ID Faculty Featured on Recent Podcasts
April 24, 2025
ID faculty are expanding their impact beyond the classroom with recent appearances on prominent design podcasts. Their conversations explore topics from sustainable business practices to leadership and behavioral design, showcasing ID’s thought leadership across industries and domains of design practice.
Profit is Not the Only Value: Weslynne Ashton on The Provocateurs
Professor of Environmental Management and Sustainability Weslynne Ashton was interviewed on The Provocateurs podcast, a collaboration between Deloitte and Thinkers50 featuring remarkable leaders from around the world.
In the episode, Weslynne discusses her work in the circular economy and argues that businesses must adopt a more holistic view of value creation beyond financial metrics.
She advocates for expanding our traditional ideas of capital to include eight different types: natural, human, financial, manufactured, social, political, cultural, and digital. The conversation explores the challenge of getting “these multiple capitals onto the balance sheet of business.”
Find the episode and transcript at The Provocateurs.
The New Era of Design Leadership: Tony Bynum on Design Observer’s DBBD Podcast
Associate Professor and Director of the ID Academy Tony Bynum shared his insights on redefining leadership through inclusive design practices on a recent episode of The Design of Business | The Business of Design podcast from Design Observer.
With experience founding Northwestern Mutual’s Design Thinking Center of Excellence, Tony brings a perspective that is deeply informed by both design and business. In the conversation, he shares lessons from his unorthodox career path that remain relevant in today’s challenging job market.
Tony emphasizes that the current era of design is shifting toward designing with rather than designing for—a philosophy that guides his leadership at the ID Academy.
Listen and read the transcript at Design Observer.
The Changing Landscape of Design: Adam Kallish on Design Darshan
ID instructor and principal at Trope Collaborative Adam Kallish appeared on the Design Darshan podcast to discuss the changing landscape of design.
In the interview, he shared his perspective that “Design isn’t just about starting from scratch, it’s about reconfiguring what already exists and adding meaningful value.”
This insight reflects Adam’s focus on the intersection of applied imagination, services, and technology to advocate for design’s value in business.
Watch the interview on YouTube or listen on Spotify.
Innovation Through Design: Vijay Kumar on Design Darshan
Another recent episode of Design Darshan featured Vijay Kumar, Professor Emeritus and author of 101 Design Methods.
In the conversation, he explored the balance between intuitive creativity and structured approaches. Vijay discusses how innovation, context, time, and value collectively shape effective design, emphasizing that, “Design is something new and specific to a context and time that adds value to the user, the provider, the society, and the environment.”
The Choice Triad: Paper by Ruth Schmidt and Zeya Chen Featured on Thinking about Behavior
The Thinking about Behavior podcast discussed a paper by Associate Professor Ruth Schmidt and PhD Candidate Zeya Chen, and what they call the “choice triad”—a framework that integrates behavioral science, design strategy, and systemic design. This framework provides distinct lenses for analyzing and developing effective public health policy: choice posture, architecture, and infrastructure.
Ruth and Zeya’s work highlights ID’s interdisciplinary approach, bridging theoretical frameworks with practical applications that can transform how we understand and design for human behavior.
Carlos Teixeira and Deaa Bataineh Launch espresso?
ID faculty are not only appearing as guests but are also creating podcasts of their own. Professor Carlos Teixeira and recent ID PhD graduate Deaa Bataineh have launched espresso? — a podcast that, true to its name, delivers concentrated insights on design, systems, and strategy.
The show aims to condense complex concepts into quick, actionable narratives, blending human creativity with AI production. Each episode explores systems thinking, design strategy, and technology in just a few minutes—ideal for busy designers and other professionals seeking inspiration without the time investment of longer formats.
Listen to the latest episode, “Futures of Anti-Oppressive Design.”
ID’s Own With Intent Podcast
While our faculty contribute to the broader design discourse through various platforms, ID continues to host our own podcast, With Intent with Thamer Abanami and Albert Shum.
The show features conversations with a variety of professionals across sectors—from writers and designers to business strategists, policymakers, doctors, and community organizers.
What unites these diverse voices is their intentional application of design methodologies in their work, whether they explicitly identify as designers or not. The podcast serves as an extension of ID’s mission to demonstrate how design thinking can be applied across disciplines to create meaningful change.
Listen and subscribe at Apple Podcasts or Spotify.