Who We Are
We have a wide range of researchers on our core staff, as well as a large network of affiliates. Our permanent staff members typically have deep knowledge in one field, with at least one other strong content interest. We look for people who work at the edges of their disciplines, with a mind toward global future implications and practical impacts on decision making.
Follow Marina on Twitter: @mgorbis
During Gorbis’ tenure with IFTF and previously with SRI International, she has worked with hundreds of organizations in business, education, government, and philanthropy, bringing a future perspective to improve innovation capacity, develop strategies, and design new products and services. A native of Odessa, Ukraine, Gorbis is particularly suited to see things from a global...
Dawn oversees client services for the Health Horizons program and across other projects at the Institute, contributing to the business relationship part of the equation. She began her technical sales career over a decade ago after realizing her skills lie in building partnerships between organizations and their clients. She believes in living life passionately which is why she was intrigued by the topics the Institute covers. This view of life has taken her on many adventures...
Robin is a Graphic Designer in the Production department of IFTF and works to support all graphic and creative needs for IFTF deliverables, as well as maintaining IFTF's graphic identity. Working with various researchers and employees, Robin finds creative solutions for research project reports, presentations, representation of data, packaging, and illustration support.
Robin holds a BA from University of California, Berkeley as well as a Certificate of Graphic Design from...
Brinda is an entrepreneur and anthropologist and serves as the president of Dhoopa Ventures LLC, a company that conducts rapid, high-quality research in emerging and high tech markets. She advises industry strategists, start-ups, and not-for-profits on innovation opportunities that will surface in three to five years’ time, based on primary research and foresight studies on people’s changing aspirations, expectations and practices. Prior to Dhoopa, Brinda was instrumental in...
Jake's research examines the role of emerging technologies in transforming identity, culture, and governance. His recent research has focused on the social, legal, and political implications of neuroscience, exploring many aspects of life in the neurocentric age (see Mind in a Designed World). His other specializations include the future of justice and the courts, alternative energies, and media. He has also been leading explorations into...
Born in Oakland, California in a time and place of great social change, Rod Falcon attended nearby UC Berkeley to better understand what was happening. There he studied history and social change as an undergraduate and public policy as a graduate student. After working one summer enforcing the Voting Rights Act for the Justice Department, he realized that public policy was not as future oriented as it might be and was inspired to do something about it. He came to IFTF to forecast...
Devin's interests center on the application of foresight to organizational strategy and strategic planning. In particular, he is interested in organizations as systems designed to activate "know how" in the right places and at the right times. From this perspective, he argues that in a post-globalization world "all management is knowledge management."
Additional areas of focus include energy advances, future supply chains, innovation economics and emerging business models....
After being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya from 2005-2007, Tessa came to IFTF has a program manager for the Ten-Year Forecast Team in 2008. Enamored with the process of creating foresight, Tessa believes that many of the challenges we face when attempting to create lasting and positive peace might find unexpected solutions within these processes.
Tessa recently returned to IFTF as Research Manager for the Ten-Year Forecast Team after completing her M....
More than ten years ago Jean brought her lifelong passion for visual metaphors and more than twenty years of experience in information design, design strategy, branding and graphics production management to IFTF. Her broad experience helped IFTF move toward new ways of presenting research material visually through maps, digital stories and many other methods.
She currently serves on the IFTF Leadership Team, Board of Trustees and she leads the communications, creative and...
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Ben's upbringing in diverse socio-economic conditions inspired his lifelong interest in issues of race, class and social justice. He spent half a decade covering these issues as a journalist at Youth Outlook, New American Media, and the Nichi Bei Times, before coming to IFTF in 2011. Ben believes that short-term thinking is a major cause of today's social inequity and that foresight is critical to...
Follow Gabriel Harp on Twitter: @gharp
Gabriel's research pivots on the interactions between ecology, design, and infrastructure as pervasive enabling resources for services, technology, and evolutionary change. As Research Manager in the Technology Horizons program, Gabriel draws on work in the life sciences, public health and disaster preparedness, education, experimental media, and design. ...
David Evan Harris is Founder and Executive Director of the Global Lives Project and Research Director at the Institute for the Future.
David is a cross-disciplinary mediamaker, working at the intersection of art, activism and academic inquiry on the politically charged questions surrounding globalization and social justice.
His forthcoming book,...
Follow Rachel on Twitter (@Rachelkeas).
Research Director Rachel Hatch has studied and worked in Thailand, Ireland, Poland, and the US. Her current forecasting efforts are focused on:
- new media & religion
- the future of connecting
- emotional & spiritual well-being
Rachel is also interested in how households and communities apply futures thinking to their current contexts...
Lyn Jeffery leads IFTF's Technology Horizons Program, which conducts independent, original research on emerging technologies and cultural change. Lyn is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the changing social relationships emerging from the presence of new technologies in daily life. She has a special interest in immersive experience, technologies that support creative expression, personal data, and the Chinese-language Internet. Lyn works with private and...
Bob is a ten-year forecaster who has outlived his forecasts more than three times over. He works interactively with top leaders across a wide range of business, government, and nonprofit organizations. He creates video-enhanced immersion experiences in the future for large and small groups. For Bob, a 10-year forecast is a story from the future that provokes insight in the present.
Bob served as IFTF’s president from 1996 to 2004 and served on its Board until 2010. Bob now...
As Interactive Media Manager for IFTF, Maureen works closely with her colleagues to effectively deliver research via online media and to shepherd the Institute's collaborative forcasting platforms through online gaming engagements. Maureen’s particular interests reside at the intersection of creativity, information design, and social interaction. With a degree in Sociology, a professional background in Web Design, Information Architecture, and Web Project Management, and a keen...
