I am a Principal at HKS, the global design firm, where I work with senior leaders to solve complex challenges and create a clearer path to the future – using design to drive outcomes that improve lives, strengthen communities, and shape the places where people live, work, and gather. My work focuses on education, community development, sustainable real estate, and public health. Clients include governments, foundations, impact investors, educational institutions, healthcare organizations, and mission-oriented businesses. 

I come to this work from a career in global higher education, where I was an interdisciplinary humanities professor and a research fellow in the Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School.

I wrote Site Reading: Fiction, Art, Social Form (Princeton UP), which won the Erving Goffman Award for Outstanding Scholarship from the Media Ecology Association, and The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature (with Peter Mendelsund, Ten Speed/Crown/Penguin Random House), which was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review. I also edited a new critical edition of The Great Gatsby‍ ‍(W.W. Norton).

Over the past 15 years, I have had the privilege to collaborate with visionary leaders and senior executives on multiple continents. My research and writing have been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Social Science Research Council. I completed my Ph.D. in English (media studies) at the University of Chicago, where I serve on the Alumni Board of Directors.