Projects — [bon]fire

Current Projects.

Examples of [bon]fire’s current projects:

01. American School of Warsaw (Poland) - “Space + Time + Experience” (Re)Design

While undergoing a $30million architectural redesign project across their PreK-12 campus, ASW invited [bon]fire to collaborate with educators, staff, and leadership to explore new ways to amplify their dynamic culture of inquiry and collaboration thru innovative uses of space, time, + experience. [bon]fire was honored to bring together a team of celebrated education designers to join us in this year-long project partnership: Dr. Fiona Young (architect + education researcher; Sydney, Australia); Scott Witthoft (designer, prototyper + author; Tuscon, AZ); + David Jakes (educator, designer + author; Chicago, IL)

02. [unnamed global restaurant brand] - Identity + Strategic Storytelling

Within a globally celebrated restaurant brand lies a complex supply chain of leaders constantly supporting and collaborating with countless colleagues, teams, + partners in their mission-driven growth process. [bon]fire joined strategic branding team Roar (Atlanta, GA) to help the firms’ real estate development team explore new ways to develop mission-driven storytelling concepts which genuinely honor their historic culture and human-centered relationships.

03. Ever Forward - SXSWedu Experiences + 20th Year Anniversary

On the heels of Ever Forward’s founder Ashanti Branch being honored as a 2023 “Medallion Awardees of Health” by the U.S. Surgeon General at the Kennedy Center (DC), [bon]fire was invited to help the organization celebrate its 20th Anniversary. At the heart of this project collaboration lies the design + facilitation of a multi-day ‘experience’ at the famed SXSWedu event in Austin, TX in March, 2024 with the goal of joining marginalized youth, conference attendees, + sponsors through genuine “social connection” / “mentoring” experiences centered on mental health support and safe spaces.

04. “5 Lenses for Visionaries (Shaping the Future)” - Book, Podcast + Event Series

After 3 years of co-hosting — alongside futurist and Ohio State Professor, David Staley — a monthly ‘foresight’ forum with multi-industry C-suite leaders across the city of Columbus, OH, [bon]fire and Staley are co-writing a book about leaders who purposefully create the conditions for their teams to thrive together while shaping the future. Simultaneously, they are hosting a parallel year-long public speakers forum via Podcast (and later at COSI, the #1 Science Center in the US) to explore 5 key leadership lenses showcased by such visionaries: Fostering Curiosity; Asking ‘What if…?’; Challenging Assumptions; Exploring Complex Systems; + Living in the Future.

05. “Curiosity Lab” - Real World Innovation Prof. Dev., K-12 Educators

We live in a golden era of K12 schools beginning to invest in a variety of ‘innovation’ practices to help their students foster 21st century skills + prepare for new opportunities in the future. While the specific academic topics + educational methodologies can be diverse — design thinking, entrepreneurism, AI technologies, experiential education, project-based learning, etc. — the emphasis is always focused on educators designing ‘for students’ without necessarily building a community of colleagues to learn alongside one another. [bon]fire‘s own “Curiosity Lab” — built upon a decade-plus of leading multi-day, real-world ‘Prototype’ camps + labs around the US/world — partners with various organizations to empower educators to team up together in order to experience + co-create the very same innovation programs they want to help their own students experience. At the heart of all “Curiosity Lab” experiences is a non-negotiable commitment to fostering empathy + deepening reflection, helping to build strong professional connections that serve as coaches + allies for future innovation practice.

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Additional projects + references available upon request.

Past Projects.

Examples of past projects (working w/in other teams) that strongly influence [bon]fire’s work today:

01. Mount Vernon School (Atlanta, Georgia) - Pre-Strategic Planning Research; Upper School Campus Design

Being part of the planning team that architecturally designed one of the most innovative high school campuses in the U.S. led to a more recent collaboration with the school’s CEO to develop the foundational research for MV’s future ‘strategic plan’ process. This has led to [bon]fire re-imagining how innovation + ‘foresight’ practices (signals, trends, scenarios) can support an ongoing commitment to helping diverse professional teams thrive together while in service to an organization’s guiding mission and contextual realities.

02. “Hakuba Forum” (Hakuba, Japan) - Global Leadership Retreat

As a co-founder of the annual global retreat for innovative school leaders hosted in the mountains of Japan, this was a rare opportunity to create the conditions for internationally renowned leaders to come together to explore ‘designing schools as platforms for regeneration’ to fuel a shared ‘future of learning’. Based on this retreat model, [bon]fire continues to explore ways to ‘humanize’ both the multi-layered experience of holding-space for one another, fostering authentic collaboration over time, + ensuring that each organization’s values + goals can be honored within a call for ‘new ways’ to learn + make progress across systems.

03. THINK Learning Studio (global) - Start-Up Strategy, Marketing, + Experience Design

As one of the world’s most innovative international high schools, THINK Global School sought to expand its impact by launching a public-facing consultancy to help schools + education organizations around the world. Being a core member of the TLS start-up leadership team deepened [bon]fire’s desire to strengthen real-time professional + leadership culture as a way to ensure a successful shift towards various future-facing innovation practices + methods.

04. Roto (Columbus, Ohio) - Futures Strategy for Immersive Experiences for Cultural Institutions

Over an 18-month period, an invitation was extended to explore future strategies / scenarios to support the globally respected design-build firm’s ongoing mission to “build genuine human connections” across a wide array of cultural institutions. The experience helped [bon]fire to deepen ways to embrace how each individual — both internally + externally — brings a critical voice + perspective to each experience. Furthermore, this emphasized ways to align technology + human emotion with purpose.

05. “Bridge to Recovery” - Silicon Valley (California) Covid-19 Response Leadership - Leadership Coaching + Strategic Facilitation

Within the first few weeks of Covid’s impact on the closing + re-imagination of organizations of all kinds, [bon]fire’s founder was invited to lead “Bridge to Recovery” C-suite leaders from a diverse range of non-profit, municipal, higher education, + corporate organizations across Silicon Valley through months of human-centered design processes to establish a collective vision for systems-wide collaboration. The process confirmed the critical necessity to help mission-driven leaders to first ‘know’ others + ‘be known’ by others before trying to innovate in times of complex systems-level change.

06. “Wander + Wonder” Podcast - Hosting Interviews w/ Global Innovation Leaders

From speaking with co-author + publisher of books from global icons (Rev. Desmund Tutu, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Jane Goodall, Rick Rubin, Richard Attenborough, etc) to the founder of the 2023 Most Innovative School in the World, this leadership interview podcast series sought to better understand how leaders foster imagination, curiosity, storytelling, empathy, + design for good within their global audiences + local communities. In addition to widening the global network of change agents [bon]fire regularly collaborates with, it was a reminder that uncovering deeper truths from anyone we collaborate with require a deep commitment to listening over time, to finding the question behind the question, the project before the project.

07. Department of Education + Training; Tech Schools (Victoria, Australia) - Multi-School Innovation Lab:

This talented group of multi-disciplinary education leaders + technologists were expert in their craft + brave in their convictions. But in coming together to forge a new vision for how they could share wisdom + insights across institutions required a willingness to align professional curiosity + empathy with strategic goals for educational innovation. [bon]fire continues to think about how we can honor each expert’s hard earned knowledge while also ensuring that teams develop a shared ‘yes, and’ mindset in order to foster new ways of working together.

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