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Natalie Nixon to speak at TN Arts & Arts Education Conference

By Ann BrownSuzanne Lynch and Nieya Wallace Murray, TN Arts Conference Chairs –

We are excited to announce that design strategist and hybrid thinker Natalie W. Nixon, PhD will be the second of our two featured speakers at the TN Arts Commission’s Design Thinking Conference in Clarksville, TN. The “Mindbender” plenary will be held June 20 at 11:00 a.m.

At Figure 8 Thinking, LLC she helps organizations accelerate innovation and growth by developing meaningful strategy through design thinking and ethnographic research. As a scholar-entrepreneur, she applies her diverse background in service design, anthropology and fashion, to help clients with culture transformation, leadership development, ideation sessions and envisioning labs.

Natalie is a Fellow at the Paris d.School, a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania in social innovation and design for social impact and a Senior Advisor at Econsult Solutions. She is the Founding Director of the Strategic Design MBA program at Philadelphia University where she was a professor in design strategy and fashion management.

Natalie is a published author: the editor of Strategic Design Thinking: Innovation in Products, Services, Experiences and Beyond and a regular contributor to INC.com online magazine on creativity and design thinking. She is a global speaker and is represented by the BigSpeak speakers bureau. Her public speaking invitations have included the Business Innovation Factory, 360 Possibles (Saint Malo, France), Creative Mornings, TEDx Philadelphia, The Copenhagen Institute for Interactive Design, The European Innovation Academy (Nice, France), SEB Bank (Tallinn, Estonia), FUSE and the Mayo Clinic’s Transform conference.

She serves on the boards of the Alumni Association of Vassar College, the Philadelphia Art Commission and Leadership+Design.

Natalie earned her BA (Honors: Cum Laude) from Vassar College with a double major in Anthropology and Africana Studies; an MS in Global Textile Marketing from Philadelphia University (USA), Shenkar College (Israel) & Reutlingen University (Germany); and a PhD in Design Management from the University of Westminster, London.

The Tennessee Arts and Arts Education Conference will be held June 20 and 21, 2018 on the campus of Austin Peay State University (APSU) hosted by the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts (CECA). Special Opportunity Grants will be offered beginning March 1, 2018, to those who want to attend the conference. The grant will be applied to conference costs and is offered on a first-come, first-served basis. The commuter rate for the conference is $150.00 and the non-commuter rate is $200, which includes campus accommodations. Registration will open March 15, 2018.