Designing a Values-Driven Career

Katie Krummeck '03 is a Community Experience Coordinator at Stanford University's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. Her ability to organize through chaos has helped her tremendously in life and at work. Whether she is dodging San Francisco traffic on her 1978 Vespa scooter, helping to get an independent school off the ground, growing an award-winning education non-profit from a local start-up to a national organization, navigating the cultural norms of life in southwestern China or canning the fruits of her labor in a peach field, Krummeck is happiest when she is solving problems and lending a hand.

Krummeck is an educator by training, a maker by trial and error and a steadfast believer in the power of empathy to bring compassionate solutions to the messiest of human problems. Indeed, the fact that empathy is a central component of design thinking is what led her to the d.school. Krummeck was thrilled to find a place where empathy is not only a value, but a process and a place to start. Krummeck is also excited to find a place where learning, teaching and doing are all equally praised and ecstatically executed; in other words, the perfect place to hang her work hat.

Krummeck hopes to bring her somewhat discordant attributes of type-A-ness and waywardness to the operations of the d.school. From organizing and stewarding the spaces in the building to working to increase the exposure of design thinking to those who come calling, Krummeck is excited to help in any way she can!

Ask her about her menagerie of rescued pets who all hail from Walla Walla, her vegetarian/vegan recipe blog (www.veghere.com), her recommendations for eating in San Francisco or the time her car was in a movie.

This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Student Engagement Center.