Mike Youngblood is a cultural anthropologist working at the nexus of social science and human-centered design. His work challenges the conventional roles of social scientists and the people they study by regarding community stakeholders as subject matter experts and engaging them as co-designers of solutions that impact their lives. Mike’s diverse fieldwork topics have ranged from the decline of conventional resource management practices among North African camel herders, to the dynamics of social inclusiveness in rural Indian politics, to the achievement challenges of low-income students in U.S. public schools.

As a design consultant, Mike has worked with for-profit and not-for-profit clients around the world in a wide range of industries, including financial services, transportation, telecommunications, food and nutrition, education, healthcare, and social services. Prior to his current work with The Youngblood Group, Mike helped launch the San Francisco office of gravitytank, an innovation consultancy in Chicago and San Francisco, where he was an associate partner.

Mike holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and is a frequent speaker on topics of anthropology, design thinking, and collaborative change-making. In addition to MICA, he has taught at the School for International Training, the Haas School of Business at the University of California–Berkeley, and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University.