Dr. Mariam Asad, PhD joined Sassafras in late October 2020. Mariam completed her PhD in Digital Media at Georgia Tech where her work explored alternative sociopolitical frameworks and practices for more just technology design. Mariam is from Atlanta, Toronto, New Jersey, the Philippines, and Palestine. She is a leading socio-technical scholar and practitioner who introduced prefiguration to the field of Human Computer Interaction and developed Prefigurative Design, or how we can use social relationships, material resources, and counter-institutions to help create the worlds we need.
In her short time at Sassafras, Mariam has already been a gift to Sassafras’ project teams and cooperative initiatives. She has brought incredible skill in UX design and research, facilitation, tech product strategy, planning, and an expert anti-oppression analysis to all that she does. Specifically, for example, she has been leading the Madeline team with the Working World, to support loans and material resources to amazing worker-owned cooperatives around the world. Additionally, she has led the design of software for a forthcoming art exhibit on grief (stay tuned!) Internally, Mariam has led Sassafras in clarifying and separating out product, planner, and developer roles on project teams. A blog post on this will be forthcoming on this as well.
We all look forward to continuing to learn from Mariam, as she is a force in shaping the present and future of Sassafras. We are so lucky and grateful to have Mariam with us at Sassafras.
Photo Credit: Meredith Stern, Justseeds, Cooperative Cats series, https://justseeds.org/product/together-through-the-mist/