Hello D+I alumni! 

It's been a wonderful year in the world of Design and Innovation. We were thrilled to have an overwhelming number of you visit our curriculum sessions, host our job treks, and mentor us and our 100+ club members this year. THANK YOU. In this email you will find:
 

Cheers!
David, Ellie, Kate, Kathryn, Scott & Yennie 

A REQUEST: 
D+I Advisory Board
 

Interested in playing a more active role with the Design + Innovation Club? As we reflect on this year and what makes the D+I Club so special, the strength of our alumni community is always at the top of the list. In an effort to bolster institutional memory and build stronger connections with alumni and faculty across Yale, we are testing the idea of launching a D+I Advisory Board made up of students, alums, and professors. Depending on your response, we have discussed prototyping the idea in May with an hour-long virtual meeting, and based on that experience, continuing with several meetings next year. The test session could convene either: May 18, 19, or 22 from 4-5pm EST. 

If you’d like to join the initial conversation (without any permanent commitment), please email Ellie, Jackie, and Lizzy (ellen.levitt@yale.edu, jacqueline.ball@yale.edu, e.landau@yale.edu) with all available dates by Wednesday, May 9.

A ROUND-UP:
Our year in D+I 

In early May of 2017, the incoming Design and Innovation Club leadership team looked upon a wall of sticky notes with excitement and trepidation. On each fluorescent square was scribbled an idea, a flicker of something grand we wanted to do as second-year D+I leaders. Staring back at us were luminaries who we hoped would come speak, field trips to sacred Yale spaces, design mindsets we wanted to explore, innovative companies we wanted to visit, and whimsical parties we wanted to host. Could we ever hope to accomplish all of this in just one school year?

We didn’t. Instead, we converged on our favorite ideas, buttoned up our band collar shirts, and got to work on making 2017-18 a truly special year.  With the help of our first-year leaders, we were able to:

Lead weekly club meetings that inspired and stretched our club members, and helped them develop fluency in key design vocabulary and frameworks. We taught our classmates “how to see,” went deep on pioneering companies, studied models of organizational design, and brought in some amazing practitioners—Michael Bierut, Chelsea Acosta Patel, Mat Chow, Ben Young, Scott Weiss, and Allie Mahler—to share their craft.
 

Host workshops that gave members the chance to apply design concepts, and helped companies like IBM, Redbull, and SYPartners address real business challenges. We piloted our first ever “Design Thinking Deep Dive” workshop, spending an entire day with forty students at CEID and running across Yale in service of generating potential healthcare solutions.
 

Engage with guest speakers from across campus and continents. We learned how to craft our jobs in any work context (Amy Wrzesniewski), and how the Yale University Printer created the university’s signature typeface (John Gambell).  We were given a special peek into how Disney extends its storytelling through its worldwide attractions (Kareem Daniel and Ann Morrow Johnson), and met a visionary at the intersection of design, technology, and business (John Maeda). 

Elevate career discovery and support at all levels of the search process. We spent days touring some of our favorite companies in San Francisco, Boston, New York, and abroad. We matched first and second year students with each other in resume review groups, and hosted special learning sessions on innovation units and portfolio building.
 

Prioritize community building by planning one event per month from summer til spring. We opened the year by placing over 100 students in small group dinners throughout New Haven, pushed the boundaries of gingerbread house architecture at our holiday party, meticulously planned a roaming “progressive” party throughout East Rock, hosted Closing Bell at the Peabody Museum, and held a much-needed hygge night in the heart of winter.
 

And amidst all this ongoing learning, striving, and fun, we led the efforts on the 7th Annual MBA Innovation Summit in New York, drawing hundreds of students and more than a dozen top-tier companies for a day of growth and connection. We helped with planning the Design & Innovation Global Network Week at Yale SOM for the second year in a row. For good measure, we launched our first International Experience trip—Nordic Trek—to Copenhagen and Stockholm, where we visited leading companies in furniture design (Hay), architecture (BIG), design (E-Types), and tech (Spotify). We lastly resdesigned the beloved D+I website and refreshed our LinkedIn group – check both out!
 

It is now time for us to rest on our weary D+I laurels before punching our new, corporate time cards. Still, we are thrilled pass off the reins of the club to the extraordinarily competent, confident, and curious rising second-year leaders as we join the esteemed ranks of the alumni community.