Design Adjacent with Elise Schuster, Co-Founder and Executive Director, okayso on being a problem solver, standing the gap, creating safe spaces, and building a human first organization.

Elise Schuster is a sexuality educator with 15 years of experience in youth development and pleasure-based sex education. Elise has a masters in public health from Columbia University with a specialization in sexuality and health. Elise began their work in public health at Physicians for Reproductive Health, training doctors to provide adolescent-friendly reproductive health care. They also spent many years teaching workshops at Babeland and having thousands of one-on-one educational pleasure-based sexual health conversations.

After their MPH, Elise spent almost a decade at a premiere NYC youth development center serving over 11,000 marginalized young people every year. Elise had several roles here including running intake and assessment for over 30 new young people every day, overseeing capacity building work, managing 30 student volunteers, starting a professional training institute, and a youth council, and overseeing a $6.5 million wraparound services grant with twelve subgrantee partners.

Elise also serves as a trainer on LGBTQ+ competency issues and regularly facilitates workshops for healthcare professionals, educators, artists, corporations, and more.

About AIGA Design Adjacent

AIGA Design Adjacent is a monthly podcast series with AIGA’s Executive Director, Bennie F. Johnson, in conversation with industry leaders who are innovating and designing the future. These conversations expand beyond the design community, encompassing industries and areas that intersect with design and shift the ways in which we think about and interact with each other and the world around us.

About Bennie F. Johnson

Bennie F. Johnson is the Executive Director of AIGA, the professional association for design. Bennie thrives on the connections between marketing, technology, education, and innovation. With experience in strategic and consumer marketing, brand management, and innovation management, he is drawn to opportunities that allow him to lead and create new modes for business engagement. He has broad experience growing brands, businesses, and organizations with a special focus on venture launch and brand relaunch business environments.