Harmonie Coleman is a Senior Community Engagement Manager at IDEO.org. In this role, she collaborates closely with design teams, partners, and local community members to advance equitable practices in design research and community co-design methods across the organization. She specializes in designing transformative experiences, healing-centered facilitation, participatory design methods, and recruiting community members with lived experience. Her past experiences as a teacher and community organizer both deepen her expertise and ground her current work and interests. Harmonie has a Master of Education from Harvard University and a Bachelor in Psychology and Race and Difference Studies from Emory University.

In this episode, Harmonie shared her views on community and intentional relationship building, and stressed the need to move from transactive interactions to intentional relationship. She illustrated the value of intentional relationship building by sharing two projects she worked on with families and youth who have been impacted by the child welfare system. She discussed how the distinctions between participatory design, community design and co-design were not necessarily generative. Instead, she invites us to focus on the "how" and practice, rather than the labels. Last, we discussed adrienne maree brown's work and how the notion of emergent strategy informs Harmonie's work.

I asked Harmonie to share some recommended readings:

Thick, Tressie McMillan Cottom
The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker
Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown
How We Show Up, Mia Birdsong
Holding Change, adrienne maree brown
Abolishing the Cop in Your [Designer's] Head, Sarah Fathallah and A.D. Sean Lewis https://designmuseumfoundation.org/abolish-the-cop-inside-your-designers-head/

Read Harmonie's essay "On Community": https://www.ideo.org/perspective/on-community-harmonie-coleman

Follow her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harmonie-coleman-a42b25155/

Credits:

Conception, host and production: Anne-Laure Fayard

Sound design & Post-production: Claudio Silva

Music & Art Work: Guilhem Tamisier