San Diego Design Week:
watering a community

In 2024, San Diego Design Week was World Design Capital’s signature design experience, built around belonging on both sides of the border. As community manager for SDDW and TJDW, I made the core events happen and helped community members bring their own programs to life. It was a phenomenal week.

When World Design Capital ended, its pull went with it, and funding tightened. In 2025 the NEA clawed back grants already awarded to San Diego arts groups, and in 2026 the city’s draft budget proposed cutting all $11.8 million in arts grants before the Council restored much of it. Meanwhile a new class of designers was entering a field where AI is reshaping entry-level work. I joined the San Diego Design Week board to help the community regroup.

Design in our region has a full lifecycle: the academy, industry and the community in between. AI is hitting early-career and later-career designers differently, so intergenerational engagement matters more now: each group holds what the other needs.

In 2026 I came back as a contributor. With the Design Lab and Qualcomm, I co-produced Digital Design Day on Qualcomm’s campus: a showcase, a career fair, an Adobe AI workshop, community sessions and a panel on designing with AI, opened by leaders from SDDW, the Design Lab and Qualcomm together. I recruited and prepped presenters, ran registration through Qualcomm’s system, built the run of show and briefed the 30+ person support team.

Next year, I’d bring employers on in January for a September event, push harder on sponsorship so we can pay speakers and demos, and build data-sharing consent into registration so every partner can follow up with the people who came.