Cindy Coleman

Cindy Coleman is a design strategist with Gensler. She has more than 25 years of experience working in a variety of roles across the design industry. Coleman has previously served as a project designer for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. She has also earned experience in development, manufacturing, and marketing through her own industrial-design firm, Align Incorporated, based in Chicago. She began her career in design journalism as executive editor at Perspective, a magazine published by the International Interior Design Association. Interior Design Handbook of Professional Practice, her first book, was published by Interior Design magazine with McGraw-Hill in 2001. Coleman is an adjunct professor at her alma mater, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also serves as the professional adviser for the Marcus Prize, a $100,000 biennial architectural prize administered through the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning and the Marcus Corporation Foundation. In 2010, Coleman was named a senior fellow by the Design Futures Council. Coleman received a bachelor of fine arts degree in interior architecture as well as a master of design methods degree from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology.