Alexandra Fiorillo is a behavioral science and human centered design specialist who serves as Director of GRID Impact, a research and design collective that specializes in developing creative solutions to complex social and human development challenges around the world. GRID Impact’s work spans global health, education, financial inclusion and economic empowerment, water / sanitation / hygiene, and agriculture.Alex has over 18 years of experience in innovative product and service design, training and facilitation, and international development. She has worked in over 40 countries on five continents, completed over 800 hours of presenting and training on subjects such as human centered product and service design in international development and has collaborated with diverse partners ranging from grassroots organizations in the Amazon jungle to banking regulators in Zambia.She works to bring empathy and creativity to all development challenges and particularly loves to lead design thinking workshops in unexpected places, like on airplanes and in remote rural villages. In her consulting work, she draws on her unique experiences from Azerbaijan to Kenya to Zambia in product development, program design, behavioral economics, and design thinking.Most recently she designed a mobile phone chatbot to deliver financial education to rural farmers in Uganda and Tanzania, led the research and design of programs to delay pregnancy of recently married adolescent girls in Niger and Bangladesh, collaborated to design communications and capacity building solutions to increase the practice of Kangaroo Mother Care for low-birth weight babies in Ethiopia and India, and facilitated workshops for donors and organizations working to digitize payments for humanitarian response contexts and G2P payments to women.Alex earned her Master’s in public policy and development economics from Columbia University and received her Bachelors in Economics and Latin American Studies from Connecticut College. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Ecuador where she worked on microfinance and social enterprise projects among indigenous communities. She teaches Behavioral Research and Design courses to graduate students and professionals in Costa Rica, Denmark, and India through the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.
