John Maeda is an American executive, designer, technologist. His work explores the area where business, design, and technology merge to make space for the “humanist technologist”. He is Global Head, Computational Design and Inclusion at Automattic where he seeks to address the diversity gap in tech[4] by exploring how inclusion can be a key ingredient for success in the technology industry.
He is formerly Design Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) where he advised startups on the business impact of design[8][9][10][11][12] and continues as a Strategic Advisor. He also serves on the Board of Directors of consumer electronics company Sonos and global advertising firm Wieden+Kennedy.
He was a Professor at the MIT Media Lab for 12 years where he fostered a community of designers who could code and engineers who could design called the Aesthetics + Computation Group[13][14], and then created the Physical Language Workshop[15] with Henry Holtzman. Shortly after the launch of the Design By Numbers[16] project to teach artists and designers how to code, he helped to accelerate the Scratch language project in an NSF proposal with outreach across the digital divide[17][18]. He resigned from MIT in 2008[19] to become the President of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), just as the global financial crisis of 2007-09 took hold
