Cat Drew

Design Council chief design officer Cat Drew began her career working with Government where she held leadership positions with FutureGov and Uscreates – a service design agency which is now part of FutureGov – where she oversaw projects concerned with creating better health and well-being services.

Drew is a designer herself, with a masters in graphic design from University of the Arts London.

At Policy Lab she led creative teams which used design and data to introduce civil service to new ways of making policy and she once gave a TED talk titled: Making Government Better Through Design and Data.

Today Drew is a presenter on The Fix, a Radio 4 show which encourages young people to tackle societal issues with creative ideas.

At the Design Council, Drew works across public sector design and business innovation, the built environment and architecture on an array of projects including its recent endeavour to improve outcomes for homeless people during COVID-19.

Meanwhile Drew is working with RSA as part of a team behind a new initiative, Deconolizing Design, where she is one of 11 coalition members looking to create a set of principles, which will help ensure the design industry can be “truly inclusive”.

You can hear more about Cat Drew, her career and the kinds of things she works on in this filmed interview we did with her when she accepted her prize. Find out how she has learnt to join up other disciplines with design, influence policy and effect change for different groups of people. Plus, she shares tips on how to get into this type of design work.