ID [PNW]

David Kaisel   has worked for 25 years integrating design, business strategy, user research and global health. Pursuing design as a tool to help people lead healthier lives, his design career progressed from office seating in Italy to client management in Silicon Valley to designing morgues, emergency housing and malaria treatment programs in Angola, Colombia and Brazil. Four years coordinating projects for Doctors Without Borders confirmed his interest in design for global health. Exploring how design impacts sustained adoption of health interventions, he advises clients such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and PATH on user research design and product innovation for household water treatment and community sanitation. As a research director at the Institute for the Future, he developed strategic forecasts of trends in the global health economy for Fortune 100 clients. His past work includes research on biomass stove test protocols and standards for the Shell Foundation, ...

Dawn Danby   wants the things designers make to benefit both people and the world.  Her goals goals are simply to develop environmentally sustainable systems and products that change the way individuals experience the things around them. Dawn is a cross-disciplinary designer, strategist, art director, project manager, producer and artist. She currently manages Autodesk's Sustainable Design Program, integrating sustainable thinking into the digital tools used by 9 million designers and engineers worldwide. Dawn has collaborated with international artist Noel Harding on Windsor, Ontario's Green Corridor initiative, designed a $3.5 million tree-covered, wind-powered pedestrian bridge on the US-Canada border and developed closed-loop manufacturing strategies for a leading outdoor footwear manufacturer. Dawn is a  co-author of  WorldChanging: A User's Guide to the 21st Century and has spoken at  TEDGlobal 2005:  Ideas big enough to change th...

We are excited to have Mike Simonian and Maaike Evers presenting at the IDSA Western District Conference, San Jose, CA.   And check out the latest Metropolis magazine (March 2011), it features Mike and Maaike as some of the great new design talent in America. " Mike & Maaike is a progressive industrial design studio led by Mike Simonian and Maaike Evers.   Formed as a design laboratory, the San Francisco studio works both independently and with clients to create new opportunities through products, technology, furniture, environments, packaging and transportation.   Maaike Evers is Dutch, Mike Simonian, Californian. These distinct backgrounds inform a diverse body of work marked by experimentation, substance and strong conceptual narratives.   Recent collaborations include: Google, Belkin, Steelcase, Xbox, Blankblank, Council, Coalesse, Incase,  Dupont, Fritz Hansen, Ironkey, and the City of San Francisco." - from their website. Mike and Maaike's atnmbl...

Kevin Starr is the managing director of the Mulago Foundation. He directs the  Foundation and the Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program. Kevin had a perfectly good career in medicine when he stumbled into philanthropy in 1994. His friend and mentor Rainer Arnhold died suddenly when they were working together in Bolivia, and the Arnhold family asked Starr to help carry on Rainer's work through the Mulago Foundation.  Kevin spent the next decade working with projects from Afghanistan to Zambia, trying to figure out what makes for real impact at big scale. At the request of the board, he established the Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program in 2003 to apply Mulago's principles and tools to help social entrepreneurs turn good ideas into lasting change at scale. Kevin went through medical school and residency at University California San Francisco and has lived in San Francisco ever since. He teaches and mentors fellows in other programs for social entrepreneurs and still practices medicine p...

The IDSA Western District Conference has 2 new amazing additions to the line up: Ryan Duke of Project H and Heather Fleming of Catapult Design ! Ryan Duke leads the San Francisco team of Project H Design working on socially-oriented design initiatives providing creative capital to those with limited access. As a project leader, he has led hundreds of volunteers, organized in small groups based on skill and commitment, through numerous projects that work to create impact in local communities.  Launching the first city-based group, Ryan has helped Project H define processes and establish strategies for effective project implementation as Project H develops within the evolving world of social design. Heather Fleming, Founder | Chief Executive Officer, Catapult Design Heather is a designer, an engineer, and an entrepreneur motivated by social inequality. In 2005, she helped found and then led a volunteer group of engineers and designers focused on humanitarian design projec...