Teaching
My pedagogical approach focuses on the integration of business and design, in the domains of behavioral economics, design leadership, and design management.
Spring 2026
Design Methods for Ideating
Workshop exploring diverse thinking styles, ideation approaches from multiple disciplines, and frameworks for reframing problems and sparking creativity. Emphasized practical application through research planning, concept testing, and translating ideas into design requirements.
Design Methods for Prototyping
Workshop focused on diverse prototyping methodologies and their application across the design process. Emphasized critical reflection, empirical user testing, and the translation of research insights into actionable design concepts.
Fall 2025
Graduate seminar examining foundational and contemporary theories of leadership with a focus on design contexts. Covered attributes of effective design leaders, historical and evolving models of leadership, and critical reflections on leadership challenges in the 21st century.
Graduate-level course exploring business processes and strategic management through the lens of design practice. Topics include managing people, projects, resources, and relationships across various organizational structures. Students developed comprehensive business plans, applying management theories and tools to real-world design contexts.
Design Methods for Framing Problems
Designed and taught a course focused on developing students’ ability to critically frame complex, ambiguous problems through iterative research, reflection, and systems thinking. Guided students in constructing actionable opportunity statements by synthesizing diverse perspectives, uncovering assumptions, and applying framing strategies across domains such as public policy, business, and social innovation.
Spring 2025
Fall 2024
Wicked Problems & Sensemaking
Design Methods for Framing Problems
Guest Lectures
Other Presentations
Guest Lecture on Visual Communication
MAX 507/MSC 655– Visual Analytics: Data Analytics and Visualization Spring 2024
Taught by Prof. Elizabeth J. Durango-Cohen, Ph.D. at Stuart School of Business, Illinois Institute of Technology
Co-taught (with Smrti Ganesan) a seminar on visual communication for Prof. Liz Durango-Cohen's Visual Analytics class in Spring 2024 at the Stuart School of Business. Having taken the class in the previous year (one of 3 design students), Prof. Durango-Cohen invited us back to teach the students the basics of visual communication and how to implement it within a data visualization context.
Trends in Design
Presented at FITCH Mumbai (now Landor): March 15th, 2018
A seminar summarizing the current trends in marketing, branding, and design, drawn from the WPP Stream Asia Unconference 2018.
Stories of Design
Presented at FITCH Mumbai (now Landor): October 26th, 2018 and at Interbrand Mumbai: March 15th, 2019
A seminar on three tools used by designers and the stories behind their creation and evolution, including one from the past (Brunelleschi's discovery of perspective drawing), one from the present (splines from shipbuilding to 3D modelling software) and one from the near future (Generative AI in design).
The Other Senses
Presented at NowHaus (Institute of Design) - Zhou B Arts Center, Chicago, March 2022
A sound driven presentation on the importance of multi-sensorial and multi-modal design experiences.
Pathways
Institute of Design, Chicago, April 11th 2025
Pathways: Insights from ID Alumni was designed to help students better understand the transition from graduate study at the Institute of Design to early professional roles across design, innovation, strategy, and research. This panel-style event featured recent alumni who shared reflections about their career paths, decisions, and lessons learned since leaving ID. It was developed in direct response to themes and concerns voiced during a recent student town hall, including the desire for more real talk, more transparency, and peer-to-peer insight into life after ID.