Devon Skerritt, Ed.D.

I am an independent design researcher, facilitator, and strategist growing people’s capacity to navigate change and imagine possibilities by design. I’ve engaged this work as a consultant and in roles across higher education centers, departments and intermediaries. My consultancy, Social Design Strategies, enables learning organizations, nonprofits, and civic institutions to understand people, context, and opportunities through curiosity, need-finding, and creative problem solving. In my human-centered design practice, I offer strategic facilitation, helping people and organizations explore opportunities, interrogate uncertainties, and find alignment through meaningful interaction. I also offer innovation capacity-building expertise from my experiences in innovation strategy at Southern New Hampshire University and organizing academic experiences and corporate/community engagement for Design and Innovation Programs at Southern Methodist University. Finally, I’ve led inclusion-focused qualitative research on belongingness, self-efficacy, and innovation as well as produced impact reporting for national nonprofit organizations. I also engage in the FDHE design educator community and served as an adjunct lecturer teaching about Life Design and Liberatory design thinking. My previous background includes more than 15 years of experience in education administration roles serving students as an advisor and counselor at organizations from K12 to higher education. I have an Ed.D. from SMU and master’s degree (both in higher education) from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, where I was also a 2015 Social Impact Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, with a B.A. in history from Colgate University.