SCD Director Rachel Switzky and team presented Siebel Center for Design’s inaugural Virtual Open House on Friday, October 16, 2020. Sad you missed it? No worries! We have it right here.
For those who wish to watch the video with closed captioning, click here.
Questions?
Email us at designcenter@illinois.edu
Check Out Our Speakers!
Rachel Switzky
Rachel Switzky is the inaugural director of Siebel Center for Design. Prior to her current appointment, she has been a global design leader working with Fortune 100 companies over the past 20 years.
Most recently, she served as an Executive Director at IDEO, the company who pioneered the concept of design thinking. For the last decade in this role, she helped teams imagine futures and then put them into action, focusing on digital design, emergent technologies and impact at scale.
Rachel attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, receiving her BFA and MFA in Industrial Design from the College of Fine and Applied Arts.
Rachael Dietkus
Rachael Dietkus is the Associate Director of Programs at Siebel Center for Design. She came to SCD with a decade of macro-focused clinical social work practice, with previous experience in the federal government working on healthcare and housing advocacy, and in higher education with a focus on macro and clinical preparation with social work students. At SCD, she is focused on human-centered design teaching and curriculum development. She has served as an AmeriCorps member and NGO delegate to the Human Rights Council, and is currently a Commissioner with Serve Illinois. She is a two-time alumna of UIUC, where she studied Sociology and Social Work, and is currently working on her MFA with a focus on trauma-informed design research.
Saad Shehab
Saad Shehab is a postdoctoral research assistant at Siebel Center for Design. He conducts research that informs the design and implementation of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development in order to facilitate the teaching and learning of Human-Centered Design (HCD) in formal and informal learning environments. His research interests focus on the role of the teacher in orchestrating collaborative problem solving activities in STEM classrooms.
Amanda Henderson
Amanda Henderson is a Lecturer and Senior Design Strategist with Siebel Center forDesign. Her work extends from a passion for creating informed, engaging, and educational experiences across an ecosystem of learning environments. She currently teaches the TE401 course: Introduction to Design Thinking and works on several human-centered design projects focused on the campus experience while managing the interference of several family members, three golden retrievers, and a very fluffy cat.
Gail Rost
Gail Rost is currently at Siebel Center for Design as a Siebel Scholar and is a full-time graduate student at the University of Illinois working on her PhD in Art Education. With two degrees in design, Gail leads a human-centered designed life through the many iterations of her career. Her past experiences include many years in public K-12 education experience as executive director of the Champaign-Urbana Schools Foundation and through public service; as co-founder, designer and manager of The I.D.E.A. Store, a creative-reuse non-profit; in her landscape architecture and graphic design practice, through volunteer leadership, her advancement work for the College of Fine and Applied Arts and public/private art-making.
Jake Fava
Jake Fava has been with the Siebel Center for Design team since the beginning, starting as an intern in 2018 while pursuing degrees in Electrical Engineering and Technology Entrepreneurship. While at SCD, Jake has led research projects for the Grainger College of Engineering, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and the Gies College of Business iMBA Program. He has also been involved in curriculum development and instruction for courses in the College of Engineering, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and for SCD's own ‘Successful Storytelling’ course, and has conducted workshops on human-centered design for students, instructors, K-12 educators, and other audiences.