About
I am a participatory designer. But also…
A researcher, storyteller, and collaborator.
Also a cat mom, a typography nerd, a systems thinker, and someone who still reads the footnotes.
Born and raised in Islamabad, I grew up on books, family stories, and curiosity. These days I move between a few cities, but still find joy in long conversations, good food, old books, and the people around me.
I am currently completing the Erasmus Mundus MFA in Design & Healthcare, and will begin the next semester at Lab4Living, Sheffield Hallam University, in September 2026.
My practice combines participatory design, design research, and storytelling to explore how people experience and navigate systems of care. Much of my work focuses on women and children, working alongside communities to understand everyday experiences and create more inclusive futures.
I am interested in participation as a meaningful design process, in questioning dominant narratives, and in using design as a way to generate insight, dialogue, and new possibilities.
My work spans research, facilitation, speculative design, and collaborative making, often bringing together lived experience, community knowledge, and design practice.
What I do
Three things, mostly.
01
Participatory design with children and women
Workshops, tools and methods that treat children and women as co-designers — not subjects of research. Especially in education and healthcare settings.
02
Strategic communication for movements
Narrative campaigns, identity systems and event design for organisations working on women's leadership, education equity and care.
03
Research at the edge of care
Slow, situated research on what care looks like for women and children inside health and education systems — especially in the Global South.
Questions I keep returning to
- Where is the power imbalance between designer and participant — and how do we shrink it?
- How do we challenge the west/eurocentrism baked into design?
- When does design research become extraction — especially of women and children?
- How do we move past tokenism toward real inclusion?
Chapters
Where I've been.
Sept 2026
Lab4Living
MFA in Design & Healthcare — final semester
Starting the next semester as a researcher-in-residence at Lab4Living, Sheffield Hallam University, after time with LUCA School of Arts in Belgium and the Care Lab in Portugal.
Now
Belgium · Portugal
MFA in Design & Healthcare
A two-year Erasmus Mundus MFA across three institutions, asking how design can sit gently inside care — especially for women and children navigating health systems that weren't built with them in mind.
2019—2024
Islamabad · expanding into Sindh
Manager, Strategic Communication — Teach For Pakistan
Led the design and comms teams for five years. Built five narrative campaigns for Fellowship recruitment and fundraising, directed five annual events including The Pivot 2025 and the first Alumni Homecoming of 100+ leaders, and helped open the Sindh chapter. Designed consent and storytelling systems for 12,000+ students, most of them girls in low-income public schools. CEO's MVP Award, 2022.
Global
South Asia + global
Teach For All Global Network
Part of cross-country design and communication exchanges with Teach For All partners across the Global South — translating local stories of educational equity into shared movement language.
2019
Nepal
Artist residency — Myth of Sanctification
A residency around ritual, gender and the everyday objects women carry — early roots of a practice that keeps returning to women's interior worlds.
2015—2019
Pakistan · regional
Designer & organiser across South Asia
Identity, publication and campaign design for nonprofits, schools and arts organisations.
Currently
Reading, listening, watching.
Reading
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion
On grief, memory, and the strange architecture of loss.
Listening
Empire
William Dalrymple & Anita Anand
Histories of empire, told with rigour and a sharp eye for detail.
Watching
Pachinko (S2)
Apple TV
For the women, the language, and the way time folds in on itself.
Off the clock
The small loves.
Oceans (the Atlantic especially), sunsets, birds, trees, long walks, books, music, textures, illustrations and typography.
Four cats: Naku, Hubble, Daffy and Kiki — usually somewhere in the background of every video call.