Meet our ๏ปฟDesign Fellows!
Weโre excited to announce our 10 Design Fellows from our nine-month fellowship program for early to mid-career QTBIPOC designers!
The fellowship will empower designers to transform their careers, uplevel their skills, and elevate their impact on their communities and the design industry.
2025-2026 Fellows
Star Ajasin
Star is a multidisciplinary researcher, designer, and technologist, who crafts experiences with technology that enable agency, connection, and resilience. Currently, they are pursuing an MS in Integrated Design and Media at NYU, working with interactive new media, design pedagogy, and mixed-methods research to critically investigate and re-imagine our collective relationship with technology. Outside of academic research, Star also is working with community organizations and collectives like OutInTech, Labs for Liberation, and Caffeine Garden to engaging community members in participatory design to develop technology enabled services that enable community power and knowledge.
Yanlexis Arizaga
Yanlexis is a designer and storyteller who's spent over five years creating digital experiences across nonprofit, government, and tech sectors. She started in traditional art and teaching, then discovered her love for solving problems through design. She currently helps NJ families and children connect to services and resources through the NJ Department of Children & Families, and has previously mentored young designers at Hopeworks and built AI-centered tools for creatives. Whether it's government work or tech startups, her focus remains the same: using design as a force for helping people connect with others and themselves.
Grace Cho
Grace is a self-taught multidisciplinary visual designer based in the Bay Area. Previously a community manager, Grace is interested in how design can be shaped by the community to create meaningful solutions for the community. They are interested in sign painting, music production, and coffee.
Devin Fernandez
Devin is a results-driven Digital Designer with over seven years of experience creating impactful investor decks, brand identities, and user interfaces. With a strong focus on health and wellness, he has rebranded an AI healthcare startup and supported digital health companies like ScaleHealth and Startup Health. A design consultant by trade, he has a proven track record of helping clients secure more than $150 million in funding and driving significant brand growth. He is fueled by a passion for solving real-world problems and thrives in the fast-paced, collaborative, and iterative environment of startup culture.
Michael Lau
Michael is a Senior Product Designer at Grow Progress, where he helps mission-driven organizations persuade more effectively by turning behavioral science insights into intuitive digital tools. Heโs passionate about designing products that donโt just work, but actually empower people โ especially in spaces where good design can drive real-world impact.
In his free time, he can be found surfing during summer, snowboarding in winter, and strength training year round.
Dija Manly
Dija is a product designer based in Brooklyn and is passionate about clarifying the ambiguous through design. She is currently a Digital Product Designer at PIMCO. She has previously worked at Genentech, the Stanford Institute for Diversity in the Arts, and the Foundation for Black Womenโs Wellness. She graduated from the Stanford d.school with a B.S. in Product Design with Honors in the Arts. She also has a certificate in Product Design from the Useful School. In her free time, she runs a mutual aid event collective, DJs, makes films, watches lots of anime, and eats multiple daily sweet treats.
Kasey Martin
Kasey L. Martin is a multidisciplinary designer and filmmaker who uses design as a tool for storytelling and community impact. With roots in the nonprofit world, her design practice was shaped by years of creating visual content across web, mobile, and social media. She later deepened her skills through a UX course at The New School and went on to work as a multimedia designer at Gaia GPS (Outside Magazine), where she collaborated closely with product, marketing, and engineering teams to design accessible and engaging experiences across mobile, web, and print. For Kasey, good design is functional, accessible, and responsible. These values guide everything she creates. At the core of her work is a commitment to using creativity to support underrepresented communities and drive positive impact.
Isabel Rozario
Isabel is a multidisciplinary product designer with a background in cognitive science and data science. She lends a technical yet human-centered approach to solving complex design challenges. After 3 years working as a program manager in cloud sustainability, she made the leap into design and hasn't looked back since! Now five years into her career, she's passionate about demonstrating how diverse experiences fuel novel designs for social good. Outside of work, youโll find her making art, playing piano and bass, and catching live jazz somewhere in a park. Isabel's mission is to share thoughtful and beautifully crafted experiences with the world - one pixel (or sketch!) at a time.
Obson da Silva
Obson is a Brazilian-born product designer with 10+ years of experience in design. At BulkLoads, he helps improve the mobile app, enterprise product, and marketplace web application to make freight logistics management more intuitive and less of a burden.
He was raised on arts and crafts and shaped by a background in Advertising and Marketing. He began his career designing brand activations at ad agencies and moved into product design in 2019 after completing a UX Design bootcamp at General Assembly. Since then, he has collaborated with teams at Samsung, the United Nations, and UC Berkeley.
Harry Trinh
Hi I'm Harry, Queer Chinese American Designer/Art Director here in NYC. Currently, I am the Head of Creative of a nonprofit called Welcome to Chinatown. I've been with the organization since 2020 and full-time since 2022. I have always grown up in Chinatowns; as an adult I am always trying to find ways to bring thoughtful innovation to this community from the lens critical thinking and 2nd-Gen cultural rediscovery. I find a lot of joy of giving creating experiences where younger generations can rediscover their culture in their own right. I draw a lot of inspiration from my love of themed entertainment, museum exhibition design, and haute couture designers.
qtbipoc design
20 Pine St. Suite 2312
New York, NY 10005
[email protected]
Registered 501(c)(3) organization โข EIN: 127890
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ยฉ 2025 QTBIPOC Design