Designer, Schools2030 Program Support

In the fall of 2019, Aga Khan Foundation invited me to create a design-based innovation process for schools around the world participating in the Schools2030 initiative. I collaborated with Gray Garmon to develop a series of toolkits to empower local teachers to leverage Human-Centered Design to solve problems in their classrooms and schools. We also created and delivered both in-person and virtual trainings in Human-Centered Design. I have continued to support ten country teams as they begin to implement the program locally with schools.

Below are the resources we created as well as some of the reflections we have presented about Schools2030 and the potential for Human-Centered Design to help teachers to make a difference in these schools.

● Schools2030 Human-Centered Design website

● One Design Process. 10 Countries. 1,000 Schools. Endless Opportunity

● Using Human-Centered Design to address educational challenges – video interview

In the spring of 2021, the Schools2030 toolkit won the runner-up award for the Design Education Initiative category of the Core77 Design Awards.

In the fall of 2021, the Schools2030 toolkit won an honorable mention in the Fast Company Innovation by Design competition.

Designer, Stanford Healthy Elections Project

In May 2020, a team of designers from the d.school launched efforts to use human-centered design to contribute to protecting voter participation in the Fall 2020 election.  Amidst a global health pandemic, the d.school is focusing on how to reduce the health risks and stress associated with voting. The project is being carried out in partnership with Stanford Law Professor Nathaniel Persily and his elections-focused research team.

The research team is working with a range of partners who have been heavily involved in improving the voting experience from a design, implementation, and experience standpoint at the state and county level. Funding for this initiative is provided by Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, an initiative of the Stanford Law School.

• Healthy Elections website

• Long lines, stressed poll workers, COVID-19: How Stanford d.school is using design to streamline voting

• Stanford project applies human-centered design to in-person voting

Reimagining the Discipline Process for Dallas Independent School District

The Reimagining Discipline Design Project was initiated by Dallas Independent School District (DISD) and Child Poverty Action Lab. Dallas Independent School District serves more than 150,000 students in Dallas, Texas. Discipline processes in school districts in the United States are notoriously discriminatory against Black and brown students, who often face harsher punishments for the same infractions. This leads to loss of learning and more interaction with the justice system. This phenomenon is so consistent that it has been named by sociologists as the “school to prison pipeline.” I led the process with a Design Team made up of more than twenty DISD leaders and community members. The Design Team followed an Human-Centered Design process to explore the challenge of eliminating In-School Suspension and Out-of-School Suspension from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, including students and educators.

Below are links of news coverage of the larger initiative.

• Reinventing School Discipline in Texas: After Years of Unequal Punishment for Black Students, Dallas ISD Moves Toward Historic End to Most Suspensions

• Trustees praise Dallas’ effort to ban most out-of-school suspensions and rethink its discipline policies

Addressing Racism in the Childcare Licensing Process for the Oregon Department of Education, Early Learning Division

Katie led an Human-Centered Design process with a Design Team made up of nine staff members from the Early Learning Division in the Oregon Department of Education, focusing on childcare. In the state of Oregon, childcare providers enroll more than 120,000 children. The Design Team followed an Human-Centered Design process to explore the challenge of eliminating bias and discrimination from the state-regulated licensing process for childcare providers. There had been persistent complaints that the licensing process was discriminatory against Black and brown childcare providers. The Design Team interviewed multiple stakeholders, including childcare providers, Early Learning Division staff and families.

Facilitator, Principal Impact Collaborative

PIC is a unique professional growth and learning opportunity for principals from North Texas public school districts to work together in small teams to develop and execute a transformative improvement project for their school. Over the two year program, principals in the cohort have dedicated time each month away from their campus to refine their leadership skills and hone their project idea in order to drive impact at their school. 

I serve as the lead facilitator for the principals’ design thinking trainings. In this program, I lead a five day summer institute as well as monthly sessions for the first two quarters of the school year.

Click here to learn more about my work with the Principal Impact Collaborative.

“Through these sessions, Katie has designed and implemented thought-provoking, inspiring, and engaging learning opportunities so that through our program, our principals can design small-scale innovative ideas to improve their schools.  In this time, I have been more than impressed with Katie’s ability to teach, inspire, and challenge in her role as a facilitator.  I believe any organization would be lucky to engage with her.”

- Alejandra Barbosa, Program Director, Principal Impact Collaborative

Facilitator & Designer, Parish Episcopal School

I have led a small team of external designers and a committee of Parish teachers and school leaders through a multi-year process to use design thinking to reimagine the use of time as an instructional resource at Parish.

Click here to learn more about my work with Parish Episcopal School.

“It is my privilege to communicate how pleasurable and powerful it has been to know and work with Katie Krummeck over the last three years. Her impact both on me as a school leader and on our school community has been significant.” 

