UC NEXT Innovation Scholar takes the stage at San Francisco Design Week

UC College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. Photo/Jay Yocis

The scholars program brings together high-achieving undergraduates like Cunningham for a transdisciplinary educational experience rooted in design thinking and future-focused innovation. This approach recently led to a milestone few undergraduates ever reach:

Cunningham, a senior industrial design student at the UC College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, was selected to design and lead a workshop at San Francisco Design Week, one of the country's leading professional design conferences.

Getting a proposal accepted to the conference is competitive even for established studios and working professionals. So, for an undergraduate applying from outside the Bay Area, it's rare. Cunningham's session, "The Career Prototype with Nova and level: An Iterative Guide to Career Adaptability," paired her with two industry founders: Jeanette Numbers, CEO and principal at Nova, and Nichole Rouillac, founder and creative director of level, for a hands-on look at building career adaptability into a design practice.

"The NIS program is designed to put our students in professional innovation environments that most undergraduates don't get access to," says Aaron Bradley, founding director of UC's NEXT Innovation Scholars program. "And Jackie's experience is a great example of what's possible when you equip high-potential students with the tools, experiences and professional confidence to push beyond the boundaries of the traditional educational system."

NEXT Innovation Scholars Foresight Lab produces visionary work displayed at Futures Forum 2026, that far surpasses higher education norms. Photo/Greg Glevicky.

In Latin, "finis" is traditionally used to mark a formal closing. For Cunningham, FINIS, a Bay Area company that develops swimwear and swim-training products, was instead the start of her journey. Her first co-op took her to San Francisco to work for FINIS, introducing her to the region and giving her an early connection to the design and innovation ecosystem she hopes to return to upon graduation.

Cunningham's co-op experiences have since taken her through packaging design, swimwear, medical devices and other areas of design - experiences she now views as a series of career prototypes.

"I've had the opportunity through co-op to work in packaging design, swimwear, medical devices and more," Cunningham says. "These all feel a little like prototypes."

She also completed two internships with Procter & Gamble, including work in the company's front-end innovation group, where she applied the future-focused thinking she'd developed through the NIS Foresight Lab, designing 10 to 15 years out.

"My work in NIS set me up really well to be designing for the far future rather than for the next quarter," Cunningham said.

A subsequent internship at Nova's design firm based in Providence, Rhode Island, added another dimension to her experience. During her time at Nova, Cunningham began considering design conferences where the firm might participate and proposed several options.

She initially hoped to present at a conference later in the year. Instead, Numbers from Nova encouraged her to collaborate with the company and apply for San Francisco Design Week, months earlier than Cunningham had originally planned.

Cunningham took her advice and was accepted as a presenter.

"Our approach to NIS has always been future-focused, and in 2026 we took that to the next level by launching one of the only undergraduate strategic foresight labs in the country," notes Bradley. "This gives our students an amazing platform to not only learn the practice of foresight and futures research but also translate it into action for external audiences."

Left to right: Jackie Cunningham displays the A/B paddles she made in the 1819 Ground Floor Makerspace along with CEO of Nova, Jeanette Numbers. Photo/Jackie Cunningham

For anyone unfamiliar with San Francisco Design Week, the opportunity represents far more than a student presentation.

"SF Design Week is a place where companies and design studios get to showcase the future of design and design excellence," Cunningham says. "Being a part of the same design week as powerhouse design studios IDEO and Frog Design, and even Google, is a huge accomplishment."

When she learned her proposal had been accepted, her reaction was immediate:

"I was shocked, excited and realized it was 'go time,'" she says.

There was plenty to do. Cunningham was taking summer classes at the time, so she had to coordinate with professors, arrange to make up coursework, book flights and accommodations, and prepare materials for the event.

Among those materials were paddles Cunningham made herself in the 1819 Innovation Hub's Ground Floor Makerspace and packed into her carry-on for the trip to San Francisco. Marked "A" and "B," the paddles became part of a panel discussion Cunningham facilitated, giving participants a chance to weigh in on career-related statements by holding up the corresponding letter before the workshop began.

"It has been such a huge accomplishment, and yet natural in comparison to all of the other amazing things NIS has done on an international level," she states.

