¡Hola! I’m Laura.
I'm a designer, strategist, design researcher, and educator.
My professional experience spans across the social services, arts, publishing, and startup sectors. More recently, I have embraced the role of educator, sharing my knowledge and experiences with others.
I am deeply committed to centering the needs and desires of the individuals and communities most impacted by a product, service, or system. I strive to foster understanding, build capacity and resilience within communities and organizations, and approach action and design responsibly and sustainably.
What I do
(and do well)
Design Research and Strategy
I utilize diverse research methods, from benchmarking and market analysis to participatory, equity-centered design. Collaborating with partners and communities, I identify needs, extract insights, and define problems. These are translated into actionable principles, mapped into processes, and developed into inclusive, sustainable plans aligning with project goals for meaningful impact.
Facilitation and Co-creation
At times, I shift from 'expert' to guide, creating spaces for communities to question, define, and co-create their goals. Using participatory and co-design methods, I foster collaboration and ensure power is shared equitably, enabling meaningful engagement and empowering participants to shape their projects or missions effectively.
Visual Design and Communications
I leverage my visual design expertise to create materials—slide decks, brands, data visualizations, and websites—that clarify complex concepts and enhance engagement. These tools support project phases or serve as final outputs. I also develop organizational communication plans and strategies to ensure alignment and effective messaging.
Illustration and Printmaking
These skills often feature in my work, recently focusing on personal projects and social justice causes. I’ve created zines, posters, and screen-printed items like tote bags and T-shirts, enjoying the creative advocacy of using the risograph printer I co-own to support meaningful movements.
Educate
My teaching blends design, systems thinking, and social change, fostering spaces where diverse voices are valued, critical conversations thrive, and vulnerability meets compassion. I encourage experimentation and embrace failure as essential to growth, guiding students to examine design's role in shaping a life-sustaining and equitable future.
Social and service design projects, from research to strategy to implementation.
Brand dev. + applications, books, websites, magazines among others.
Standalone work, small projects, and bits of larger projects.
*** Please Note ***
I’m updating and migrating my website to this new platform.
While I get this new website up and going, I will link to pages on my old website.
While you’re still here, I invite you to experience some of the work I co-created with The Fortune Society community members and my friend and fellow artist, Jenny Polak, at MoMA PS1. (on view until March 2025).
Future Freedoms is a celebration of four years of deep relationship and collaboration with the Fortune community—artists, staff, participants, partners, and supporters—and a culmination of the two years of our CRNY-supported work. The exhibition showcases self-portraits, garments, poetry, pennants, sculptures, a broadsheet, audio recordings, a billboard, and a music video. The exhibition centers and honors the talents and ingenuity of Fortune artists, who present works that are not only aesthetically beautiful, most also problematize and counter mainstream discourses about carcerality and reentry within a society that favors punishment over healing and legality over wellbeing.