Bradley Kreit joined the Institute for the Future in 2009. His research at IFTF builds on his background in anthropology and history by exploring how everyday challenges, decisions and contexts shape long-term futures--both in individual lives and at larger scales. He primarily researches issues involving food, health and biological identity.
As a researcher for the Health Horizons, he has written on how emerging life sciences and technologies are reshaping our...
Andy's passion for new technology and innovation led him to San Jose State University, where he is majoring in MIS. At IFTF, Andy assists with infrastructures for servers and general technology support for the staff. He has four years experience providing general support prior to joining IFTF.
Mike Liebhold is a Distinguished Fellow focusing on the mobile web, abundant computation, immersive media and geospatial foundations for context-aware and ubiquitous computing. Previously, Mike was a Visiting Researcher, Intel Labs, working on a pattern language based on semantic web frameworks for ubiquitous computing.
Before that, during the late 1990s Mike worked on startups building large scale international public IT services and IP networks for rural and remote...
Miriam Lueck Avery is a Research Director working primarily with the Health Horizons, Global Food Outlook, and Ten-Year forecast programs. As an anthropolgist, her overarching interest lies in how the rhythms and choices in people’s everyday lives individually and collectively make the future. As a forecaster, her passion lies in inspiring futures that help make resilient communities, navigate complex transitions and allow people to thrive.
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Rachel believes that futures thinking and forecasting are critical for enabling health care delivery systems to better prepare for an constantly evolving health and well-being landscape. As a principal researcher in developing IFTF’s body of work around key directional shifts affecting the future of health, healthcare and well-being, Rachel combines her deep understanding of both health finance and the impact new media and mobile personal technologies are having on health...
Jane McGonigal takes play seriously. She studies the power of games to impact the real-world -- and she creates games that do just that. A pioneer in the field of "alternate reality gaming", her previous projects include The Lost Ring, World Without Oil, Cruel 2 B Kind, and I Love Bees. She is an expert on applying game design and game theory to real work and real business, and has consulted and developed internal game workshops for leading technology companies in Asia, Europe, and...
Deepa’s research at the Institute primarily focuses on commercial innovations and disruptions as well as societal responses to technological change. She works closely with IFTF Distinguished Fellow Bob Johansen and together they interact with clients to translate strategic foresight into actionable insights.
Having lived and worked in Mumbai, Los Angeles, London, New York, and San Francisco, Deepa brings an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural...
A self-described nerd growing up, Sean read all he could about science as a kid, and immersed himself in maps for hours at a time. He also set his chemistry set on fire a few times, took junior high computer classes on a TRS-80, and was on his high school ecology team. In college, he switched from mechanical engineering to polymer science when he learned that polymer grads often went on to...
Neela manages the Health Horizons program while working closely with the Health Horizons research team to facilitate the logistics of project planning and deliverables. She also assists the program director with managing the execution & planning of projects, budgets and conferences.
Neela's interest in health lies in a commitment to help others by providing knowledge and assistance about their health and health care. Before coming to IFTF, Neela worked as a intern/...
David Pescovitz is co-editor of the popular weblog BoingBoing.net and also editor-at-large for MAKE:, the DIY technology magazine. Pescovitz co-wrote the book Reality Check (HardWired, 1996), based on his long-running futurist column in Wired magazine where he remains a correspondent. He has also written for Scientific American, Popular Science, New York Times, Washington Post, Salon, and New Scientist, among many other publications. In 2002, he won the Foresight Prize in...
Jody's design career began when he was hired to airbrush surfboards for Stüssy Designs in Laguna Beach, California. Along the way he's designed men's surfwear and branding for Gotcha Sportswear, rave flyers for events in San Francisco, a magazine called Morph's Outpost on the Digital Frontier, web design for various early net startups, advertising for defense contractors and a magazine for a rifle company, finally coming to rest in the IFTF production department, where he...
Jason Tester's interests in interactive technology began the old-fashioned way, tinkering one-on-one with the equipment he had at hand. With his work on technological voting, however, he saw the possible effects of computer-human interaction on the future of society as a whole.
At IFTF, Jason focuses on three areas: research into how people use emerging technologies, the application of design to futures research, and facilitating groups to stimulate insights and implications...
As Program Coordinator for Technology Horizons, Nicole works closely with the team to coordinate research deliverables, facilitate project planning, and manage logistics. Driven to find more efficient, sustainable, and innovative solutions to make the world a better place to thrive, Nicole hopes to help catalyze paradigm shifts through leveraging the human spirit, research, and communication to positively influence the future. Prior to joining IFTF, Nicole provided...
Dr. Anthony Townsend’s research focus is on the impact of new technology on cities and public institutions, and the role of technology in economic development. Recent forecasts he has developed at the Institute for the Future address several inter-related topics: the impact of urban data on the poor, national innovation strategy for a major emerging economy, technology and restructuring of large public organizations, and the role of science and technology parks in economic...
Kathi Vian leads IFTF's Ten-Year Forecast Program, which is a broad scan of the emerging global environment, focusing on the intersection of new economic forces, changing environmental realities, and new social practices. She is the author of the annual Map of the Decade, which summarizes the most important trends and insights from each year's research across the Institute.
Kathi is also an active participant in the Institute's Technology Horizons Program, where she has been...
Upon graduating from design school at Ohio State University, Nicolas Weidinger co-founded Cobego, an industrial design startup that specializes in making ideas come to life. In the summer of 2011, he moved to San Francisco to expand his horizons and to participate in the IFTF intership program. Though he spent most of the summer mumbling about boats in space, IFTF decided to keep him. Now Nicolas spends his time developing Artifacts from the Future and investigating novel...
