SL (Shree Lakshmi) Rao

Director of Research + Strategy

Substantial
SL Rao

SL (Shree Lakshmi) Rao (she/they) is an equity-centered system change designer with experience across sectors (tech, philanthropy, global health, and government) and a background in interaction design. Rao works to (re)design systems with a strong racial equity and social justice mindset. They currently co-lead Substantial?s equity-centered design work in education and have prior experience leading end-to-end product design. Rao’s practice is grounded in trauma-informed design research, targeted universalism, co-design, and complex systems theory. They are a strong proponent of evolving the design practice to be anti-racist, decolonized, and systems-thinking oriented.