Deborah Alden
- Advisor & Strategist
As a strategist, advisor, and educator who straddles the business and design worlds, Deborah serves as a thought and operating partner to leaders navigating ambiguous futures. A builder and systems thinker at heart, she's particularly drawn to opportunities to create new models that blur the line between values-driven and for-profit organizations and have worked with global enterprise executives, non-profit leaders, and hundreds of inspiring entrepreneurs.
Currently, as Founding Partner of da/rk with Richard Kelly, they're on a mission to humanize our economic models for shared value because they believe the increasing uncertainty and complexity of our world demands (and deserves!) fundamentally new and adaptive ways forward.
Previously, as both an intrapreneur and entrepreneur, she led the design and development of five purposeful organizations including WeWork’s global 'cultureOS’ business, which drove revenue growth by helping C-Suite executives think and act differently about culture and the role it plays in their businesses, and the Brooklyn Fashion + Design Accelerator, which focused on sustainable and ethical businesses.
She loves sharing the stories of impact of the communities of which she is a part and is regularly invited to do so globally. She has taught human-centered design and research at SVA, IIT Institute of Design, CEDIM in México, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where she was the Inaugural Chair for the BFA in Visual Communication.
Contact Deborah.
