Lee Davis
Co-Director, Center for Social Design, Maryland Institute College of Art
Lee currently divides his time between California and Baltimore, Maryland, where he is the Co-Director of the Center for Social Design and Faculty in the MA in Social Design at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Prior to MICA, Lee was co-Founder and served for 16 years as co-CEO and Chief Innovation Officer of NESsT, an incubator for social enterprise start-ups in emerging markets. From 1997-2013, he grew the organization to a team of 50 across 10 countries in Central Europe and Latin America.
Lee is Co-Chair of the Winterhouse Institute, dedicated to advancing social design education, and is a Social Enterprise Fellow at the Yale School of Management. He is a 2004 recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and a 1988-89 recipient of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. He has worked for corporate design firms in the USA and Japan, and was the first in-house designer for CARE, the international aid and development organization. He holds a BA from Connecticut College and an MA in Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins University.
Originally from New York but now a proud Californian, Lee has called Stanislaus County home for the last 15 years. He currently lives in Modesto with his longtime Brazilian partner Daniel, a composer, conductor, and professor of music. Lee is currently working on establishing the Modesto Design School as well as a book and exhibition on the history and heritage of design, innovation and invention in Modesto.