About the CfC Team

Justin W. Cook is the Founding Director of Center for Complexity. He is a strategic designer working on the world’s most challenging problem sets, such as healthcare, sustainability and education. His passion is to tackle these systems challenges by designing innovative organizational architectures.

Until 2018, Justin was Senior Lead for strategy at the Finnish Innovation Fund, Sitra, where he spent a decade working to focus Finnish society on greater sustainability and human wellbeing. His portfolio included strategic design, urban systems, decarbonization, impact investing and the future of education. In 2018, Palgrave published his book Sustainability, Human Wellbeing and the Future of Education. While at Sitra, Cook was a founding member of the Helsinki Design Lab. In 2016 he joined the OECD’s Observatory for Public Sector Innovation as an advisor. He has worked with organizations such as the UNDP, IAEA, Special Operations Command, RI National Guard, Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins University, Google, IBM, Infosys, and Fidelity Investments. Justin holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard University and Bachelor of Arts from the University of Washington.

Katie is a strategic designer with a foundation in transdisciplinary design and new media. Her work at the center focuses on shaping design practice in large business and technology organizations. She guides development and delivery of design programs, and communicates the value of emerging skills to internal stakeholders and business customers. Outside the center she works with public sector stakeholders on participatory design for civic engagement.

Directly prior to joining RISD she worked in New York City at the intersection of nonprofit and government developing strategic interventions in economically vulnerable communities. This practice was based in placemaking and participatory design on topics including public safety and smart cities for clients including the NYC Mayor’s Office of Tech and Innovation and the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. Prior to her graduate studies she worked in Silicon Valley and New York City in a variety of startup contexts focusing on entertainment and technology. She holds a Masters degree in Media Studies and a Masters degree in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons School of Design, and an undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Max Emrich is a transdisciplinary designer working at the intersection of innovation, strategy, and industrial design. As Strategic Programs Lead at the CfC, he develops and facilitates programs that build out strategic design capabilities.

Before RISD, Max worked across industries spanning medical devices, organic waste, micro mobility, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. Rooted in Munich and based in New York, his global perspective informs his approach to complex challenges. In addition to his role at RISD, he teaches Innovation Methods, Futuring and Studio Classes at Parsons and works with clients out of Newlab.

A connector of dots, people, and ideas, Max’s work is driven by curiosity, making, and the pursuit of new possibilities across disciplines.

Tim Maly is Senior Lead, Strategic Design & Communications at Center for Complexity. She is working on designing institutions suitable for managing planetary civilization and providing care beyond stigma. A writer and critical designer, Tim has taught in the Masters of Industrial Design program at RISD, helping students understand the role that communication plays in explaining and exploring ideas.

Prior to joining RISD, Tim’s work focused on the small details and vast networks at the strange edges of architecture and design. She is a co-founder of the Dredge Research Collaborative and of Capybara Games. As a journalist, Tim’s work has appeared in Wired, Fast Co.Design, The Atlantic, Medium, Works That Work, and Urban Omnibus. Tim and Emily Horne co-wrote The Inspection House: An impertinent field guide to modern surveillance, published by Coach House press.

Charlene Sequeira is a designer, strategist, and researcher. Starting at CfC as a Studio Lead for Strategic Programs, she helped develop and facilitate Strategic Design workshops both in-person in India, and online. In her current capacity as Strategic Design Lead, she works on an array of projects in healthcare and the polycene, that include workshop facilitation, visual design, design research, and pedagogical development.  

Before RISD, she built over a decade of design expertise across UAE, Oman, India, and USA. She has worked in print and digital media, retail experience design, brand strategy, community engagement, social innovation, and education with a diverse portfolio of international clients. Working across cultures, industries, and design mediums brings openness and adaptability to Charlene’s approach to systemic issues. She holds a Master’s degree in Communications Design from Pratt Institute, New York. 

Drawn to amplify efforts of grassroots environmental and social impact organizations in India through facilitation, strategic design, and visual communication, Charlenes’ ongoing design practice manifests at various intersections between design, education, and sustainability.

Sahib Singh is a Strategic Design lead at Center for Complexity. He’s energized to make sense of the uninterrogated beliefs and assumptions driving outcomes within complex systems and to design structures which amplify the abundant virtues within people.

At CfC, Sahib most recently co-designed and co-led a systems-level pilot for over 2.5 years with medical professionals at UCSF’s School of Medicine, employing 11 interventions to improve health outcomes for patients with limited English proficiency and to foster a transdisciplinary model of collaboration for strategic improvement. He’s co-led workshops with front-line emergency medicine professionals to understand nuanced issues behind difficult decisions during the pandemic’s first fall, and taught studios on mindsets/practices for navigating complexity and uncertainty with professionals at Infosys and leaders from Rhode Island Department of Health.

Prior to CfC, Sahib worked on multi-disciplinary teams with organizations including eBay, American Express, Genentech and the National Institutes of Health. He co-led a type-2 diabetes pilot project in Ghana on a team of designers, engineers, and social scientists in graduate school. Sahib holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology with a minor in Chemistry from NYU, magna cum laude, and a Masters of Integrated Product Design from the University of Pennsylvania.

Julie’s insights in system design stem from decades of creative and managerial experience in banking, construction, marketing, advertising, journalism, education and municipal government. She has written for cable news, radio and newspapers, designed billboards and marketing materials for multimillion dollar projects; founded organizations to advance civic engagement and civil discourse.

She co-designed and co-led eleven quality improvement interventions to help the Division of Hospital Medicine at UCSF improve the health outcomes of patients with limited English proficiency, earning funding from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Her interest in healthcare is motivated by the legacy of industrial pollution from the Mystic, to the Nashua, to the Blackstone River Valley and the health impacts of that legacy on members of her own family. This and years of volunteering at Camp Sunshine supporting children with critical illnesses and their families inform her public health activism.

A former teacher of English and writing, she applies her writing and research skills to a variety of CfC projects, has driven the ambitions of the annual symposia and supported RISD students in their writing and research. A graduate of Suffolk and Northeastern Universities, Julie is a watercolor artist and member of the RISD Community Engagement Advisory Committee.