- Dave Monaco, Head of School, Parish Episcopal School

“Parish understood the need for a different approach to initiating change. Katie and her team have been instrumental in gifting us with their knowledge, expertise and time. Our faculty have embraced this design model, understand, and appreciate that they have been involved in the design process from the beginning.”

- Michelle Lyon, Assistant Head of School, Parish Episcopal School

Facilitator, School Retool Principal Fellowship, Stanford University

School Retool is a professional development fellowship that helps school leaders redesign their school culture using small, scrappy experiments called “hacks.” Hacks may start small, but they're built on research-based practices that lead to Deeper Learning, and can create the kind of big change you aspire to—namely, preparing your students for life in the real world.

Coach, d.school Designing for Social Systems, Stanford University

Designing for social change is complex work. It requires considering the many stakeholders and factors that could affect outcomes, having deep understanding of people while seeing the bigger picture, gaining clarity and conviction despite incomplete information, and discovering and choosing interventions that have impact, in the multitude of possibilities. Our belief and experience is that human-centered design is a powerful methodology and mindset to employ in this work.

The purpose of Designing for Social Systems is to empower leaders and practitioners in the nonprofit, philanthropy, government, and social impact fields to work in more effective, human, and strategic ways. In collaboration with these practitioners, we aim to redesign how this work is done, develop more effective interventions, and advance the sector as a whole.

Facilitator, Teach for America & Texas Education Agency Workshop on Design Thinking, School System Leaders Summit 

I co-facilitated a group of 60+ school and nonprofit leaders in a weekend-long design thinking sprint. Participants learned the design thinking process and then generated ideas around the challenge of supporting principals of turnaround schools in Texas.

“It is rare to find a facilitator who I can put in front of teachers and superintendents and trust that the session will be a success, but Katie is that person. She has an authenticity and joy that she brings to her work that makes others curious and excited to engage. Katie’s leadership and facilitation style is casual and approachable, while leaving no doubt for her audience that she is absolutely an expert in her field. She understands, like few experts do, that most people don’t want to listen to someone talk all day. They want to do, practice, and try what you are teaching them. Katie leans into this participant desire and rarely has a stretch of more than 10 minutes where she is the main focus. Her sessions were interactive and genuinely fun for participants without sacrificing the learning.  After attending Katie’s all-day session, a summit participant said to me, ‘This is hands down the best development I have had as a leader, and I’ve been in education for 16 years! She’s amazing!’ Katie has been wonderful to work with throughout the projects we’ve collaborated on and I look forward to working together in the future!”

- Kaleigh Finn, Manager of Alumni Educational Development, Teach for America DFW

Facilitator & Designer, Independent Schools Association of the Southwest

I led a small team of external designers and a committee of ISAS staff and school leaders through a multi-year process to use design thinking to reimagine options for the accreditation process for their association. The project launched with a sprint focused on design research that our team facilitated for more than one hundred Heads of School. This sprint included unconventional methods for gathering feedback and input into the redesign of the process. From there, our team synthesized the data gathered, made strategic recommendations and facilitated the leadership team through a process of making decisions about what to implement.

“Katie finds ways to contribute to education at the edges of innovation. She has most recently facilitated an ISAS group of Heads of School to design a new iteration of Self Study for the ISAS accreditation program, the members of which were selected especially for their talents and interests in developing a fresh approach to ensuring foundational excellence for independent schools coupled with aspirational improvement. Her work at the ideation session was excellent. She led an experienced and diverse group of school leaders through a variety of activities. She challenged and prompted the group to free its thinking so as to capture the most aspirational ideas. She asked each person to question assumptions and probed organizational blind spots. She diligently recorded all thoughts and synthesized the data for future scrutiny and consideration. At the same time, the session went by so quickly; everyone was engaged fully, never a dull moment. That is a testament to her personality and process.”

- Rhonda Durham, Executive Director, Independent Schools Association of the Southwest 

Facilitator & Designer, Good Shepherd Episcopal School

I led a committee of GSES teachers and school leaders through an intensive design-based process to gather qualitative data regarding the state of their school. This data was synthesized to develop materials for the school’s accreditation process and also informed the school’s strategic planning process moving forward.

“Katie is a trusted, experienced, and powerful thought partner for our school. She doesn't try to offer a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather understands your organization from the inside and is able to identify meaningful opportunities. She then knows how to make those opportunities into their own design questions that help you move forward.”

- Julie McLeod, Head of School, Good Shepherd Episcopal School

Facilitator & Designer, Highland Park High School

Our team led a committee of stakeholders (teachers, administrators, parents, students) to explore how to implement a Bring Your Own Device policy at a local public high school. The committee gathered qualitative design research and our team synthesized that data into recommendations for programmatic elements to implement.