Co-Designing Social Impact with Ali Fawkes

Ali Fawkes does a lot of heavy lifting in her work and her life, literally. Being severely dyslexic growing up, she turned to art as a way to give voice to her inner world. That led to a degree in fine arts, and reaching students with special needs through art, many of whom were nonverbal. Through a chance encounter, she became the first employ of the social design firm Humanly, who uses co-design and inclusion as a way to design with underrepresented and marginalized communities. We talk about her career path that led her to doing work with social impact. We also talk about how being naive and uninformed can be tremendous assets to keeping an open mind. We talk about how an art background keeps her in a mindset of disruption and innovation, breaking old norms to create new possibilities. Finally, we talk about her competing strongperson competitions, and how that is related to social design work.