Christa May

Christa May (she/her) is a designer, illustrator, and design educator. She has worked in multiple departments in the museum space, as a UX/UI designer in startups, in marketing and communications at advertising agencies and in-house, and taught design on a collegiate level. After years of making bad ideas look good in the for-profit sector, she worked to found a digital platform to create more parity in the art market for artists who live outside of major art markets, or are historically underrepresented, and was awarded NPR’s ‘How I Built This’ Summit' fellowship. While she’s no longer working on the startup, the experience galvanized her to matriculate in a management program to put design into conversations earlier, in order to create more socially just and ecologically sound systems. She holds undergraduate degrees from The University of Oklahoma in Visual Communications and Art History and a masters from Pratt Institute in Arts and Cultural Management. She is currently working on design and design education projects for the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and working as the designer for the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative.