Rachel Abrams is the Principal of Turnstone Consulting, New York. In 2006, she founded Turnstone to apply strategic design principles and practices to civic, social challenges. Between 2001-2006, she worked as a strategic designer with IBM and Imagination in New York, and before that, in London, for the BBC, The Economist, the UK Parliament and the Institute for Public Policy Research.
She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a former fellow of the Design Trust for Public Space, the Municipal Arts Society at Rockefeller, Bellagio, and the Open Society Foundations US Program’s Technology and Future of Work initiative. As a Board member of AIGA New York, she conceived its Design/Relief response to superstorm Sandy.
Rachel has fifteen years of experience teaching graduates of design: Between 2007-09, as adjunct faculty of New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (NYU ITP); from 2009-21, at the School of Visual Arts, as faculty of various MFA programs in Interaction Design, Design for Social Innovation and Visual Narrative, and since 2015, in Products of Design.
Rachel’s writing on the social impact of design and technology, and her business illustrations, have appeared in over 25 international publications. She regularly gives talks and interviews about Turnstone work, locally and internationally.
Since 2006, she has taken two breaks from Turnstone, first to work with PentaCityGroup on Walk NYC in 2012 and more recently, to lead strategic design at Arup, New York. She returned to independent consulting at Turnstone Consulting in 2021.
Rachel is a graduate of Cambridge University (Social and Political Sciences) and the Royal College of Art, UK (Computer-Related [Interaction] Design). For further details and project highlights, see Linked In.