While Cunningham prepared for San Francisco, another NEXT Innovation Scholars team was publishing content it had presented at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, earlier in the year.

"It just goes to show the kind of work NIS is doing and the momentum we have to keep bringing novel ideas to a variety of stages," she says.

The theme of this year's San Francisco Design Week was "Multitudes," exploring how designers and the design field can adapt to change and volatility while remaining relevant in an era of emerging technologies.

For Cunningham, her proposal, "the Career Prototype," offered a natural response.

"I think 'The Career Prototype' was a great take on this and challenged designers to imagine themselves using the discipline in new ways," she says, "whether it be in the studio or in a completely different career path."

Jackie Cunningham, standing left, walks attendees through her presentation at SF Design Week. Photo/Jackie Cunningham

Cunningham's workshop at the conference ran as a three-part evening at Level's San Francisco studio. It opened with a career adaptability panel featuring Numbers and Rouillac, followed by Cunningham leading attendees through building their own career prototype.

Participants explored what they value, the skills and talents they bring to the table, and how those qualities could translate into new professional possibilities.

At its heart was a simple idea: A career does not have to be treated like a finished product.

It can be designed, tested and revised.

"The career prototype was a workshop that helped strengthen or challenge our current career paths," Cunningham mentions. "For emerging and seasoned designers, it was a space to think about what we value, what skills we bring to the table and how we can create new careers out of it."

The idea was born in part from the boom of artificial intelligence and its rapidly changing role in design.

Cunningham had been thinking about the growing debate over whether traditional design careers would remain "valid" as AI and other technologies reshape the field.

Her conclusion was that instead of competing with technology, designers need to recognize what makes their design valuable in the first place.

"I was inspired by the volatility of AI in the design space, and debate over if the career is no longer 'valid,'" she says. "This workshop solidified that design isn't going away, and the skills a designer brings can be applied to almost any situation."

That adaptability, Cunningham believes, may be one of designers' greatest strengths.

"The discipline is so broad that it can be difficult to find your place," she states. "There can be pressure to specialize early in order to have stability. In reality, I feel that our adaptability is what makes us so employable, applying the same design principles across a variety of spaces."

The workshop also changed Cunningham's own understanding of what she wants to do as a designer.

"So much of my degree is focused on the products themselves, their form and function," she says. "There is an entire side to design revolving around experiences, and I got to uncover my joy for it."

She discovered that she loves facilitating and designing experiences, a realization that emerged not from a classroom assignment, but from standing in front of professionals and leading them through an experience she created.

Image of the poster Jackie Cunninham helped design for the week. Photo/Jackie Cunningham.

The invitation to present on an international stage was nerve-wracking.

Cunningham knew the general setting for her presentation, but she wouldn't know exactly what she was working with until she arrived in San Francisco.

Still, she was prepared.

NEXT Innovation Scholars had given her years of practice in stepping into unfamiliar situations and figuring things out.

"I've been able to jump into any situation gracefully," Cunningham says. "Whether it's a workshop in a new place, networking events and more."

She credits the the scholars model with helping her feel comfortable contributing outside the traditional boundaries of industrial design.

"Just having the multidisciplinary perspective that NIS brings makes me valuable in any conversation or initiative," she notes.

That preparation also came from the people around her.

As she developed the workshop, Cunningham worked with students and alumni from other cohorts of the program. She ran a rough draft of the presentation by them, asking them to challenge the concept, identify gaps, assess timing and help refine the experience before she took it to San Francisco.

Their feedback helped turn an initial idea into a workshop ready for a professional audience.

Cunningham's DAAP experience provided another layer of preparation. Through UC's co-op program, she has completed four semesters of full-time work as both an in-house and consulting designer.

"That's not something a ton of students can say," she mentions, "and it makes me more prepared to enter the workforce postgraduation."

The combination of co-op, DAAP and NEXT Innovation Scholars has allowed Cunningham to repeatedly move between classroom theory and real-world application.

"I think in the real world and on co-op, I've learned that when you're working as a team, it's very rarely only designers," she says.

That lesson has become central to her understanding of the profession.

Discussions with participants during SF Design Week, led by Jackie Cunningham, utilized the A/B paddles to weigh in on career statements. Photo/Jackie Cunnintham.

