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alumni profiles
Parsons graduates engage with the global–local theme collaboratively and on their own, bridging geographical, disciplinary, and cultural contexts. On the following pages, alumni discuss projects that address global perspectives and local communities and their concerns. Much more alumni news can be found in re:D Notes, the online-only supplement to re:D. Make sure we have your email address by sending a message to alumni@newschool.edu so you can keep up with your classmates.
Jessica Weber
Cert., Graphic Design For the last 25 years, Jessica Weber has built a successful graphic design and marketing firm serving an impressive roster of nonprofits. With her team at Jessica Weber Design, Inc., the lifelong New Yorker has raised design standards for clients while partnering with groups whose missions make coming to work a daily joy. Weber has also shared with scores of students the benefits of nonprofit work during her 30-plus years teaching at Parsons. She and her students have helped clients address basic needs like education and food. They designed posters for the prestigious Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which provides full-ride graduate scholarships for gifted students. “Nonprofits play critical roles; their passion inspires us and helps students learn to communicate important social messages.” Weber’s next class will create campaigns for New York’s Westside Campaign Against Hunger. “At the end of the day, she asks, “shouldn’t you feel good about where you’ve invested your energy?” View New Americans posters at www.newschool.edu/alumni/soros.
Grace Tsai ’09
BFA Product Design Grace Tsai is a new alum who is tackling a complex problem with an elegantly simple solution. Tsai is working to help balance China’s growing income gap. “If the gap gets bigger, poor migrant workers from the countryside who come to urban areas for jobs won’t survive in the expensive cities and neither will their families, who depend on their income.” As a group, migrant workers comprise about 10% of China’s population but contribute most to China’s economic growth. However, being less educated than their urban peers, they tend to be underpaid and treated poorly. Tsai developed Contact Helpmate, an attractively illustrated booklet that gives accessible information about basic rights and labor contracts, to help educate Chinese migrant workers. It won Parsons’ Product Design Thesis Prize for 2009. Tsai is now in touch with the Chinese government to help her distribute Contact Helpmate throughout China. “I want to make this project happen for real,” she affirms.