About

“As a design ecologist, I give people an immersive look at the extraordinary power of design in everyday life, in the headlines, and at the heart of our most pressing global challenges.”

Lindsay Tan is a risk-tolerant innovator and engaging storyteller with special expertise in symbolic aspects of human-computer and human-environment interaction. Her unique skillset has allowed her to jump fences throughout her career, applying her talent to healthcare, civic, educational, hospitality, retail, residential, and corporate interiors and extending beyond disciplinary boundaries into the realms of digital and print media, user experience, apps, exhibits, virtual and augmented reality, products, landscapes, visual merchandising, stage, and film. She was a founding member of the Tallahassee School of Design. She founded DESIGN-ATLAS and serves as Design Director for West Second Street LLC.

Tan is an in-demand speaker and award-winning author who enthusiastically shares her passion for design as the leverage point for world-changing. You can see the impact of her work featured in: CBC News, CBC/Radio-Canada, Reuters, Chronicle, Faculty Focus, Commercial Interior Design, Elle Décor Italia, Architectural Digest, Cruise Arabia & Africa, Designers Today, Spaces Quarterly, and the Board of Human Sciences.

Her career in higher education spanned 22 years, beginning with a non-faculty role in online learning @ FSU, continuing across 3 top-ranking interior design programs, and ending at Auburn with tenure and a solid foundation of research and creative scholarship backed by $1.52 million in support. She retired from full-time academic work at age 40, stepping away from an absolute rockstar career to pursue her next big adventure and more time with her family.

As a free agent, she wears a lot of hats – business owner, executive leader, independent researcher, instructional design strategist, and project manager. She is also a wife and mom, prescribed burn manager, and lover of long-leaf pine, native bunchgrasses, and charismatic animals of the Southeast. Her vices include using too many commas, checking her mobile, and walking entirely out of her way to step on crunchy-looking leaves. (Sometimes simultaneously.)