About ONE & Designing for Empathy®

Elif Gokcigdem (she/her) is the founding president of ONE - Organization of Networks for Empathy, and the editor of Fostering Empathy Through Museums (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), and Designing for Empathy: Perspectives on the Museum Experience (American Alliance of Museums, 2019), which are considered reference books in empathy-building through museums, a new field of inquiry she pioneered in 2014. Dr. Gokcigdem developed Designing for Empathy® as a unique, patented intellectual framework, and an international platform for multidisciplinary, multisector, and multicultural collaborations to deepen our understanding of empathy, and to develop strategies, scholarship, and empathy-building experiences that consider the wellbeing of the whole —all of humanity and our planet. In 2018, Dr. Gokcigdem curated and co-chaired the world’s first empathy summit titled: Fostering Universal Ethics and Compassion through Museums with His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, India. Elif grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, studying history of art and mysticism, and later, museum studies in the US. Currently, she leads ONE, teaches at the GWU Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, and serves as a member of the Board of Trustees at the Museum of Us.