Cooperative talent model
We have low overhead because we assemble the best team for the project at hand. We don't care about titles, but about delivering you the best product, on time, and on budget.
Meet the team below or email us.
Mission Control
We are accountable for your expedition’s success, we keep the team small to allow for agility and speed.
Hi. I’m a design and innovation consultant where I specialize in solving hard and complex problems for people in elegant, and hopefully simpler ways. Depending on the problem need, this might look like user and customer experience design, product and interaction design, service design, strategy, or environments design.
I consult and advise, having worked with a wide roster of organizations after leaving IDEO after 12 years of exciting work. Prior to this, I worked as an architect in NYC, for 8 years.
I’ve done extensive work in the public sector working with great partners from the Knight Foundation to reimagine the civic commons across eight cities, Bloomberg Philanthropies to cultivate city-based innovation in the U.S. and India, AARP to evolve their role in creating livable communities for all, and the City of Los Angeles and NYCHA to make cities better through design.
I’ve also completed a range of new products and services with a diverse set of clients—including State Farm, Steelcase, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Tata, Citibank, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, and Walgreens—on a variety of design challenges, from new digital communication tools, to blended digital and physical experiences, to entirely new retail strategy and concepts.
Holding a BS in Architecture and Masters of Architecture from the University of Cincinnati, I’ve worked worldwide for firms large and small. I have extensively taught in the past, most notably as a Part-time Studio Lecturer at Parsons the New School, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
EXPEDITION–READY CREW
We have a network of expedition-ready crew who can roll on and off projects as need be, so you have the best people for the right job.
Njoki Gitahi is a visual designer and strategist. She helps organizations collaborate better, understand and express their unique purpose and value, and create innovative and accessible products, systems, and experiences for their audiences. During her eight year span as a consultant for IDEO, Njoki designed dynamic brands and user experiences for retail and academic clients such as Citibank and Cornell University, created interactive platforms for dialogue for public media and social justice organizations like PBS and NYCLU, and helped nonprofits and corporations alike envision the future of education, media, and work. Recently, Njoki has helped Disney+ redefine inclusivity on its streaming platform and worked with the Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation to create a new brand and website.
We've worked together on many projects, with special highlights the Listening Room and Reimagining the Civic Commons.
Sarah Canning is a design researcher and strategist who is deeply curious about understanding the lives and perspectives of others and motivated to help clients empathize with the needs, desires, and behaviors of their users. Her background combines rigorous training in social research theory and methodologies with real-world business consulting and design thinking expertise. She’s uniquely positioned to facilitate the development of innovative and impactful products, services and strategies rooted in research-based insights and systems thinking. She has 8+ years of experience partnering across a wide range of industries and clients, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, and working at renowned creative agencies IDEO and Ogilvy & Mather. A social scientist by training, Sarah received a Masters of Science in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and her Bachelors Degree in Political Science from Amherst College.
Make Believe Works host carefully facilitated corporate team building workshops (remote, in-person, and hybrid) that use creative activities to help people strengthen personal connections, build trust, and refresh inspiration. In short, they help your team work better together to fuel a healthy, collaborative, productive work culture.
Clients choose us because we sit in a unique niche between lighthearted activities (like virtual magicians or wine tasting) that are fun but forgettable, and competitive activities like (trivia nights and scavenger hunts) that are fun but divide people by design. Our activities bring people together. They are carefully designed to deliver experiences that are playful in the moment but have lasting impact on team culture.
Make Believe Works have a deep library of corporate team building activities designed to help you accomplish your team goals. Some common goals include:
- Improving collaboration
- Building trust
- Bridging silos
- Creating psychological safety
- Sparking creativity
- Celebrating differences
- Just having fun together.
Together we helped local government experts share their local wisdom with AARP.
Scholastic Rodent offers software development and data science services that turn ideas into reality. In practice that can look like:
- EXPLORING the landscape of state-of-the-art machine learning models to evaluate suitability for your use case
- PROTOTYPING interactive experiences to answer critical questions about the design of your product or service
- PRODUCTIONIZING a web app, ML model, or API on cloud services like AWS or Google Cloud to put your creation into users’ hands
Scholastic Rodent was founded by Ryan Cranfill to make things that use modern technology to solve complicated challenges. He has over a decade’s worth of experience as a software and data practitioner. Prior to starting Scholastic Rodent, he spent 5 years as a consulting data scientist and software designer at global design firm IDEO and Datascope Analytics (which was acquired by IDEO in fall 2017), and before that worked as a data scientists and analyst for several startups.
Hi. Expedition Works is a design consultancy (and a small-business!), where we design new services and businesses, new environments, new ways to engage with residents, and we conduct independent research.
Purchase our physical zine, Journey with Purpose.
We help you on your journey with purpose.
Explore our weekly logos.
Email us and visit our Instagram.
Expedition Works, LLC; New York.
Listen to our podcast:
A conversation about cities, architecture, history, and why these affect us today. Hosted by Randy Plemel and a weekly cast of characters.
In this episode we speak with Sam Starr, a cargo bike expert about what our cities might look like if we shift some (or a substantial amount) of our in-city freight traffic from giant potential trucks to cargo bikes. Listen to Episode 006 with Sandra Rothbard for more freight pod.
Guest Bio
Sam Starr is a distinguished Sustainable Freight and Cycle Logistics consultant, co-founder of the North American Cargo Bike Conference by Our Greenway, and a trailblazer in the decarbonizing of goods movement. With over 15 years of expertise in logistics and supply chain, including roles at FedEx Services, Flash Global, US Pack Logistics, and others, Sam has recently played a pivotal role in transforming sustainable logistics, driving academic studies and cycle logistics pilots across Canada. A sought-after speaker at conferences like those hosted by the Association for Supply Chain Management, International Cargo Bike Festival, and the United Nations Economic Commission, Sam holds degrees in Electrical and Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and is a graduate of the Master of Engineering Leadership program in Urban Systems at the University of British Columbia. Passionate about sustainable cities and cutting-edge mobility, Sam stands out as a visionary leader shaping the future of environmentally responsible logistics systems.
“The future is very bright for cargo bikes, but we need to start thinking about it as that ecosystem. And this is not just for businesses, it’s for everybody.”
Connected Episodes
In this episode we speak with freight expert Sandra Rothbard, who is an urban planner specializing in freight transportation. After working for public agencies in NYC on city logistics, disaster preparedness and solid waste management, she now supports public, private and non-profit organizations around the world as an independent consultant. She focuses on building sustainable, resilient and safe streets, healthy communities and efficient and economic supply chains.
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“What I and my colleagues, would like to see, is a definition between what is a regular, family use cargo bike that might as well just be a regular e-bike. So that’d be one category and then another category that’s maybe more on the mid size scale that allows for heavier duty goods requires maybe a bit of training to use them but this is still carrying a I’ll call it a mid weight. And then a higher, heavier duty category that’s looking at 800 pounds, 700, 800 pounds of payload and more, and that these get regulated at these different levels.”
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