Irna Sayeed
MS, Strategic Design and Management, Parsons School of Design
Irna believes in the power of empathy to transform ideas into meaningful and innovative products, systems and services, that can change and save lives.
Passionate about applying design to improve healthcare and education globally, Irna spent two years as a UXR Designer at Noora Health, a Stanford Extreme start-up that educates patients’ caregivers in hospitals on post-discharge care to improve health outcomes. She travelled across hospitals in different states of India to develop and implement impactful tools and training programs that were medically accurate yet relatable across literary, cultural, language and geographic barriers— reaching over 150,000 people. Irna has also collaborated on health education projects affiliated with the UN and consults with other healthcare and non-profit organizations on strategic innovation projects to maximize their impact.
Currently, Irna is pursuing her MSc in Strategic Design & Management at Parsons, The New School and is a fellow at the Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative there. Irna is a TA for the Innovation course at the Parsons BBA program and is a product manager at Yurgosky —a tech firm that consults with Non-Profits on strategy, data analytics and database solutions in New York.
Irna completed her B.Des in Information Design at Srishti Institute of Design in Bangalore, India.
What is the unmet social or environmental need you intend to address?
Poor quality of education among caregivers in developing economies.
What most excites you about participating in the Impact Entrepreneurship Fellowship?
Designers have traditionally been tucked away as a select group of “creatives,” but are core team members now. I am very excited to work on multidisciplinary teams with other impact-driven students.