IDEO/IDEO.org, San Francisco

Annette Diefenthaler is a designer and design leader driven by the question, what can design contribute to improve our society? As an Executive Director at IDEO and Fellow at IDEO.org, she has brought creative approaches to health care systems, to the education sector, and to work towards transformational change in child welfare. Bringing joy and humanity to complex questions is her passion and has manifested in a fast-growing high-quality network of schools in Latin America, a radically new international school in Bangkok, a bus that virtually takes middle schoolers to Mars to inspire STEM learning, and a community of educators who creatively lead change. Annette is invested in giving those impacted by design solutions equitable authorship in their creation and, as a design researcher, focuses on the creative translation of insights into sustainable solutions. She is co-author of multiple publications, and her work has received several design awards. Annette holds a master‘s degree from Köln International School of Design. Now based in San Francisco, Annette grew up in Germany. In her free time, she can be found running near the ocean, backpacking in remote areas, or building large kinetic Origami sculptures with art collective FoldHaus.