March 29, 2016

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, to be featured speaker at 2016 Commencement ceremony

Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO, will be the featured speaker at Claremont Graduate University’s 89th annual commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 14, 2016.

The ceremony will begin at 9 a.m. at Mudd Quadrangle, located at the southeast corner of Tenth Street and Dartmouth Avenue.

Commencement speaker Tim Brown
Tim Brown

Brown is an advocate for the value of design thinking and innovation, and a thought leader in the areas of creative competitiveness and the importance of creative leadership in business. His company, IDEO is an award-winning global design firm that takes a human-centered, design-based approach to helping organizations in the public and private sectors innovate and grow.

Brown takes special interest in the ways that human-centered design can be leveraged to solve large-scale systems challenges for society, such as serving the well-being of people living in poverty, creating sustainable food systems, reimagining how we experience aging, and solving for the demands of urban living.

An industrial designer by training, he has earned numerous design awards and has exhibited work at the Axis Gallery in Tokyo, the Design Museum in London, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

He advises senior executives and boards of global Fortune 100 companies. He is a member of the board of trustees of IDEO.org and serves on the Mayo Clinic Innovation Advisory Council and the Advisory Council of Acumen, a non-profit global venture focused on improving the lives of the poor.

He also chairs the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Creative Economy and writes for the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, and other prominent publications.

He maintains a blog as a LinkedIn Influencer with more than 1 million followers, as well a blog on the subject of design thinking.

His book on how design thinking transforms organizations, Change by Design, was released by HarperBusiness in 2009 and his talks Serious Play and Change by Design appear on TED.com.

CGU’s commencement ceremony will feature the conferral of degrees, the awarding of honorary degrees, greetings by university officials, and the commencement address. Tickets are not required. Receptions will be held afterward for individual schools and programs.