Hello!

I’m Akshata, a human centered designer and researcher with an experience of over 10 years spanning across US and India. I am particularly excited about pushing the envelope on the value of design in the most complex problem spaces (such as healthcare). I find myself probing and reflecting on “so what” and “what if” to get to meaningful outcomes.

Presently, I am working as Design and Research Lead at Peterson Center on Healthcare, a non-profit, with a mission to lower healthcare costs in the United States without impacting quality. My role is to design the ‘human centered design’ function for the organization, and lead it.

My professional strength lies in three areas:

1. Facilitating hard and complex conversations to make informed, accelerated decisions

2. Conducting user/stakeholder research to understand in depth human needs

3. Prototyping ideas into tangible solutions to learn quickly and iteratively

I am an alumni of School of Visual Arts, NYC, where I studied MFA Design for Social Innovation.  

In the past, I have worked as a designer in a variety of fields including healthcare, game design, IT, service design, rural empowerment and education.

I am a mom of two beautiful girls, a foodie and a published children’s book author/illustrator. And I love board games— my favorite is the Settlers of Catan (for which I got a chance to work too!).

For anything related to design or board games, get in touch!

Here's a glimpse of my design approach