Nicole Sheena Anand
“Our service mandate on TACRE is to design recommendations for racial equity that the US Treasury can enact.”
“If we want to create humane, pluralistic futures, we need to nurture a different kind of curiosity.”
“Hiring for diversity and then managing for assimilation does not breed innovation. At best, it stifles creativity.”
“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.”
“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. ”
“Multistakeholderism has the potential to tackle problems that arise through expertise-centric problem-solving... When done well, it creates space and incentives for different stakeholders to speak, share and deliberate. ”
As a lifelong learner, I’ve woven together an unconventional expertise that has enabled me to confront some of the most complex and pressing issues facing our societies today. For over 15 years, I’ve applied this expertise to my leadership in the strategy, learning and impact of local and international, social and economic justice organizations.
My experience stretches across the United States, Europe, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America and West Africa, and I graduated from the University of Berkeley, California and the London School of Economics. I am an impact methods nerd. I love teaching and practicing design strategy and research. I am a facilitator and I enjoy the difficult task of creating spaces for ‘a healthy debate’.
In my free time, you can catch me 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 and what reasoning do we use?
I am a political economist.
In 2022, I joined Inclusive Action for the City as Deputy Director to grow the footprint of the organization’s policy advocacy, microfinance and innovative research. In under 3 years, through legislative actions and frontline services, we’ve greatly furthered the movements in inclusive finance, immigrant, worker, small business, and commercial tenant power. As an advocate, I was selected to sit on the inaugural Racial Equity Committee for the US Treasury (TACRE) and for 2 years I’ve recommended solutions for equitable treatment of Black taxpayers, a safety net for immigrants, and inclusion of AANHPI in access to capital programs.
I am a participatory strategist.
In 2019, I returned to my hometown of Los Angeles, California, where I developed my independent consulting practice. I joined forces with our Deputy Mayor of Budget and Innovation in planning the city’s open government agenda, I co-founded and stewarded 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, and I guided senior leaders at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the use of systems approaches to navigate global policy issues.
A decade prior, I became a leader in the international open government and data movement. 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.
I am a design researcher.
For 7 years, I taught Design Research to MFA students in the Transdisciplinary Design program at Parsons School of Design, The New School. This ran in tandem to directing the strategy of the international civil society organization focused on data and technology, The Engine Room, and the global social design firm, Reboot.
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