Team

Liz Chen, PhD

Liz is the design thinking lead on our Innovate Carolina team. In 2016, she was trained in human-centered design at the world renowned design firm IDEO in San Francisco. Through her training, she spent 18 months applying design thinking mindsets and methods to develop a technological solution to teen pregnancy. In 2017, she co-founded the tech nonprofit MyHealthEd, Inc. whose mission is to use human-centered design to improve the health and well-being of youth of every identity. Its first product Real Talk is a mobile app that uses real stories by real teens to convey relevant and credible information about health topics to teens and reassures them that they are not alone. Real Talk has reached more than 10,000 teens and has been featured in Fast Company and Teen Vogue. Liz was named to the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 class for Social Entrepreneurs and in May 2019, Liz served as the co-facilitator for the Chancellor’s Faculty Entrepreneurship Workshop at UNC-Chapel Hill that focused on design thinking.

Liz is excited to continue working with Carolina faculty to integrate design thinking into their research, teaching and practice. She is a Teach For America alumna and enjoys co-creating and facilitating design thinking learning experiences for others and working with faculty to apply design thinking to their existing projects. Check out her latest article on design thinking and community-based participatory research (CBPR).

Liz offers weekly design thinking office hour appointments via Zoom. To sign up for a 30-minute slot to chat with Liz about design thinking and/or to ask questions about design thinking, use her Calendly calendar.