Emily Shepard, MFA

Resident Artist

 

Emily Shepard is a graphic facilitator, illustrator, and teacher with over 20 years’ experience. She is passionate about using the power of visuals to help people clarify and align their thinking, collaborate effectively and create change. And, most importantly, to reflect back to people that they are being heard.

 

Her previous experience as a graphic designer and her skill as a fine artist inform her work, making it visually organized but also fluid and loose, and open to iterations. She aims to listen with empathy as she draws, creating a visual representation of a session’s ideas, insights, discussions and mood. She believes in strong partnerships that are grounded in connection, open dialogue, and forged in the spirit of curiosity and play.

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Her clients have included large multinational corporations, start-up businesses, non-profits, foundations and government. She’s helped groups think better at board retreats and conferences, and at sessions involving strategic visioning and innovation. She’s listened and drawn stories from diverse stakeholders to encapsulate learnings on pain points and bright spots –- to be used to effect change in their organization or system.

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Emily also loves to get people to pick up the pen! She has taught visual thinking workshops at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Stanford University’s School of Business and at California College of the Art’s dMBA program, as well as at various consulting firms, public agencies, and local public school districts. She's also created an online class on the basics of visual flip charting, called "Draw it Out”.

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Emily received a B.A. from Middlebury College in Vermont, and a M.F.A. with distinction from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, California.