Mollie Ruskin is an independent designer with roots in activism and social justice movements. She is a designer of many stripes—her design work ranges from deep qualitative user research to creative direction and visual design to UX, product and service design.
In 2017, Mollie lead an effort to map the human and technological systems involved in Congressional constituent correspondence for the Open Gov Foundation. She works with organizations such as Color of Change, Democracy Works and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
A founding member of the United States Digital Service in the Obama White House, Mollie has a rich background in civic tech and design, with the aim of improving government’s ability to deliver human-centered services for the American people. She previously served as a Presidential Innovation Fellow at the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. In these roles, she led a myriad human-centered design endeavors — including an effort to understand Veterans’ experiences with the VA, an effort to redesign how low-income Americans apply and enroll in public assistance programs, and the development of a first-ever U.S. Web Design System.
Mollie serves on the board of the Alliance for Youth Action, a national network of organizations building political power of young people in the U.S and is a co-founder of Design Gigs for Good, a job board for designers looking to put their skills to work for world betterment.