It’s 2025, and Sam Altman’s new alliance with Jony Ive has reignited the idea that design can change the world: the promise of quick, tangible, beautiful solutions we’ve long been taught to trust. Yet children everywhere face unprecedented crises: Gaza, Ukraine, DRC, Colombia, Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire. From war and disease to education gaps and lack of safe water, children’s realities grow harsher while humanitarian funding shrinks.

This talk explores both the promise and the paradox: through my journey from the Global South to IDEO to helping build UNICEF’s new in-house design team, one of the only such teams in the United Nations.

What does it mean to be scrappy in the times of AI powered digital tools for everything? How fast is fast enough in the public sector? And should beautiful always be the goal?

I hope this sparks an honest conversation about sitting with discomfort, It’s about what it means to champion stategic design, and many times stand against it. It is about staying with discomfort and recognizing that design’s real wins often come from the most unexpected places.

Erika Díaz Gómez is a senior design lead practicing service design for development. Currently co-building the design function at UNICEF’s Office of Innovation—one of the only ones of its kind across UN agencies—the team partners with cross-sectoral projects and programmes, including governments and the public sector, to create, test, and enhance solutions for children across the world.

Born in Colombia, Erika has over 15 years of international experience advancing human-centered initiatives. She has worked with leading agencies like IDEO in San Francisco and with public sector partners such as the Inter-American Development Bank. Her work spans migration, health equity, climate, and education, including designing access to social services for migrants in Latin America and supporting innovation in education technology in Ukraine.