XR, theatre, and live events. His recent directorial projects include Orun, a VR experience that premiered at the Sao Paulo International Film Festival, and the immersive theatre Last Stop: In-Between, showcased at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
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Christian Howard (any kind pronouns) is an educator, game and narrative designer, meditation teacher, death doula, and cultural strategist living and working on unceded Tongva land (Los Angeles, California). Their work is rooted in abolitionist ideologies, play, and contemplative practice that explores the tension between collective liberation and speculative futures.
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Founded in 2017 by Kori Martodam, JKLM Studio is a crucible and an archive for the creative projects of Kori Martodam and her collaborators. Since its inception, JKLM has fostered the development of five evening-length scored movement improvisations for performance. JKLM has also hosted and co-taught a number of classes and workshops in collaborative, real-time co-creation. In recent years JKLM has evolved to include installations, visual art, writing, and other curated reflections.
View Kori’s work:
JKLM Studio Dance Improvisation and Installation
Without Physical Address: A Travel Blog from around the World
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Karmisha Reeb, a 21-year military veteran, has transitioned into an innovative immersive experience designer, specializing in creating interactive learning environments for STEM fields. As the Director of Experience Design at Exit Lab in Houston, she leverages her unique skills to challenge individuals through captivating gameplay. Her notable achievements include constructing the first escape room dedicated to exploring the Museum's role in colonialism, theft, and repatriation. Currently, she is furthering her expertise in educational escape room design at Northeastern University.
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Aisha Shillingford (she/her), is an anti-disciplinary artist, world builder, designer and cultural strategist originally from Trinidad & Tobago. Her collage, text-based work, installation and experiential design work explores Black utopias, abolition, Black radical imagination, solidarity economics, climate futures, marronage and dreamspace. She draws on recurring themes and symbols of fugitivity, opacity and afrosurrealism.
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Born in Hull, England in 1973.
I think we long for change in ourselves but wonder how it may come about. Humans tend to carry on doing the same thing until something very unexpected happens or they’re forced to make a life decision. In my case, not getting married set me on a path to something new. My early obsession with starting and growing the hedge fund had faded to listless maintenance. I could do the job but where previously endless creativity had flowed, now I drifted. On a suggestion from my yoga teacher, I read ‘The Great Work of Your Life’ by Stephen Cope, an American Yogi. Rather than a translation, it’s a chapter-by-chapter explanation of how the Bhagavad Gita can help you find your dharma. I gave up drinking to give me as much clarity as possible to search and to feel, now without the option of drinking to run away from either the thoughts or feelings. I had experimented with immersive experience design in the past through three very different productions I dreamt up and brought to life through collaborations. Sooner than I expected, I realised I wanted to create transformational immersive experiences as a new career and creativity started to flood back.
Links to work
Bruce Wayne’s Bloody Masquerade Ball:
Imagine being a guest at one of Bruce Wayne’s parties at Wayne Manor....Now you can actually be
there...
https://vimeo.com/643659335/082985c1ee?share=copy
Liphook’s Revenge:
An upstart from London has bought a new place in the country, kicking out the resident polo teams and
ending the hunt. Even worse he seems to have filled the place with artists who are up to god knows what
and now is having some kind of festival there.
What will the locals make of it? And how will the new and the traditional combine?
https://vimeo.com/735370351/92f08ec847?share=copy
2023
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Eugene Ashton-Gonzalez is a Bay Area-based artist and personal coach. His 15-year career and experience design praxis spans the worlds of game design, theater, urban exploration, and consciousness studies, with an emphasis on playful activations and radical re-contextualizations of liminal space. His work was recently acknowledged in Turn Your Life Into Art: Lessons in Psychomagic from the San Francisco Underground.
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Kasaundra Couch (any/all pronouns) is a Bay Area-based playwright and director with an active interest in immersive and experiential work. After surviving the pandemic by slinging coffee and keeping sane by writing increasingly surreal scripts they are ready to take on the ultimate challenge: this stunningly talented cohort!
