JUROR 2023

Lekshmy Parameswaran is an international award-winning designer and Care activist who has been working in the area of health and care for over two decades. In 2008, she co-founded fuelfor, a specialist design consultancy working with a wide variety of players and teams within the health and care sectors in different countries like Singapore, Netherlands, USA, UK and Spain.

In 2017, Lekshmy co-founded The Care Lab, an international network of designers-turned-activists working to transform our world of Care, driving change through human-centred design practices in the health, social and education sectors. In 2018, she and her team received the President*s Design Award in Singapore for the project "Who Cares?”, recognising her role as a service designer in transforming the caregiving experience. Lekshmy´s diverse portfolio of projects in Singapore includes: (a) re-envisioning end-of-life and hospice care services in partnership with the Lien Foundation and the Ang Chin Moh Foundation, (b) collaborating with DesignSingapore Council to design and develop the Design Thinking and Innovation Academy to train the public and private healthcare sectors, and (c) working with the National Council of Social Service in Singapore to transform the social care sector by empowering the role of caregivers and caregiving. Based on this strategic work, she is currently implementing new Care services and programmes together with partners AWWA, Rainbow Centre and the Hospice Care Association.

A strong and consistent thread through Lekshmy's work is her ability to communicate credibly across disciplines: encouraging people to challenge conventional thinking, bringing the voices of citizens, patients, their families and care professionals into the innovation process in inspiring ways and creating solutions that have measurable and meaningful impact.

Previously, she was Innovation Director, Global Healthcare Team, at Philips Design. Lekshmy holds a Master of Engineering degree from Cambridge University and a Master of Arts from the Royal College of Art in London.