exploreID: Civic Design in DC

Join us for a panel discussion event featuring Institute of Design (ID) alumni and Booz Allen Hamilton rockstars – Ellie Eberts (MDes 2016), Jenna Petersen (MDM 2018) and Bridget Soldan (MDM 2018) – as they share their experiences using design to improve federal government services at the VA Veteran Experience Office (VEO) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). They will also discuss how their background and education at ID helped to prepare them for their roles today. The discussion will be moderated by Katarzyna Siedlecki from Booz Allen Hamilton’s Strategic Innovation Group (SIG).

This event will also be available via webcast. Please follow these instructions to access the session: 

About the panel

Ellie Eberts 
Ellie (MDes 2016) is a San Francisco Bay Area native with a passion for designing services and experiences that create a positive impact on people's lives. She received her BA in Linguistics and worked in specialty food in the Bay Area prior to receiving her MDes from the Institute of Design, with a focus on design strategy, service design, and communication design. Since graduating from the Institute of Design, Ellie has moved all over; from Chicago to Memphis and then to DC. Ellie is currently a design strategist at Booz Allen Hamilton supporting a burden reduction project at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Jenna Petersen
Jenna (MDM 2018) is a design strategist in the Strategic Innovation Group at Booz Allen Hamilton where she co-leads human-centered design practice for the Veterans Experience Office at the Department of Veterans Affairs. She has 14 years of experience in communications strategy and customer understanding using a range of quantitative and qualitative methods. She is particularly interested in how design integrates with other disciplines to create new frameworks and methods.

Bridget Soldan 
Bridget (MDM 2018) is a design strategist in the Strategic Innovation Group at Booz Allen Hamilton. With a background heavy in design research and industrial design, she’s shifted her career toward designing for social change after graduating from ID. She’s currently working for the Veteran’s Experience Office alongside data scientists and stakeholders across various business lines of the VA to improve Veteran Services. She is passionate about how the integration of data and human-centered design can inform decisions and impact policy.

Kat Siedlecki, Moderator 
Kat leads a team of design strategists, service designers, and customer experience strategists on an Experience team within Booz Allen’s Strategic Innovation Group (SIG). She has 15 years’ experience providing design, strategy and learning services to U.S. military, the federal government, commercial and non-profit clients. Kat is passionate about using design to solve complex problems, drive innovation within the public and private sector, and help to improve the lives of people around the world. Kat has applied design to address a variety of wicked problems such as veteran employment, sexual assault prevention, human trafficking, patient engagement, regulatory burden reduction, opioid epidemic, and improving the experiences of employees, residents, and alumni. She has presented design at numerous conferences and events, served and moderated panel discussions, led design workshops and is an active member of the DC-based design community.

About the exploreID series
IIT Institute of Design (ID) gives students the freedom to explore a wide breadth of design disciplines by offering flexible master’s programs. This spring, a series of events—many of them in our new home—will touch on the vast array of pathways students pursue during and after ID, including design research, digital experience, organizing for innovation, and product management. Attend to learn more about the diversity of courses we offer and what design means at ID.

Photo by Jacob Creswick on Unsplash