Design in Public Benefit Breakfast

The Seattle Design Festival is a community-driven program made possible by small individual donations from our community.

The Seattle Design Festival provides such a meaningful opportunity to leverage design. I am donating to help individuals and organizations to test ideas, challenge assumptions and raise awareness for our community. – Rob Deane AIA, NCARB Senior Associate at Encore Architects

I donated because the Seattle Design Festival provides the unique opportunity to explore our most pressing challenges and current events creatively. This annual event welcomes everybody to express what’s on their minds and in their hearts, including how to make our place on this planet better – something that is necessary right now. – Marisa Zylkowski, Senior Sustainability Consultant at Rushing

The Design in Public Benefit Breakfast is an online celebration bringing together and acknowledging the community of designers and enthusiasts who support our ongoing work to highlight all the ways that design has a powerful impact on our lives. We have important work to do, building vibrant connections between designers and the public and fostering partnerships with the potential to transform our community. This year, we are taking our efforts online with a multi-week fundraising campaign, culminating in a compelling and interactive online event. We are happy to be able to conduct this event virtually and are excited about the opportunity to connect with you all safely. Please join us to unleash the design thinker in everyone to illuminate Seattle’s challenges and ignite action!

This year’s Breakfast program will include the following:

· An impassioned keynote from Rico Quirindongo, Interim Director at Office of Planning and Community Development at City of Seattle

Rico Quirindongo, AIA, has been working for 26 years to revitalize and reimagine Seattle’s historic landmarks and neighborhoods. He is Interim Director of the City of Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development. Rico believes that through proactive design, vision, and multi-agency collaboration, opportunities for social change can be realized through community-invested civic projects. Rico works with organizations to positively influence communities through design and is committed to the betterment of his hometown, Seattle, through public engagement, design, and civic service. Rico is a recognized expert on civic projects and city-convened taskforces to create and execute processes for inclusive and authentic engagement. Rico was chair of the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority Council, was a Downtown Seattle Association board member, and was AIA Seattle President in 2012-13. Rico was recognized by AIA as a Citizen Architect in 2020 and is a Northwest and Pacific Regional Representative on the AIA Strategic Council.

· Mc’d by Sheryl Cababa, VP of Strategy at Substantial

Sheryl works as Vice President of Strategy at Substantial, a design and technology consultancy in Seattle. With a background in design research and strategy, she drives a human-centered design practice that is focused on systems thinking and ethical innovation, working on everything from robotic surgery solutions to imagining global health data services. She has worked with a diverse base of clients including the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, IHME, and IKEA. Previously, she worked at companies such as frog, Adaptive Path, and Philips, conducting qualitative design research and leading user experience design projects. She is currently working on a Rosenfeld Media book about systems thinking for designers to be published in spring 2022.

· A gracious acknowledgment and retrospective of the formative work of Festival founder, Lisa Richmond Hon. AIA. 

Driven by a deep commitment to design as a tool for change, Lisa has catalyzed efforts to advocate, educate, and engage the public on critical issues of equity, livability, and resilience. She founded the Seattle Design Festival in 2011 as a strategic initiative of AIA Seattle to engage and empower communities through access to design thinking. Under her leadership, the festival has grown into a city-wide exploration of design, with an audience of over 30,000 and deep partnerships with more than 100 organizations and firms. In 2015, Lisa led AIA Seattle’s partnership with Seattle Architecture Foundation in opening Seattle’s Center for Architecture & Design.

· An exciting reveal: the 2021 Festival theme EMERGE branding!

· Join small group discussions about our shared future and the role designers will play in our “Emergence” from the pandemic.

· And crucially, we will thank EVERYONE for their support.