Shannon Randolph is a human-centered design process leader, seasoned social scientist, environmental anthropologist and international development and conservation specialist. She has lived and worked across Africa, the South Pacific and California. Shannon has extensive experience designing and leading teams in locally appropriate research methods and user-centered conservation, public health and education messaging. Her applied research and design projects have tackled challenging issues like the elephant meat trade, locally designed forest conservation, climate change adaptation, culturally appropriate education in developing countries, zoonotic disease management, and locally driven social media for rural health and conservation. She is adept at tackling issues where cross-cultural understanding is pertinent.
Shannon was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon and received her MA in Anthropological Sciences (2011) and will receive her PhD in Anthropology (January 2016) from Stanford University. After completing in-depth Fulbright and National Science Foundation fieldwork in Cameroon, she first encountered human-centered design through Stanford’s Hasso Platner Institute of Design (d.school) in 2011. Since then, she has led legal, education, public health and non-profit teams through the design process to reach surprising solutions to stubborn problems.
She has applied her cross-cultural research, empathy and design skills to a range of businesses, non-profits and research institutes. In the past, she consulted with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the National Institute of Health (NIH). Most recently, she worked with Wildlife Conservation Society to design locally appropriate water conservation and to understand the extent and value of marine and forest resources on islands threatened by rising sea levels in Papua New Guinea. She also worked with San Francisco non-profits to design mission-aligned revenue-generating models with the Civic Innovation Lab; with Stanford’s School of Education to design user-friendly approaches to administration; and with The Focal Point to design legal strategies for corporate lawyers. She is currently working with National Geographic to design conservation messaging for zoonotic disease-prevention related conservation in Uganda. Her work area has ranged geographically from SF Bay area, to Oceania and Africa.
