Sara Little Turnbull

Stanford University
Stanford , CA

Sara Little Turnbull is the director of the Process of Change, Innovation, and Design Laboratory at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Her laboratory houses a collection of evidence that shows how society reflects cultural, commercial, and technological advances. She has been an editor, designer, strategic planner and development consultant, trained in design with an academic discipline in applied cultural anthropology. Her anthropological studies have taken her to Borneo, Malaysia, the Philippines, Kenya, India and elsewhere. Ms. Turnbull has been a design consultant to a prolific list of well-known product companies including Procter & Gamble, Corning, Revlon and 3M. Products on which her influence has been felt range from pollution-filtering facemasks to beautiful-yet-sturdy cookware. She attended Parsons School of Design and by 1941 she was serving as Editor of House Beautiful. In 1958 she left to begin her own consulting business. At Stanford she has been a consulting professor to the School of Engineering, and in the Graduate School of Business she has mentored students in the design of products such as ski racks, alarm clocks, and water bottles. She helps students have a deeper understanding of culture and its influence on product design creating a definitive advantage in the competitive world. She was recently honored by the Modern Art Council of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The council cited Turnbull?s contributions to the world of design and she was officially designated a ?Bay Area Living Treasure.?