Jen Leonard Portrait
Journalist & Design Strategist

Jen Leonard was a guest speaker at the TrafficJam BigTent event, where she helped tackle the challenge of improving mobility in the Toronto region. 

She is a journalist, co-author of Massive Change, and host of Brand New Ways: Change Making and Rule Breaking. For the past 10 years Jen has been Senior Design Lead at global innovation consultancy IDEO, on projects ranging from service & brand to products & spaces with clients including Nike, Marriott, Visa, Equinox, & Renault. Jen's resume includes roles as writer, broadcaster, design thinker, strategist, storyteller & rock critic.

Location: 
San Francisco
Affiliations: 
Founder & host, Brand New Ways: Change Making and Rule Breaking

DesignJam "TrafficJam" is an all-day innovation jamboree – a curated open space guiding more than a hundred design leaders & design learners, sharing ideas, tools & perspectives, to better understand & address a complex problem. Nicknamed "TrafficJam," DesignJam Toronto gathers young leaders, mentors, teams and aspiring entrepreneurs to conceive innovative user experiences and activate ideas to improve mobility in the Greater Toronto & Hamilton Area.

Design Jam 
 

The theme: “TrafficJam”: How can we improve mobility in our region?

Finding & meeting challenges & opportunities for improving traffic & transit in the Greater Toronto & Hamilton Area (GTHA) through design thinking, innovation & entrepreneurship.

 

How can we improve mobility in our region?


Facilitators & Mentors

Our spotlight is slated to feature great people including:

  • Adam Lawrence, service innovation director & co-initiator of Global Sustainability Jam, GovJam & Service Jam, the world's biggest service design event
  • Jennifer Leonard, founder of Brand New Ways, IDEO alumna, co-author of Massive Change
  • Peter Stoyko, Industry Canada service designer whose work visually unpacks urban mobility
  • Matti Siemiatycki, U of T expert in transportation policy, infrastructure, and planning
  • Roger Keil, York University research chair whose work illuminates global suburbanization
     

Workshop choices include

Creating
Better Futures

Strategic foresight

Mapping Mobility
Visual thinking & visual production

Making Systems Human-Centred
Service design thinking

Designing Flourishing Business
Sustainable business architecture

 

Schedule

9–10:30 am  Welcome, Orientation, Lightning Talks
10:30–12 am Morning Workshops
12–1:30 pm Food, fuel, music
1:30–3 pm Afternoon Workshops
3:30–4:15 pm   Workshop Reports & design critique
4:15–5pm Expert feedback & panel

 


For more information please contact: designjam@ocadu.ca

 

Ontario Centres of Excellence logo   Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs logoMaRS logo

 

Organized by Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) as part of OCAD University's Campus Linked Accelerator (CLA), DesignJam has support from OCE and ONE in partnership with MaRS and OCADU's Imagination Catalyst. We draw from methods and insights developed in OCADU's Strategic Foresight & Innovation (SFI) community, a unique graduate program creating new kind of designer: a strategist who sees the world from a human perspective and re-thinks what is possible; an innovator who imagines, plans and develops a better world.

Life's Traffic Jam

Can we design think our way out of a traffic jam? It’s time to get practical with Jen Leonard as she talks Drake, mass transit, analogous thinking, traffic jams and forks in the road. Design thinking is an open adventure, with no maps or signs but a practice that allows for a multitude of different specialists from different disciplines to creatively solve problems.

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