Design Futures 2025!
The 2025 Design Futures Forum will be an in-person five-day, interdisciplinary leadership development convening in New Orleans, Louisiana from June 2nd-June 6th, 2025. Hosted by Tulane, we will bring together 70+ student leaders from across the nation representing design programs from leading academic institutions and over 25 academic and practitioner faculty from private and non-profit based practices.
Registration is through the University Consortium. Individual registration may be available.
If you are a university representative, faculty or staff and would like to participate in the Consortium, please contact designfuturesforum@gmail.com
Ezra Kong (they/them)
Executive Director
Ezra Kong is a community-based facilitator and practitioner. They are the co-founder of Reflex Design Collective, an organization working to shift how our cities evolve to design with, rather than for, those most impacted by (in)equity. Ezra is based in Oakland, California on Ohlone land.
Barbara Brown Wilson
Dan Etheridge
Rajan Hoyle
Theresa Hyuna Hwang
Shalini Agrawal (she/her)
Shalini Agrawal (she/her) is an Associate Professor at the California College of the Arts in Critical Ethnic Studies, Individualized, and Interdisciplinary Studios. Drawing from her extensive career in and community engaged design, she created equity-focused, anti-racist training for architects and designers as founder and principal of Public Design for Equity, and Co-Director of Pathways to Equity. She is a Visiting Professor of Practice in Planning at University of Oregon, and core organizer of CCA’s Decolonial School and Dark Matter U.
Carlos Cepeda Gómez (He/They)
Carlos Cepeda Gómez is a Design Futures 2024 Alumnus and a recent graduate from the school of architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. Originally from Venezuela and having lived in the United States over the last decade. They are interested in informal housing, geo-centric design, and liminal urban spaces.
Gabby Coleman (she/her)
Gabby Coleman is an interdisciplinary designer, planner, and artist. As a Visiting Assistant Professor of Architecture at Kansas State University (KSU), she teaches undergraduate design studios and graduate seminars on community engagement and participatory design. Her research engages with spatial issues at multiple scales, investigating topics of urban justice like placemaking, informal social networks, and community resilience. Gabby holds a Master of Architecture degree from KSU and a Master of Science in Urban Planning from Columbia University. Storytelling and participatory research fuel her design approach.
Jose Cotto (he/him)
Jose Cotto is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator whose creative practice explores relationships between people, place, and time – often integrating poetry, design, mark-making, and lens-based media. He has a Masters of Architecture from Tulane University and BFA in Design + Architecture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In his current role at the Small Center of Collaborative Design, Cotto curates exhibits & programs and works with students to explore critical connections between our environments and social fabrics through courses and projects.
Alissa Ujie Diamond (she/her)
Alissa Ujie Diamond holds a B.S. in Architecture, an MLA, and a PhD in the Constructed Environment, all from University of Virginia. Her work focuses on histories of spatialized inequity and action-research as a basis for systems change in the contemporary world. As an interdisciplinary scholar, she draws on an early career in applied architectural and landscape design as well as scholarly frameworks from environmental history, geography, plant humanities, urban planning, and ethnic studies.
Jess Garz (she/her)
Jess’s primary goal is to support groups to create policies, practices and cultures that take an active position towards social and racial justice. As the founder and director of RAE Consulting, Jess’s practice is inspired by a decade of work as a grantmaker, training in architecture and urban planning, and a community of brilliant colleagues, artists, friends and family. After decades of moving around, Jess lives in the neighborhood where she was born and raised in Philadelphia
Christine Gaspar (she/her)
Christine Gaspar is Executive Director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a New York-based nonprofit whose mission is to use the power of design and art to increase meaningful civic engagement in partnership with historically marginalized communities. Her 15+ years of work in community-engaged design draws on her degrees in architecture, urban planning, environmental studies, and her experience growing up in an immigrant family.
Liz Kramer (she/her)
Liz works with people working for the public good to design meaningful, engaging, human-centered change. She co-leads Public Design Bureau, a St. Louis-based organization that works across sectors, centering the voices of those most directly impacted and historically excluded in decision-making in the design of new products, services, experiences, and more. She previously led the Office for Socially Engaged Practice at the Sam Fox School at Washington University, and teaches design thinking, creativity, and empathy.
Liz Ogbu (she/her)
A designer, urbanist, and spatial justice activist, Liz is an expert on engaging and transforming unjust urban environments. Her multidisciplinary design practice, Studio O, operates at the intersection of racial and spatial justice. Among her honors, she’s a TEDWomen speaker, Public Interest Design’s Top100, and Aspen Ideas Festival Scholar.
Sarah Wu (she/her)
As the Assistant Director of Research for the School of Architecture, Sarah is responsible for coordinating and working directly with faculty, professionals, stakeholders and community groups on various projects, and assists in grant writing for proposed work. Sarah has a BS in Conservation & Resource Studies from UC Berkeley and a Masters in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include environmental planning, social equity, public interest design and sustainable development.
Marc Norman
Sue Mobley
Elgin Cleckley