Jackie Cunningham

I'm currently a student at the University of Cincinnati studying industrial design, and I've been in this field since 2022. What drew me to industrial design is that it's really the kind of field where you can touch all areas and problems that need to be solved. I came into college wanting to maybe do engineering, maybe do fashion design, and it got to the point where I was just interested in having the ability to touch a bunch of different areas, and industrial design really spoke to that while still being able to practice hard skills and crafts like sketching and computer-aided design. It's a good mix of being creative but also being able to touch a variety of problems. As part of my undergraduate education, I've had extensive co-op or internship experience with four different opportunities across three different companies, working as a full-time co-op. I recently came off of an internship with a company called Nova, doing industrial design in Providence, Rhode Island, and they had a primary focus within MedTech and women's health. I really enjoyed that internship and want to continue to work within that field. Right now I'm targeting areas in San Francisco for my next and final co-op, and hopefully post-grad opportunities. Outside of class, I'm part of an organization called the Next Innovation Scholars, a program within University of Cincinnati that works with innovation companies within the Cincinnati Innovation District, like P&G, Kroger, and even Microsoft. We work with companies like them on corporate innovation projects, but it's a program that also teaches design thinking and strategic foresight and does some work within the community as well.