Official Bio

Vanessa is a principal of Building Cultures of Belonging on the programs team at Omidyar Network. Her newsletter, Future of Belonging, explores how we can redesign tools and remodel approaches to fulfill the basic human need for belonging over the next decade as loneliness, alienation, and exclusion become more pervasive.

Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Vanessa worked as a research director for the Institute for the Future where she helped organizations think systematically about the future.

Trained as a social science researcher and public health practitioner, Vanessa utilized cross-disciplinary perspectives and mixed qualitative methods to understand emerging behaviors, values, and consumer insights to redesign and reimagine well-being and belonging across business, social, and civic spheres.

Before joining IFTF, she led work at the intersection of inclusive design, innovation and health for global companies including Genentech, government entities including the City of Oakland and the Brazilian Ministry of Health, startups such as Iodine, and pilot innovations funded by foundations including the Aetna Foundation. Vanessa has written for and been quoted in several media outlets including NPR and Fast Company. She has been recognized as a 2018 Aspen Ideas Festival Spotlight Health Scholar, 40 Under 40 Tech Diversity Silicon Valley, 2016 New Leaders Council San Francisco Fellow, 200 Black Women in Tech to Follow on Twitter and as a 2016 TEDMED Research Scholar. Vanessa earned her BA in psychology from Yale University and her MPH in global health from Columbia University.

Expertise: belonging, psychology and the human experience; addressing societal inequity and systemic oppression; digital health; social determinants of health; design; systems thinking; facilitation; public speaking

emoji Bio

💼 Building Cultures of Belonging @ Omidyar Network / expanding safety, connection, expression, inclusion across business, social, and civic spheres

👩🏾‍💻 Creator and Writer @ Future of Belonging / imagining how we can remodel tools and approaches to fulfill the basic human need for belonging over the next decade as loneliness, alienation, and exclusion become more pervasive.

🧠 Recovering perfectionist, she/her, ENTP, Type 7

📍San Francisco, CA resident / Houston, TX native / past lives in Mozambique, Argentina, Brazil

🕵🏾‍♀️ Equitable, Inclusive, Decolonized, Humanity-Centric, Optimistic Futures

🔥 Wit 💡, whiskey and bourbon 🥃, wanderlust 🗺 , music of the African diaspora 💃🏾, bullet journaling 📓