Ilana Lipsett’s work at IFTF as a Senior Program Manager focuses on creating equitable, resilient, and participatory futures. She studies the future of civic life with an emphasis on public-facing work, including public transportation, housing, and governance. She is interested in how we as individuals and as a society respond to challenges such as climate change and movements for social and racial equity. She co-teaches Design Futures, where she helps participants harness their innate creativity and curiosity to imagine and create better futures. Before joining IFTF, Ilana worked around the globe, combining participatory design, community engagement, and creative placemaking to help cities, developers, NGO’s, refugee communities, and creatives imagine and design what their futures could look like. She has facilitated civic imagination processes and activated spaces to catalyze community development through art, culture, dialog, public input, and economic opportunity. For her work co-founding freespace, an initiative to temporarily transform vacant spaces into community, cultural and arts hubs, she was recognized by the Obama White House as a Champion of Change in Civic Innovation. Ilana holds an M.B.A. in Sustainable Management from the Presidio Graduate School and a B.A. in history with a concentration in French literature and music from the University of California, San Diego.
Expertise
climate, equity, governance, urban planning and cities, creative strategy, systems thinking, public speaking, workshop design and facilitation.
