The Support Team

Profile of

Dr. Vida Mia Garcia

Expertise

Innovation Strategist

Too many people confuse being smart with being critical; they point out problems and flaws they think no one else can see. But what if the smartest person in the room isn't the one who shoots an idea down? What if it's the one who says yes to wild possibility? The one who takes a risk on a future no one else can imagine.

Vida Mia García received her doctorate from Stanford’s Program in Modern Thought and Literature, an interdisciplinary department where her research combined the fields of literary studies and anthropology. She has taught in Stanford’s English, Anthropology, and Feminist Studies departments as well as in the Ethnic Studies department at California State University, East Bay. Since leaving traditional tenure track academia, Vida Mia has loved being able to continue researching story and culture – as well as to utilize her ethnographic training – in the world of design thinking and innovation strategy. She has worked with client teams across the retail, beverage, consumer packaged goods, and social media industries throughout the U.S. and internationally; more recently, she has circled back to the realm of higher education to help colleges and universities develop and launch design/creativity/innovation labs on their campuses. She also very happily continues to teach: in addition to coaching in the Executive Education program at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school) and lecturing in the Department of Design at the University of California, Davis, she is currently a Visiting Professor of Practice in the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut.