Leslie Speer
Industrial Design Program, Instructor


Leslie Speer is a designer and educator with 20+ years of experience in the design world. She received her BSID from California State University at Long Beach, did graduate studies at ENSCI in Paris, and received a Master's in Design from Middlesex University in London. Currently she is a director at Bolton Associates, a London based design firm. She has worked for companies and clients in the USA, Europe and Mexico including E.I. Dupont de Nemours, Phillips NV, Praxis Product Design, Sun Microsystems, frogdesign, Case de Cultura (Tenancingo), Banomex, among others. She has worked for over a decade with artisans in small villages in Mexico, helping them to create viable products for the world market. Her current work focuses on social entrepreneurship and on developing strategies for applying more inclusive participatory design methods to emerging markets in the developing regions of the world. She was the Assistant Chair of the ID program at California College of the Arts for 7 years and has taught a multidisciplinary course with UC Berkeley and CCA for the last 8 years. She is currently the Chair of the IDSA Design for the Majority Professional Interest Section.