Emily born in Liverpool in 1966, joined the RSA in 2008 as Director of Design. She has developed a new account of the relationship between design and citizenship for this 250-year old society, integrating the RSA’s long-standing and influential work in design education with public engagement projects, live events and research.
She was previously the British Council Arts Group’s first Head of Design & Architecture. For twelve years her critical expertise in design shaped an extensive programme to enhance Britain’s international reputation for creativity, increase understanding of design in the world at large and expand the international perspective of design in the UK. Emily commissioned the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennales of Architecture from 2002 to 2008; and two of the first major international design exhibitions to tour India and China. Emily has initiated a series of critical debates on design including How Global is Design? at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2005, My Kind of Town at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2006, Has the Silk Road Gone for Good? which she chaired at Asia House in London in March 2007 and How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling: building homes in the 21st Century at the 2008 Venice Biennale of Architecture.
Emily has a BA in English Literature from Clare College, Cambridge, a Diploma in Clothing Technology from the London College of Fashion and an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale School of Art, which she attended as a Mellon Fellow from 1991-3. She has been a pattern-cutter for the fashion designer Jean Muir, a project manager at the design consultancy Pentagram in London and a graphic designer at Pentagram in New York, where she and partner Michael Bierut created outstandingly successful visual identities and campaigns for Brooklyn Academy of Music, Nickelodeon and Princeton University.
Emily has served as a visiting critic at Kingston University and the Royal College of Art; as a jury member for the Design Museum’s Designer of the Year, the RIBA Awards and the Prix Emil Hermes; and as Chair of the RSA Design Directions student award and Grand Designs Product of the Year. Her essay on contemporary London was published in the 2008 catalogue to Design Cities for the Design Museum and Istanbul Modern.
