A design writer, curator and strategist, Wolff is desigNYC’s executive director, a nonprofit whose mission is to improve the lives of New Yorkers through the power of good design.

Over the years Wolff has developed a creative practice of cultural engineering that provides a critical eye on all things visual and a multi-faceted understanding of the cultural value and strategic dimensions of design.

In 2010-11 she founded expoTENtial, 10 urban interventions x 10 design labs, a collaborative platform that investigates ideas for a smarter, livelier and healthier New York–each lab using a design strategy to address a major challenge to urban life. This model was the main curatorial inspiration for “EmpathiCITY, Making our City Together,” a project she co-curated to activate the UNESCO Creative Cities of Design network at the latest Saint Etienne International Design Biennale last March 2013.

Wolff has co-curated a number of similar interdisciplinary labs, among which “Value Meal: Design and (over)Eating” in 2005, and “Headspace, on Scent as Design,” at Parsons School of Design, in partnership with MoMA and IFF. She has consulted for Parsons, the New School for Design on strategic alliances, programming and intellectual branding, as well as to this day for the Swiss EPFL+ECAL lab on exhibitions, public programs, media and industry partnerships.

Formerly the editor-in-chief of Surface and Graphis, Wolff is the author of the award-winning monograph Massin and of Real Photo Postcards. She is a regular contributor to Etapes, a design and visual culture magazine.

photo credit: Sarah Shatz