Anke Stohlmann is a seasoned professional in design, policy, and education, currently serving as a Senior Fellow at the Public Policy Lab since March 2025, where collaboration with government agencies and public partners aims to enhance policy and services that benefit the American public. As a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute since August 2022, Anke teaches Graduate Studios in Transformation Design, focusing on human-centered and empathic design strategies. Anke founded Li'l Stories in May 2015 to promote creative thinking and digital literacy in elementary education. Previous roles include Principal User Researcher at Skylight, Executive Director of Design at The New York Times, and Design Manager at Nava, among others. Anke holds an MFA in Interaction Design from the School of Visual Arts, an MPS in Design Management from Pratt Institute, and a Diplom in Graphic Design from Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences.
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Public Policy Lab
The Public Policy Lab's mission is to design services that help Americans build better lives. We partner with government agencies – and the communities they serve – to create public services that are more effective, more respectful, and simple to use. Public programs are how our society invests in citizens. Too often, however, public services don’t feel very friendly, or even very useful. Here at the Public Policy Lab, we think the solution lies with the people themselves: when services are thoughtfully designed to serve the needs of their users, to be engaging and easy to use, then they’re more satisfying for citizens, as well as more effective and cost-efficient for government. We engage in research at the intersection of policy and user-centered design. We examine how policy goals and public services can be assessed through the experience of their users. We identify best practices from the design professions that can bring value to the public sector. And then we directly engage with government leaders and community members in projects to improve service delivery.