Caroline O’Connor
Storyteller-in-Chief
Caroline helps the d.school spread its impact in the world.
A former journalist, Caroline sees stories everywhere she looks, and uses them to communicate impact and guide organizational culture. At the d.school, she turned our once-static website into an open platform where students, faculty, alumni and staff connect with each other and the world beyond campus.
Caroline’s entrepreneurial nature is evident in her approach to her work, which often begins by uncovering an organizational need and ends with a scrappy solution. This same entrepreneurial nature extends to everything she does. As an expectant mom who was unsatisfied with the market for baby clothes, she had an idea for a startup and built it into a company in 10 weeks—with customers, revenue and a team with c-level experience. The story of Plum, her company, was covered by publications like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and InStyle Magazine.
Caroline teaches Adventures in Design Thinking and other courses for graduate students. She also designs and teaches workshops for companies and non-profits seeking to develop innovative practices and a creative culture.
Years spent reporting for the Miami Herald and the Boston Globe left Caroline with an abiding love of short deadlines and punchy verbs. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, and earned her MA in communications from Stanford. She has worked as a design researcher in Asia and Europe, and was the d.school’s 2010-2011 Levinthal Fellow. Occasionally, you can find her writing about design and innovation in the Harvard Business Review.
Caroline and her husband Josh spend their time eliciting giggles from their 6-month-old son, Flynn.
