Garry K. VanPatter

GK VanPatter is a Founding Partner in the visual thinking innovation consultancy Humantific and Co-Founder of NextDesign Leadership Institute in New York. An internationally recognized innovation advisor and next design visionary he has been working in the realm of cross-disciplinary design leadership for 20+ years. GK was an early advocate of extending designs’ reach into the realms of business transformation, strategy development, knowledge creation and organizational innovation.

As Director of Strategy at Humantific he works in the trenches with giant fortune 500 global companies including Pfizer, EDS, Organon and Morgan Stanley as well as startups such as Majestic Research, AttentionLabs and Sermo. The practices of Humantific / StrategyLab, UnderstandingLab, InnovationLab help organizations large and small to create inclusive innovation strategies, visualize early stage innovation ideas and build adaptable cross-disciplinary innovation capabilities.

Prior to forming Humantific he was Innovation VP at Scient, a Scient Fellow and Co-Founder of Scient's Innovation Acceleration Labs. In collaboration with Elizabeth Pastor he created Scient’s inclusive innovation strategy as well as conceiving, designing and directing all aspects of the Innovation Lab including its strategy, organization, environments, and award winning cross-disciplinary skill-building program.

GK holds a Master of Science Degree in Communication Design from Pratt Institute in New York and an undergraduate degree from the School of Architecture at University of Manitoba. Twenty years ago, as he was in the early part of his career in the Architecture business, he became convinced of the need for better tools to enhance strategic problem solving and cross-disciplinary collaboration. The subject has remained his passion and the central focus of his work ever since. Today there is growing awareness, not only that cross-disciplinary work plays a significant role in next economy organizations of all kinds, but that it requires new thinking skills, tools and behaviors.

Concerned about the future of design leadership, he co-founded the NextDesign Leadership Institute with Elizabeth Pastor in the spring of 2002. Upon launch they began posing the provocative question: Who will lead design in the 21st century? Their NextD Journal / ReReThinking Design has thousands of subscribers in more than forty countries. NextD Journal conversations are widely used as thought leader reference materials in graduate design education around the world. NextD conducts ongoing cross-disciplinary research with graduate schools in Germany, India, Canada, Denmark, Switzerland, Australia and many other countries.

GK’s work has received numerous excellence awards and he has spoken at many international conferences including MIX07 in Las Vegas, Doors of Perception in Amsterdam, the Vision Plus Conference in Vienna, and the Design Management Institute Conference in Chicago. Pastor and VanPatter are presently working with a group of collaborators on the creation of Next Academy, a new international cross-disciplinary innovation leadership school that will be located in Madrid.

Elizabeth Pastor

Elizabeth is Co-Founder of the NextDesign Leadership Institute, Co-Founder of Humantific and the Director of UnderstandingLab.

Her UnderstandingLab work involves the art, science and business of constructing human understanding systems. She is particularly interested in the design of information tools to enhance learning and accelerate innovation.

Clients she has worked with include: IBM, General Motors, Pfizer, EDS, Morgan Stanley, Avaya, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Majestic Research, TED Conferences and many others.

Prior to creating the Understanding Lab, Elizabeth Co-Founded Scient’s Innovation Acceleration Lab with GK VanPatter. At Scient they had great fun creating the Innovation Lab and all of its cross-disciplinary learning experiences. In the two years that she was at Scient, over two thousand employees and clients gained cross-disciplinary innovation skills in Lab workshops. Workshop ONE subsequently won an AIGA Experience Design award. Designing the conditions for design, learning and accelerated innovation is a stream of logic that runs throughout her work.

Prior to joining Scient, Elizabeth was Senior Information Designer at Green/Wurman in New York where she worked with Richard Saul Wurman, Nancye Green and GK VanPatter.

Elizabeth holds a Masters Degree in Communication & New Media Design from Art Center College of Design in California. She has also studied advanced strategic problem solving with Dr. Min Basadur at the Center for Research in Applied Creativity. The focus of her graduate work was "Understanding in the learning process" centering on the application of information design to children’s educational environments.

Ms. Pastor speaks frequently at conferences in the US and Europe. Most recently she presented her work at the Periferia Conference at the University of Alcala, Madrid and the Leading New Economy Workplaces Conference in New York City.

She is a member of the International Institute for Information Design. A native of Madrid, Spain, she now lives in New York City.