See their work at: kasaundracouch.com
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David is an experience designer, event creator, community builder, and film/TV-maker, based in Toronto. He is co-founder of Planet Fabulon, an arts collective that uses live events (filled with costumes, interactive art, dancing, and live performance) as a medium for promoting greater connection, playfulness, and social change.
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Irina Kruzhilina is a New York-based theatre maker, scenographer, director, and educator, creating work at the intersection of visual art, live performance, and civic engagement. Irina is the co-founder of Visual Echo, a performance organization dedicated to facilitating generative dialogues among people from diverse backgrounds, and a faculty member at the New School of Drama.
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Dr. Marlo Rencher is an entrepreneur, anthropologist and educator with over two decades of experience in startup and small business development. She is the founder of Tech Founders Academy, which helps Black and Brown women reinvent themselves as tech founders.
Tech Founder Academy
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Ezekiel Baskin (they/them) is a Western MA-based theatre director, facilitator, and educator. Ezekiel focuses on new work development, with a particular interest in immersive, site-specific, and devised work. Ezekiel loves facilitating collaborative spaces of all kinds, and their work weaves together theatre, music, trans narratives and gender exploration, and public health.
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Yvette Hatton is a third of the way through her 150 year life. There was an adventurous, DIY culture in her family growing up that combined a love of art-making with deep curiosity about everything. She has created experiences as a product manager, mother, and sales rep. She directed Orpheus by Jean Cocteau at Barnard with an all-woman cast and launched digital experiences at a major bank. She looks forward to growing old and every minute of the journey there.
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Tyler Jones is the director of 1504, a narrative studio in Birmingham, Alabama that integrates strategic communications with the visual arts. As a filmmaker, Jones has led initiatives with the Equal Justice Initiative, Southern Foodways Alliance, and NPR. He believes the power of experiential storytelling fosters a more empathetic society.
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Janae (she/her) is an artist, writer, and experience designer for magic makers and cycle breakers. She has a particular interest in finding the magic in the mundane and illuminating points of connection. Over the last decade Janae has helped community organizers across the globe improve their training experience.
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Jessica Schoolman is passionate about empathy, neuropsychology and promoting conscious acts of kindness as a lifestyle. Her work in the fields of clinical psychology, international volunteering and health education gives her a unique ability to create opportunities to learn about the brain, the self, and the vital differences between them.
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Thijs Beuming, PhD, is a New York-based multidisciplinary scientist and artist who is interested in the use of computer science to facilitate the discovery of novel therapeutics. He is co-founder of the performance organization Visual Echo, a New York-based performance organization dedicated to facilitating generative dialogues among people from diverse backgrounds.
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Emily (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, dabbler, writer, community-engagement practitioner and English professor residing in Northern California (but know that she is a proud Philly native). Her artwork and teaching center on interconnectedness through designing immersive activities that tie various communities in reciprocal service bonds to one another. She is a sensory-input lover.
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As an Information Designer, Hailey activates communities by sharing complex ideas in accessible ways. She leverages neuroscience and human-centered design to inform visual design solutions that provide communities with access to essential information (housing, health, and emergent responses). Her multi-faceted approach to social design is anchored in the principles of the Design Justice Network.
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Not your average Production Designer/Creative Director, Filmmaker/Photographer, Comedian, Stylist and M.C., Jenell's mission as a multi-hyphenate creator & lifelong learner is to cultivate uniquely engaging experiences via film, comedy, installation art, & experiential design.
Sustaining an emphasis on social justice, community building, and mental health advocacy, her work can be seen in Comedy Central, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Thrasher, Teen Vogue, GLAAD, 4 Vimeo staff pics, and 3 Sundance award winning short films.
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Krishnan Unnikrishnan is the co-founder of Radiant IRIS with a mission to revitalize live storytelling culture for playful collaborative transformation and cross-cultural exchange. Using embodied interactions, even at a distance, his experiments, inspired by ancient Vedic wisdom, explore the dance between mind/body, individual/community & society/Nature.
2022
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Mel Bieler is a theatrical and event Production and Experience Designer dedicated to creating human-centered artistic experiences through storytelling, discovery, and interactive design. As an Event Designer, she’s designed and produced 600+ events and brand activations. As a multi-disciplinary theatre artist, Mel is a scenic, prop, and puppetry designer, visual playwright, and producer.
