Denise Withers, MSc.  | Strategic Designer

I work at the intersection of design, engagement, knowledge mobilization and technology to help values-based organizations co-create innovative solutions to wicked problems.

In my practice, I blend 30 years of hands-on design and management experience with recent graduate research in creating strategies and tactics for engagement.  My tools include a mix of design processes and qualitative research methods, featuring story, mind-mapping, appreciative inquiry and opportunity design.

During my career, I’ve managed projects on four continents in tough environments for a diverse clientele that includes: CIDA, IDRC, NASA, United Nations, David Suzuki Foundation, UBC, SFU, Nortel, DND, Natural Resources, Parks and Fisheries & Oceans Canada: as well as major media chains (Discovery Channel, CBC & CanWest national newspapers).

Some highlights:

• Designing a for-youth by-youth networking program for youth-at-risk  in Surrey.
• Interpreting Arctic ecosystem research on board an icebreaker for a national public audience.
• Sharing success stories of communities of HIV+ widows in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Investigating early GMO research in Saskatchewan.
• Chronicling the experience of life in space with international astronauts.
• Engaging hopeless Inuit teens in suicide prevention clinics.
• Celebrating human rights with world leaders at the 1996 Women’s Conference in Beijing.
• Tracking marauding monkeys in Barbados.
• Advancing teaching & curriculum excellence across an Alberta Polytechnic.

For fun and fulfillment, I serve as the Vice-President of the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC, foster the official “spokescat” for the SPCA, care for my rescue dog from the SARA Society, play ice hockey, race outrigger canoes and explore the coastal wilderness in my kayak.