Adding some outside perspective to our course today special guess Ceda Verbakel joining us:

Ceda Verbakel is a design strategist who makes sense of fuzzy human stuff to help organizations make more thoughtful decisions. She does this using qualitative research methods, visual sense making, prototyping, facilitation and persuasive storytelling. She is currently a consultant at EPAM Continuum, a technology innovation company that serves a diversity of industries including travel, financial services and media across the US, Europe and Asia.

Ceda previously worked as an in-house design strategist at UPMC Enterprises – the technology and innovation arm of an 80k employee payer/provider healthcare organisation in the US. Her role included providing human-centred strategic guidance for a specialty outpatient hospital construction project on decisions that affect operations, technology and the built environment, deep dive design sprints to uncover opportunities in specialty areas (e.g. menopause, concussion etc.), and leading the design of two in-house COVID-related digital tools.

In her own time, Ceda also co-facilitates futures training workshops and co-designs future artifacts as part of Situation Lab. Before making her way to design she completed a double degree in bioethics & genetics, worked as a sexual health & relationships educator in Melbourne, and was the founding manager of a maker space in Toronto. She finished her Masters in Design at Carnegie Mellon University in 2019.