Nicole Anand is a political economist and participatory designer. She is a specialist in governance, data/information/knowledge, and social design. Currently, Nicole runs a consultancy—Collectivist—and works with the Global Policy Network of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) leading the design and prototyping of a few global support services for COVID-19 socio-economic recovery and beyond. She is the co-founder of the Residency, an emergent practical learning collective for Change Designers—civil servants, civil society and social designers—and part-time faculty teaching Design Research in the Transdisciplinary Design MFA program at the Parsons School of Design, The New School. She is a longtime leader in the Open Government movement and has led collaborative initiatives between government and civil society in Asia, Latin America, West Africa, and Eastern Europe.
Nicole speaks, facilitates, and writes about participatory governance, learning, civic technology, and social design and innovation. Her latest writing on diversity, equity and inclusion was selected to be in the top 10 of Stanford Social Innovation Review’s articles of 2019. Her writing on systems design, learning and collective action is published on The Residency’s Medium. She is a lead contributing author of the World Bank publication, Closing the Feedback Loop: Can Technology Bridge the Accountability Gap? Previously, Nicole directed the research, strategy and learning of civil society organizations working on public sector innovation, anti-corruption, and social justice. She holds a Masters degree in Development Management from the London School of Economics, and a dual Bachelors degree in Development Studies and Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
