Willa Crolius

Wilhelmina Crolius (“Willa”), Coordinator of Public Programs and the User-Expert Lab, grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where she was first introduced to art and design through her work on collections management for the Yale University Art Gallery. After a year at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina, studying politics pertaining to political activism and photography, she transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where she earned her BFA in Industrial Design. Always looking for ways to combine her visual creativity with her desire to work directly with community, she was introduced to and fell in love with the language of design. From that moment on Willa combined her passion for social equality and a new found language in design to make change in the world around her. She received the Betsy Karp Award for exemplary work in Advanced Undergraduate Design Objects at SAIC and First Prize in Photography, a professionally juried exhibition at Warren Wilson College.

While studying in Chicago, Willa worked with the Chicago Rehabilitation Institute designing and developing products for people who had sustained spinal cord injuries. She also worked with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization teaching design to local youth and organizing a series of charrettes in the community to aid the design development for a proposed local area park. After a short stint in the New Haven City Plan Office where she worked, among other things, on “way-finding” for public park designs, Willa joined IHCD in February. In addition to her work as coordinator of the new User-Expert Lab, she provides daily management of the public programs including the IHCD Store, corporate and traveling exhibits, lecture series and the Library.