Michael Youngblood

Change Agent, Consultant, Explorer, Idea generator

Mike Youngblood is a cultural anthropologist working at the nexus of social science and human-centered design. His work, focused on global equity, social justice, and environmental issues, challenges the conventional roles of social scientists and the people they study by regarding community stakeholders as subject matter experts and engaging them as co-designers of their future. Mike’s diverse fieldwork topics have ranged from the decline of conventional resource management practices among North African camel herders, to the difficulties of on-the-job knowledge sharing between nurses caring for the chronically ill, to the achievement challenges of low-income students in U.S. public schools. His 2016 book Cultivating Community is an exploration of social inclusiveness and political imagination among farmers and peasants in a mass social movement in western India. As a design consultant, Mike has worked with for-profit and not-for-profit clients around the world in a wide range of industries, including financial services, transportation, telecommunications, food and nutrition, education, healthcare, and social services. Mike holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and is a frequent speaker on topics of anthropology, design thinking, and collaborative change-making. He has taught at the School for International Training, the Haas School of Business at the University of California–Berkeley, the Masters in Social Design program at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University.

Social and environmental justice

Collaborative Design, Design Thinking, Social Impact