About — COLLECTIVIST

Nicole Sheena Anand

“If we want to create humane, pluralistic futures, we need to nurture a different kind of curiosity.”

— Design Decode, "Designing with a Political and Power Lens"

“Hiring for diversity and then managing for assimilation does not breed innovation. At best, it stifles creativity.”

— Stanford Social Innovation Review, "‘Checkbox Diversity’ Must Be Left Behind for DEI Efforts to Succeed"

“The future of work and education across the globe is uncertain. For practitioners solving complex public problems, limited learning opportunities and constraining work environments threaten possibilities
of expanding and elevating their collective practice. ”

— Participatory Design Conference, "Creating Global Learning Systems Infrastructure: a collective for multidisciplinary and cross-sector practice to tackle complex public problems"

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“A designer in bureaucracy needs to learn how to satisfy the frontloading and in parallel, set expectations of iterations to come and needs for agility going forward.”

— Apolitical, "Designing in Bureaucracy"

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I am a political economist, participatory designer and design-led researcher, with extensive experience working in international development at the intersection of governance, design and technology.

I returned to my hometown of Los Angeles, California in 2019 where I’m leading civil society in the city’s open government agenda. I steward an emergent global collective called The Residency that I co-founded as the future Union, Guild and Council for civil servants, activists and social designers. I teach in the Transdisciplinary Design MFA program at Parsons School of Design, The New School. I collaborate with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the use of systems approaches to navigate global policy issues.

Formerly, I directed the strategy of the international civil society organization focused on data and technology, The Engine Room, and the global social design firm, Reboot. As a citizen and digital engagement specialist at The World Bank and an open government program manager at Global Integrity, I developed my governance practice. My international development work began in India at OneWorld Foundation as the head of their research department focused on public innovation.

My work spans the United States, Europe, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America and West Africa. I am a graduate of the University of Berkeley, California and the London School of Economics.

I am a methodology nerd. I love and teach design research. I am a facilitator and I enjoy the difficult task of creating spaces for ‘a healthy debate’.

I am currently obsessing over these questions:

Immigration: how do we share ‘immigrant’ and ‘children of immigrant’ lived experiences?
Facilitative Leadership: how do leaders listen and learn to make inclusive and resonant decisions?
Argumentation: how do we develop and deliver a viewpoint? what types of reasoning do we use?