Malene Barnett is an artist, activist, speaker and legacy maker working in one-of-a-kind ceramic sculptures and bespoke textiles. Raised in Norwalk, Connecticut, she’s an authority on the cultural traditions and practices of art in the African diaspora and how it translates into the modern black experience. She founded the Black Artists + Designers Guild, and is on a mission to use art as a tool to expand the conversation around marginalization in the arts and create greater opportunities for inclusion.

Born and raised in Chicago IL, Kara Mann was steeped in an environment of creativity, elegance, and resourcefulness. An entrepreneur at heart, Kara would sell CDs to fund projects and lie about her age to work restaurant shifts. Now she runs her own studio and has racked up clients like Virgil Abloh, Goop and several luxury hotels. She’s just launched a collection with CB2 and a line of home essentials called Kept. The Wall Street Journal aptly calls her a “spark plug in the world of design.”

This week Amy speaks with award-winning architect, and current Head of Global Design and Innovation for Gensler, Jordan Goldstein. Born in Rockville Maryland, Jordan discovered his passion for architecture visiting construction sites with his mother at age 5. Today he’s an educator and sought-after spokesperson on the future of design both domestically and globally, but what distinguishes Jordan is his interdisciplinary, cosmopolitan, approach to architecture with a focus on elevating the human experience.

Creative strategist, visionary, and design podcaster Maurice Cherry was born in Selma, Alabama where it quickly became apparent he was going to take the world by storm. Immensely talented on all fronts, Maurice has dedicated his career to recognizing and celebrating the power of Black design and creativity online. These days, Maurice is perhaps most well-known for his award-winning podcast Revision Path, which showcases Black designers, and as of 2019 is the FIRST podcast to be acquired by the Smithsonian.

Furniture designer & maker, artist, and educator Wendy Maruyama is a legend in her field. Born with Cerebral Palsy, deaf, and growing up 3rd generation Japanese-American she discovered an interest in woodworking as a teenager and by early adulthood was one of the first two women to get an MFA in Furniture Design from RIT. Throughout her nearly 50-year career, Wendy has been extremely influential in the world of studio and artistic furniture. She’s also a badass feminist, and funny as all hell.

Artist and product designer Bethan Laura Wood grew up with ample access to kitchen-table craft projects and a flair for self-expression. When kids made fun of her clothes, she reclaimed her style by going full-on “dress-uppy.” Her schooling, which included a craft-based technical track as well as conceptual rigor, has armed her with a finesse for elevating industrial materials to luxury levels, layered with depth and intrigue. Side note: she is known to travel in style, much to the delight of TSA agents!

Architect & Professor of Sustainable Design Joel Towers grew up in the suburbs with steady access to New York City. His father taught him to build and repair things, which helped carve his problem-solving neural pathways from a young age. Aware of the tension between humans and nature, a pivotal trip to Alaska set him on a dedicated path to striving for alignment and harmony. An educator at Parsons, he’s outspoken and optimistic about a future that is circular, decolonized, decarbonized, just, and feminist.

Danny Giannella, Tammer Hijazi and Jeffrey Renz are the trio behind Bower, a contemporary furniture and product design studio. With a focus on mirrors, they explore perceptions of depth, light and self. Through a free–thinking, experimental process, Bower aims to bring unexpected objects and environments into people's lives, with reflections taking center stage. They believe the mirror is the everyday object most closely related to our consciousness.

In this episode of Clever we’re deconstructing the success of New Zealand’s response to COVID-19 through a lens of design in a conversation with Ana Monroe, a civic design strategist and Akiko Kurematsu, a design and culture journalist in Auckland. New Zealand is considered a major success story in how they reacted to and contained the spread of Coronavirus, so we took a deep look at that success, by doing what designers do: taking it apart to see how it works.

In this special program, presented as part of WantedDesign Manhattan Online Conversation Series 2020, we discuss leadership insights, best practices and innovative ideas that can help sustain art and design schools through the new realities of the global health crisis and beyond. A conversation hosted by Amy Devers of Clever, with Rosanne Somerson, President of RISD; Samuel Hoi, President of MICA and Lorne Buchman, President of ArtCenter.