Rama Gheerawo is an international and inspirational figure within design. He won a ‘Hall of Fame’ award for his work at the Design Week Awards in 2019 and was named a 2018 Creative Leaders by Creative Review alongside Paul Smith and Björk, As Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, he uses design to address issues around age, ability, gender and race. He is a serial innovator in the fields of Inclusive Design, Design Thinking and Creative Leadership having personally led over 100 projects working internationally with governments, business, academia and the third sector with clients such as Samsung, Toyota, AgeUK and Panasonic. He champions inclusive and empathic approaches for individuals and organisations through his pathfinding work in Creative Leadership, with training delivered globally to thousands of people including over 700 civil servants. He is in high demand as a keynote speaker, and writes, curates exhibitions and runs workshops for audiences that range from students to business executives. Rama sits on a number of advisory boards and committees for awards, universities and organisations such as the UK Design Council, The International Association for Universal Design, the Design Management Institute, The Bhavan Institute for Indian Culture and the RSA Decolonising Design Initiative. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the Katowice Academy of Fine Art.
LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook: @RamaGheerawo
Melanie Flory is a psychologist and neuroscientist whose research enquiry is at the intersection of design, systems thinking and cognitive neuroscience.
Melanie is the first appointed Associate Director of Research of The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. Her role involves leading the growth and development of the Centre’s inclusive design and creative leadership research and knowledge exchange portfolios, as well as co-developing and launching the Centre’s first doctoral and Master’s by research programmes (2022–3). She is the neuroscience lead on the Centre’s creative leadership project.
She has a strong focus on fostering and incorporating the Centre’s inclusive design methods in cross-disciplinary research, innovation and knowledge exchange programmes and projects, with the RCA’s four Schools and other Research Centres.
Before joining HHCD in 2021, Melanie founded (2009), and is the Director of MindRheo, an organisational development consultancy intersecting neuroscience, design and systems thinking to enhance human, organisational and business performance and experience. Prior to MindRheo, Melanie held clinical, senior academic and research leadership positions (2000–11) at Westminster University, Ministry of Defence (UK) and the UK government’s Trauma Response Unit. She has led global cross-disciplinary research in war-related PTSD and the role of brain plasticity in emotion regulation and processing. Her research exploration seeks new insights into the interplay between emotion and cognition.