Designing Change

Leaders today are under pressure to innovate – or else. Trouble is, most never learned how. Moura Quayle and Denise Withers bridge this critical gap with their books, Designed Leadership and Story Design: The Creative Way to Innovate. In this open discussion, Moura and Denise will talk briefly about the foundational concepts behind their books and decades of design practice – then invite participants to join the conversation to share their own insights and experiences designing change.

About the Speakers:

MOURA QUAYLE Director pro tem, UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, Faculty of Arts, Professor, Sauder School of Business

Moura is the founding Director pro tem of UBC’s new School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. Previously she was the Director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC, the Director of the Master of Public Policy and Global Affairs, and is a Professor in the Sauder School of Business. Moura’s interests lie in rethinking, refining and rebuilding collaborative spaces at the intersections of academia, government, business and civil society. Her teaching and research focus is the Sauder d.studio and an emerging Policy Studio at Liu Institute, that help students and organizations learn to use design processes and tools. She has been Deputy Minister of the B.C. Ministry of Advanced Education, B.C. Commissioner of Pacific Coast Collaborative, Dean of UBC’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems, and Associate VP, Academic Programs at UBC Okanagan. Moura received an honorary doctorate from the University of Guelph in 2004 and the Distinguished Alumna Award from the College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley in 2009. She currently serves as Chair of Genome Canada and of the Canadian International Resources and Development Institute (CIRDI). Her book, Designed Leadership, was published by Columbia University Press in July 2017.

DENISE WITHERS Design & Innovation Consultant

Denise uses story to design the future. She launched her story design career thirty-five years ago as a white-water filmmaker. After getting her feet thoroughly wet, she landed her first television gig – then spent the next twenty years writing and directing documentaries for Discovery Channel. Ninety stories, eight awards and five continents later, the blight of reality TV crushed her soul, inspiring a career pivot. Denise left the media and returned to school to earn a Master of Science in design and a Certificate in Adult Education. In 2010, she joined the Sauder School of Business at UBC, where she co-founded the d.studio, Canada’s first studio for strategic design, with Moura Quayle. As the global demand for design services grew, she discovered new ways to use story as an innovation framework, and returned to private practice to develop her own tools and techniques. Since then, Denise has started three innovation labs, and led dozens of design sprints and studios for clients from industry, government, education and non-profits. As an academic, she continues to research design and innovation, often teaching for multiple institutions, including UBC, SFU, UVIC and THNK. Denise recently published her book, Story Design: The Creative Way to Innovate, and is a contributor to the Stanford Social Innovation Review online. For fun, she races outrigger canoes, hikes with her dogs and starts campfires in the rain.