Katie Krummeck joined The Lemelson Foundation in 2023 as a Program Officer. Focusing on Invention Education, Krummeck leverages the power of design to drive change in social systems, and uses the design process and maker-based instruction to create student-centered learning experiences that develop students’ creative confidence, optimism, and problem-solving skills.
As both an educator and social impact designer, Krummeck draws from her experiences in a wide array of settings to develop and scale educational programming that matches her deep belief in the power of hands-on, real-world learning to inspire students to solve complex problems and feel empowered to make the world a better place.
Krummeck began her career as a secondary teacher and co-founder of a small, experimental independent school, where students collaborated across age groups to engage in project-based, interdisciplinary learning. She has since helped scale a national education nonprofit start-up, helped develop the K-12 Lab at the Hasso Plattner Institute for Design at Stanford University (“the d.school”), and directed a collegiate makerspace.
Krummeck founded the Maker Education Project at Southern Methodist University, an initiative dedicated to catalyzing transformational maker-based learning experiences for students in K-12 schools, and has led design teams focused on a range of equity-focused issues, from redesigning the discipline process for a large urban school district to be more just and caring to supporting women micro-entrepreneurs in rural Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Most recently, Krummeck served as the Global Design and Innovation Advisor for the Aga Khan Foundation, where she created an innovation process and toolkit for AKF’s Schools2030 initiative. This toolkit was translated into ten languages and was deployed in 1,000 schools in 10 countries across the developing world. It was recognized in 2021 by two design and innovation competitions: Fast Company and Core77.
Krummeck’s work has been published in multiple journals and has been featured in Fast Company, the Stanford Magazine, EdSurge, and more. She holds a B.A. in English from Whitman College.