Cunningham has also moved from learning design-thinking concepts to teaching them.

Through NIS, she has helped introduce design thinking to other UC students, including through the University Honors Program's Design Thinking Modules and programming for the Gateway Honors program that has reached more than 1,000 Bearcats.

For Cunningham, teaching does not feel like a dramatic transition.

"It feels pretty natural, honestly, because we get the reps so much within NIS," she says. "We are constantly teaching from day one."

Whether facilitating design modules or participating in larger client meetings, students in NEXT Innovation Scholars are repeatedly asked to explain ideas, lead discussions and work across disciplines.

"I feel comfortable talking in front of a crowd more than I did before I was in NIS," she explains. "It's like muscle memory now."

That muscle memory became particularly valuable in San Francisco, when she found herself teaching professional designers.

Her perspective was no longer simply that of a student absorbing information. She brought an idea to the room and asked professionals to engage with it.

Aaron Bradley, founding director of the NEXT Innovation Scholars program. Photo/Andrew Higley.

In many ways, Cunningham has already been living the philosophy behind her career prototype.

Her path has moved through swimwear, packaging, medical devices, consumer products, corporate innovation, teaching, consulting and now experience design.

Each opportunity has helped her test a different version of what a design career could look like.

And she's not finished experimenting.

"College grads are entering a professional world that looks much different than it did at the start of their college career," Bradley says. "Realistically, that's only going to accelerate moving forward. Programs like NIS empower students to take control of their future by creating what's next instead of chasing it. That ability and mindset will be a key differentiator for the future of higher education and the value of a university degree."

Cunningham is currently back in the Bay Area, balancing personal projects, networking and preparation for life after graduation. Through an experiential education project, she is developing furniture inspired by the city where she plans to relocate while continuing to build relationships with design studios.

Her desire is for the next prototype to become a permanent move.

"I hope to find a role that makes sense for me in the Bay Area, working on the cutting edge of innovation design," she notes.

Her path spans UC's academic, experiential and innovation programs. UC's nationally recognized cooperative education program, with more than 1,700 employer partnerships, placed her inside professional design environments at FINIS and Procter & Gamble, where she put classroom knowledge into practice.

DAAP gave her the foundation of an industrial designer, with hands-on experience across multiple industries. NEXT Innovation Scholars expanded upon that baseline, giving her experience in problem-solving, strategic foresight, multidisciplinary collaboration and facilitation.

Together, those experiences have helped Cunningham navigate from asking what a designer can make to asking what a designer can make possible.

That may be the most important lesson of her career prototype.

"Trust the process," Cunningham advises, when asked what she would tell herself at the beginning of her NIS experience.

And for students who may be intimidated by NEXT Innovation Scholars or unsure whether they're ready to apply, her advice is simple:

"When in doubt, just give it a shot."

"NIS completely changed what I thought my career was going to be," she says. "These are things that don't magically come up unless you really put the intention toward it, and NIS is a program that is consistently pushing what students are capable of."

For Cunningham, the next stage is still being designed.

But that is precisely the point.

A career, like any good design, does not have to be finished before you begin.

You can read more about the program requirements and expectations here: program requirements and expectations.

NIS is not just a scholarship; it's a transformational academic program that includes a scholarship as a benefit. NEXT Innovation Scholars are expected to actively participate in a variety of mandatory and optional program activities throughout the year, including the summer semester and while on full-time co-op. You'll work hard, but you'll work together with an energetic community of peers from a variety of majors and academic years, sharing unique educational experiences that are signature to NIS and will shape your undergraduate career.

In general, students accepted to NIS should plan to spend an average of 4-6 hours per week on program related responsibilities, with some seasonal peaks and valleys. This may include program meetings, working on short-term and long-term projects, mentoring and advising sessions, and representing NIS at events. Newly accepted students will participate in several specific onboarding and training activities as a cohort, designed to foster inclusion through shared experiences, and equip you with the tools, terminology, and mindsets that make NIS a signature innovation program. NIS students that apply to and are selected for the leadership circle should plan on 10-12 hours per week of additional responsibilities during the Fall semester for UIF training (a global, cohort-based program led by Stanford University) and on-campus project launch.