Maggie Sheffer

Professor of Practice in Design Thinking for Social Impact

Marguerite (Maggie) Sheffer teaches Design Thinking for Collective Impact: an hands-on introduction for student changemakers to collaborative, creative ways to tackle societal problems. Sheffer is also an Associate Director of Tulane’s Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking. Sheffer holds an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership and has a decade of experience as a K-12 educator in California and Louisiana. In her most recent position as Director of Impact at TrueSchool, Sheffer developed adult education curriculum, facilitated design thinking training, and managed and coached diverse cohorts of educators from across the United States.

Her work explores speculative design thinking, community-led human-centered design, the impact of design thinking on collective efficacy, and trauma-informed design thinking.

Sheffer was first introduced to mindsets of design thinking for social impact through collaborative teacher inquiry in the Mills College Teacher Scholars program (now Lead by Learning). Sheffer began as a Teacher Scholar, and moved into the role of facilitator and evaluator, completing a mixed-methods investigation of program participants’ sense of teaching efficacy.

Sheffer is also a writer of fiction and creative nonfiction. She is a co-founder of Third Lantern Lit, a local community organization that connects and champions emerging New Orleans writers, with a focus on supporting writers from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Pinch, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, The Dread Machine and Cast of Wonders.