Meet One of PHXDW’s Keynote Speakers, Ann Yoachim

Breanne Krager
Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read

We are less than a month away from Phoenix Design Week (PHXDW), a week-long series of events that takes place this year from October 5–12. This also means we are just as close to PHXDW’s premier event, the Beyond Design Conference on Oct. 6 and 7!

This grassroots event was founded in 2009 by designer Mark Dudlik, executive director of Lost Creature, and has become a fixture in Arizona’s design community, attracting some of the top design talent in the country to speak as well as showcase their unique visual design disciplines.

One of these designers is Ann Yoachim, the director of the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design and professor of practice at the Tulane School of Architecture. As director, she leads the center in its efforts to provide design services to communities that are often underserved by the profession. In research, teaching and practice she considers the confluence of built, natural and socially constructed environments and their impact on health and wellness.

Her experience also includes managing multifaceted climate change adaptation projects to building capacity of philanthropy through design thinking. She defines her work at the intersections of design, equity and ecology.

Take a moment to get to know this talented artist better before the Beyond Design Conference!

  1. What’s your superpower, or one you wish you had?
    I wish I could fly.
  2. What design or career advice would you give to your younger self?
    Purposeful work and having a full life is what matters. Worry less about your inability to have an elevator speech describing what you “do”. Embrace your non-traditional career path.
  3. If you were given the opportunity to see into the future, what would you want to know?
    Depends how far into the future! I would want to know if/how we as a species survived climate change.
  4. If you hadn’t ended up in the career you are in, what do you think you’d be doing?
    My career path has had so many twists and turns that I could have stopped at so many points along the way. That said, I would love to have been a sports broadcaster. Rachel Nichols, host of The Jump on ESPN, is a hero of mine.

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Phoenix Design Week

Breanne Krager

Written by

Part-time writer, full-time PR stud at Wired PR Group in Phoenix.

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Phoenix Design Week

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