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Margo Gray (she/they) is a creator of immersive work based in Minnesota, on the unceded land of the Dakota and Ojibwe. Their work focuses on building audience empathy. Margo’s current project is creating an interactive audio experience for a 135-mile bike trail through northern Minnesota’s Iron Range.
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Christine (she/her) is an independent theatre-creator, audience experience crafter, and interactive and immersive comedy writer, teacher, and performer. She runs her indie theatre company smallmatters.ca out of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada located on Treaty 6 Lands. She is keen on using humour as a tool to create empathy.
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Tinkerer, Teacher, Maker, Technomancer, Jerome’s passion projects range from programming giant motion-sensing pseudo-holograms to secret internet-connected newspaper bins, to RFID-enabled immersive art exhibits. He is driven by a need to get past the “neat” factor of new and emerging technology, and instead, find ways to use technology to facilitate human-to-human connection.
jalexthetechnologist.com
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Natalie lives in Hackney, East London and devises themed, cross-genre events. Co-founder of groundbreaking Field Day music festival, devisor of bespoke barter in The Good Food Swap: her “Village Mentality” approach has community exchange and creative health at its heart: freely blending tradition, performance and the domestic, with loads of nature; always!
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Victor Carinha helps organizations achieve their most impactful visions by designing, directing, & producing playable engagements that inspire and unite participants. Experimenting with narrative and audience agency, he strives to create work that impacts a participant’s creative and philosophical outlook and the way in which the experience becomes part of that individual’s personal folklore.
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Taouba is an Algerian-born, Saskatchewan-raised community activist, documentary photographer, and filmmaker, of Berber Indigenous descent. Through her camera lens, she has had the opportunity of witnessing human struggle, strength, and spirit. Her interest lies in using storytelling to enrich communities and engage citizens. She currently lives in Canada, but her heart lives around the world.
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Megan Livingston is a Baltimore-based artist with a degree in peace studies. Her creative practices include acting and playwriting, songwriting and composing, recording and performing, nonfiction and poetics, and conceptualism and performance.
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Amy is a relational experience designer who focuses on intimate, embodied, small-scale encounters. Through the weaving of guided itineraries, sensory exploration, skilled communication, and openness to the unknown, Amy helps people access new levels of intimacy and inner wisdom. She comes from a background as a print journalist, facilitator, and sex educator. Find her TEDx talk on how experience design can amplify connection at amysegreti.com.
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Tracy is a scientist and artist who investigates complex interactions among organisms, be they microbial or human. Through This Yearning, she designs restorative experiences using multisensory stimuli (smell- and sound-scapes). As the Collaboration & Outreach Coordinator with the New York Genome Center, Tracy uses experience design to guide holistic science communication.
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Emily Gill, MFA, is currently an Associate Professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Theatre at the University of Montevallo in Alabama where she teaches design theory and costume design topics. Her interest in experiential design comes from a pre-graduate work career in freelance theatre in Atlanta as well as frequent participation in the Prague Quadrennial Festival, as well as a real love of challenging and creative theatrical experiences as a maker and audience member.
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Brice is a data scientist interested in learning about and building models of human experience. He enjoys philosophy, working with new technologies, and unexpectedly finding objects that lead into an ARG.
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A Californian transplant in New York who’s spent nearly a decade in advertising working for agencies like RG/A and Droga5 before joining Apple as a contractor. I’m excited to contribute my background in interactive production to this cohort and learn from everyone in our class as we deepen our understanding of experience design.
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Marlon is a creative polymath and professional dancer based in New York City. His creative agency, Flying Under The Radar specializes in experiences designed to stimulate and inspire, creative/movement direction, and performance of all kinds. Over Marlon’s career, was a member of the contemporary ballet company Armitage Gone! Dance, introduced a new course Tech and Tech (dance technique and technology) at Hunter College, created the performance to launch the largest screen in Times Square, and most recently premiered his original work Affirmation Station, an installation encouraging positive thinking at Brookfield Place.