Alix Gerber

Alix Gerber teaches courses between the Art Department and Design Thinking Initiative at Smith. She explores how to design for alternative political systems, collaboratively creating artifacts and tools to imagine worlds without capitalism and without policing. While at Smith, she is working on a project with local solidarity economy initiatives (i.e. mutual aid groups, worker co-operatives, public land trusts, etc.) to explore ways of designing for systemic transformation. From 2017-19, Gerber taught at Washington University in St. Louis, where she developed a project with residents of Ferguson, Missouri that imagined three different futures that achieve public safety without policing. Before that, she studied Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons, where she practiced using design mindsets to address systemic social issues that cross disciplinary boundaries.

Gerber has also worked as a human-centered design researcher since 2010. She informs the design of new programs, services and products by conducting interviews and co-creative activities with those who are impacted by them. Most recently, she has been working with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, developing a new digital program that serves people with hereditary risk for cancer.