Rama Gheerawo

Director, The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art

RCA Reader in Inclusive Design

Human first | Designer second.

Rama Gheerawo is an international and inspirational speaker, author and designer. His first solo book, ‘Creative Leadership: Born from Design’ launched in March 2022 and is available on Amazon and from publisher Lund Humphries. He won a ‘Hall of Fame’ award for his work at the Design Week Awards in 2019 and was named a Creative Leader by Creative Review in 2018 alongside Paul Smith and Björk.

As Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, he uses design to address issues around age, ability, gender and race. He is a serial innovator in the fields of Inclusive Design, Accessibility and Creative Leadership having personally led around 100 projects working internationally with governments, business, academia and the third sector with clients such as Samsung, Tata Consultancy Services and Panasonic.

He champions inclusive and empathic approaches for individuals and organisations through his pathfinding work in Creative Leadership, with training delivered globally to thousands of people including over 850 civil servants. He is in high demand as a keynote speaker, and writes, curates exhibitions and runs workshops for audiences that range from students to business executives. Rama sits on a number of advisory boards and committees for awards, universities and organisations such as the UK Design Council, The International Association for Universal Design, The Valuable 500, Open Inclusion, EIDD Design for All Europe, The Bhavan Institute for Indian Culture and the RSA Decolonising Design Initiative. He has been a Visiting Professor at a number of international institutions..

LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook: @RamaGheerawo