Andrea Ngan (she/her) is an organizational leader, design strategist, and co-design facilitator whose practices nurture community power and mutual care. As a daughter of Chinese immigrants from Guangzhou and Toishan (by way of Hong Kong), she grew up on Ohlone land in the San Francisco Bay Area bridging multiple cultures.  Since a young age she supported family members navigating language access barriers and experiencing intergenerational trauma. These early experiences shaped her commitment to design justice and collective organizing in service of healing, racial, and economic justice.

For over 15 years, she has founded and led social justice organizations such as The Periscope Summer Urban Laboratories, Creative Resilience Collective, Creative Resilient Youth, and the Design Justice Philly Node. With more than a decade of experience leading the end-to-end design and development of products, services, policies, programs, and multimedia experiences, Andrea is a builder and weaver of complex collaborative initiatives. Her community and design work led her to become a founding team member of the City of Philadelphia’s PHL Service Design Studio, where she now serves residents as a Community Co-Design Director and Practice Leader.

Andrea has lectured at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design and regularly facilitates public workshops about design justice, co-design, equitable community engagement, youth leadership, socially engaged art for change, and ways to build and share power.

Before being based in Philadelphia, she lived and worked in New York City creating interactive experiences, products, and multimedia for cultural organizations, museums, and public spaces. Some of her clients included the 9/11 Memorial Museum, One World Trade Observatory, Emerson Collective, and the Equal Justice Initiative.