Katharine Pulford
Material Design Director, Nike (formerly)
Katharine Pulford is a materials designer and product strategist based in Portland, OR. For 20 years she has worked across a diverse range of categories, including Consumer Electronics, Home Accessories, Wearables and Performance Footwear. Pulford specializes in blending consumer insight, brand values and considered use of materials to build transformational product strategies.
Pulford trained as a weaver at the Royal College of Art in London, where she developed a love of messy, craft-based prototyping. These processes underpin her mission to create engaging and innovative materials for mass production. She pursues waste reduction and process simplification as central maxims, and seeks close collaboration with suppliers and manufacturers to create sustainable solutions.
As a design leader, Pulford works to redefine innovation culture, bringing Design Thinking to multidisciplinary teams in large, multinational organizations. She is an avid advocate for diversity in design and collaborative participation. Her clients and collaborators include Philips Design, Habitat, WGSN, Stylus, Hewlett-Packard, Bowers & Wilkins, Logitech and Nike.
