Lecturer, Stanford d.school
Director, Innovation Lab at The Nueva School
Kim Saxe realized about twenty years ago that developing people is her life's work. It inspires all that she does. Kim is passionate about empowering children and adults to reach their full potential in the widest sense of the term.
Kim has already taught the design thinking process to over hundreds of K-8 classes in the past couple of months at The Nueva School, which is a partner of the d.school. She has been delighted to see the positive changes in her students' confidence and thinking skills already. Kim is known for creating engaging curriculum that has depth and complexity, teaching and fostering design thinking mindsets and strategies, and championing individuals who think with their hands. A published educational author, Kim is now turning her attention to capturing the projects, mindsets, skills, and nuances of teaching design thinking to K-8 students.
Kim recognizes and appreciates that design thinking has the potential to revolutionize education, and indeed, the world. Kim personally experienced this transformation, which she hopes to create on a larger scale in education, when she took the Visual Thinking course from Bob McKim back in the late 1970's. Since that course, Kim has "owned" both her creative and analytical sides. She wants everyone to have this same experience.
A product design wannabe, Kim got the message that her drawing skills were too weak (the unfortunate product of a left brained public school education in the Sputnik era.) Instead, she completed her studies in electrical engineering and a graduate degree in industrial engineering at Stanford. Kim went on to work in high tech semiconductor and manufacturing software firms, summer camps, an environmental non-profit group, and several schools. In 1984, Kim was named the Director of New Products at ASK Computer Systems. Over twenty years later, she became the Director of the Innovation Lab at The Nueva School. Kim was one of four project leads at the d.school who helped to create the Innovation Lab. She has also helped teach several workshops on design thinking, and she frequently speaks on this topic as well. In hindsight, Kim now realizes that everything that she has done over the past three decades has prepared her to enhance the understanding of design thinking in others.
Kim brings an unusual set of skills and dispositions to her work with students and teachers – a blend of "all of the above" that makes her another enthusiastic advocate of the d.school. She contributes a rare blend of engineering, business, curriculum development, and direct classroom experience to the d.school plate. Best of all, she feels that the d.school is "home." And yes, she sketches and paints on a daily basis now.
