Lana has spent a decade in the creative services industry making big ideas more human for companies like Radical Media, IDEO, and VICE Media. She is currently the Creative Director of R&D at The New York Times and the founder of Somersault, a creative studio based at NEW INC, the Design Museum’s art, design, and technology incubator.

Lana graduated summa cum laude from University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Cultural Anthropology and minors in Science, Technology and Society and Theater Arts. She holds an MA in Design Interactions  from the Royal College of Art in London.

Her personal fascination, and the subject of her master’s thesis, is the relationship between memory and imagination. Her early work can be found here.

News

2019
Spoke at the DesignThinkers conference in Toronto

2019
Joined the R&D team at The New York Times 

2019
Launched Women Who Changed Science, an AI-assisted web experience for Microsoft and Nobel Media

2018
Influenced the senate vote to restore net neutrality with dynamic, location-based media that allowed people to call or text their senators directly from the ads

2018
Exhibited Night Botany, a poster show and fundraiser, at the SOMMWHERE gallery in NYC

2018
Featured in Communication Arts

2016
Featured in the “New Voices in Design” series of Debbie Millman’s Design Matters podcast

2016
Co-led “Elastic Narratives” workshop as part of Parsons’ VergeNYC conferencce

2015
Presented “Data as Artifacts in Design Interventions” at the Design Anthropological Futures Conference in Copenhagen

2015
Visiting critic in speculative design for SVA's Products of Design MA

2015
Designer-in-residence at Laboratorio para la Ciudad in Mexico City