Centro Educativo de Design Thinking (Puerto Rico)

Why?

My team and I co-founded CEDDT in response to Hurricane Maria, which amplified what had been there for a long time: deep-rooted educational inequities and a lack of creative infrastructure in Puerto Rico’s school system. CEDDT became a grassroots platform to introduce Design Thinking as a tool for empowerment, critical thinking, and collaborative problem-solving among students and educators

What?

How can Design Thinking be systematically integrated into public and private school education in Puerto Rico?
What mentorship models effectively foster student leadership and innovation skills in underfunded educational environments?
How can professional development for educators evolve to support collaborative, creative problem-solving?

How?

Co-Founder & Board Member: spearheaded organizational design, curriculum development, and multi-stakeholder facilitation.
Designed and delivered iterative Design Thinking workshops tailored for youth and teachers across multiple schools.
Led fundraising initiatives and cultivated a donor and supporter network to ensure financial sustainability.
Developed strategic partnerships with local educators, community leaders, and professional mentors.
Coordinated a volunteer facilitation team, overseeing training and quality control of workshops.

But how do you make it stick and last? (transformative realizations)

Student-Centered Beginnings:
We began by placing students at the heart of our mission, focusing on empowering student voices. While this approach created immediate engagement, it proved unsustainable without broader ecosystem support.
Top-Down Limitations:
We pivoted to targeting the Department of Education, aiming for systemic change through institutional backing. However, we quickly observed that bureaucratic inertia limited real, lasting impact at the classroom level.
The Teacher Multiplier Effect:
Our most sustainable and scalable impact came when we shifted focus to empowering teachers. Teachers hold the deepest, most actionable power to initiate, maintain, and scale change within schools. By making teachers the primary stakeholders, we unlocked a multiplier effect, embedding design thinking practices directly into the fabric of everyday learning environments.