SFSU and Delta Dental Kick Off Year Two of D×D Intensives

DxD reunites professional designers from Delta Dental and students from San Francisco State University’s School of Design (HSI and AANAPISI) for year two of its Intensives program.

The coalition is committed to changing the whiteness of the design industry at each touchpoint of the ecosystem: youth exposure, education, experience, employment, and empowerment throughout the designer’s experience. Only at this level of attention will DxD and its partners affect change, close the gap on the field's deeply rooted racial disparities, and move towards a more equitable and inclusive profession.

Intensives is one of DxD’s key initiatives to drive that change. Pairing industry partners and design programs — at institutions of higher learning that serve historically excluded students — Intensives brings real-world design experience, mentoring, networking, and potential internship and employment opportunities to students typically faced with an absence of such advantages upon graduation/entering the workforce.

One of the many historic barriers that Black and Brown students face, who attend smaller minority-serving institutions (MSIs), is lack of access to industry experience which, in turn, impacts the hiring pool of the very employers that are “trying” to create more diverse, equitable design teams.

Through the Intensives program, DxD is working towards creating a more equal playing field for students by delivering the industry experience they need to be on level footing when entering the workforce. Students learn and exercise the very skills employers seek: critical thinking, leadership, collaboration, and presentation skills; they connect with career designers, planting the seeds of a professional network; and build that all important body of work that hiring firms look at before they ever meet the candidate.

“Making the decision to have our design team mentor a second Intensives cohort was easy.” said Delta Dental’s Head of User Experience, Gabriel Bentley. “Being part of the change we want to see in our industry. Guiding future designers through a UX challenge, exposing them to new tools, new ways of working together, while they work with design pros they’ll have relationships with throughout their career is simply invaluable to us and them.”

SFSU’s Director of Design Programs, Mari Hulick was equally excited about the opportunity to work with Delta Dental in year two, “Our students gained so much applicable experience in such a short period of time. They closed the course with a professional portfolio piece, a deeper understanding of what it takes to work on a design team, and industry connections. Intensives is impacting the future of design.”

DxD is a coalition effort of Impact Collaborative, a woman-founded social impact consulting firm. For more information on DxD or DxD Intensives, email info@dxd.design