Durell Coleman

Durell Coleman is the namesake founder and CEO of DC Design, a social impact design firm on a mission to eliminate multigenerational poverty and uplift Black, brown, and low-income communities in the United States. Through a combination of Design Thinking and Systems Thinking, he and his team help nonprofits, foundations, and governments better define community needs, develop strategy, and design solutions to some of America’s most pressing social challenges. In his journey as a designer, Durell has worked to redesign aspects of the foster care system, develop new approaches to criminal justice reform, reimagine healthcare service models, create apps that connect communities, and develop new educational models for the 21st century. His work has led to reductions in mass incarceration, homelessness, economic inequality, Black infant mortality and more. Trained in mechanical engineering (B.S) and sustainable design (M.S.), he is a two-time alumnus of Stanford University and its famous Institute of Design (the Stanford d.school).

As an educator, Durell regularly teaches social impact design, innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership at Stanford University. In addition to the classes he has taught at the Stanford Institute of Design, he also serves as a lecturer at the Graduate School of Business. He has taught design thinking to refugees designing solutions to challenges in refugee camps, school leaders seeking to redesign the culture of their school, students seeking to create a more inclusive campus, and corporate executives from Sony, Oracle, and Santander. He is the creator and director of Design the Future - an award-winning STEM program run in collaboration with top universities that teaches high school students to design products for individuals with physical disabilities. His original research is the basis for the 5 Systems of Black Inequality video series. He is an expert in multi-stakeholder, human-centered design; has been awarded the Jefferson Award for Public Service as a result of his work; and is one of the subjects of the PBS documentary: “Extreme by Design,” which is used as a design thinking teaching aid all over the world.