Jennifer (Houli) Houlihan is an educator and freelance designer with expertise in UX design and research, facilitation, and content. Currently, she’s an instructor for the 12-week immersive program in user experience design at General Assembly Austin. Raised in Alaska, she has served in creative leadership for more than 30 years, working with non-profit organizations and social impact businesses across the country. An award-winning speaker, Houli has presented and lectured on topics from the nuts and bolts of successful database conversions to networking skills for introverts in classrooms and at conferences across the US and Canada. She organizes the Austin Design Jam, a regular meetup devoted to hosting mini design hackathons matching talented designers with worthy nonprofits, and is a co-organizer of the OpenIDEO Austin chapter. She has published numerous articles on design, civic life, and the future of work. She holds an MA in Social Psychology from Pepperdine University and a BS in Communications from Northwestern University. Before joining GA, she served as managing director for the Austin Forum on Technology & Society. In her spare time, she writes, works in her garden, and tries to learn something new every day.