What lives beyond individual consumption and concentrated power?
How can we design systems, tools, and stories that support human and planetary flourishing?
Hi, I'm Ida. I'm a systems designer, creative strategist, and design leader working across social innovation, regenerative futures, and social impact.
I help nonprofits, foundations, and mission-driven organizations understand complex systems and human needs, design solutions that meet real constraints, and communicate their impact in a clear and compelling way.
My strength lies in making complexity actionable by connecting insight, context, and collaboration to support more equitable and sustainable outcomes for people and planet.
Over the past 15 years I've led innovation projects at IDEO, impact campaigns and communications strategies at Media Cause, and research, strategy, and creative direction across climate, education, healthcare, and social transformation.
A lot of my work comes to life through DesignShifts, a critical design lab and learning platform I founded in 2024. Through it, we explore how we can shift away from traditional design and capitalistic paradigms that focus on efficiency, individual consumption, and product output. Instead, we invite designers, researchers, organizations, and communities to explore design as a force for healing, equity, and collective wellbeing.
I work from the conviction that behavior follows conditions and harm is often structural. Which means real change requires looking at the systems we inhabit, the cultures that shape us, and the relationships that sustain us, not just the problem in front of us.
The tools and methods I draw on include systems thinking, research, design thinking, participatory design, speculative futures, and storytelling, but everything I do is intersectional and interrelational.
What lives beyond individual consumption and concentrated power? How can we design systems, tools, and stories that support human and planetary flourishing? These are the questions that drive my work.
I often speak and write about designing for a different world.
FORMER CLIENTS
My practice
UNDERSTANDSystems &
Futures Thinking
Before designing anything, I want to understand what's actually going on. Through research, stakeholder engagement, and systems mapping, I help organizations see the root causes and power dynamics shaping their challenges, not just the surface symptoms. This is where we figure out where change is actually possible.
CREATE Social Innovation &
Co-creation
Once we understand the system, we can start designing within it and against it. I help organizations develop programs, tools, and frameworks that create conditions for lasting change. That means working across facilitation and co-creation, prototyping interventions alongside communities, then building capacity to adapt as things shift.
COMMUNICATEStrategic Narrative & Communication
Good strategy needs to travel. I help organizations find the language that makes their vision clear and their work legible to funders, partners, and the people they're trying to reach. That means making sure what you say and what you do are pointing in the same direction.
Let’s collaborate
If you're navigating complex change and need support understanding the systems and people, designing better conditions, or communicating your vision with clarity, I'd love to hear from you.