Who is this guy and why is he qualified to write about design?

I am Jeff Gangemi, and I am a writer.

I admit that it took a long time to convince myself that I had the right to call myself that in the first place. Ironically, now that I’m two and a half years removed from my career as staff writer for BusinessWeek, I can’t make myself stop saying it, even after adding three completely unrelated letters after my name -- MBA.

But now that I write personal essays, blogs, television scripts (for my day job), and a host of other things, I consider myself more of a writer than ever. 

I'm also a design thinker.

As I've already alluded to, I graduated from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University this past May. My biggest achievement while there was co-founding a class on design called “Creative Design for Affordability” with a classmate named Charles Lo. 

Here's a picture of us during the workshop we did with design firm Design Continuum (he's on the right and I'm across in the blue and red shirt:

You can read an interview with us about the class here: http://www.nextbillion.net/blog/creative-design-for-affordability-at-cornell.

The class is continuing in its second year, and I can say it’s the first thing I’ve ever truly had a hand in designing from the beginning.  I would say "from beginning to end," but I'm happy to report that the class will continue (in an upgraded version) this Spring for a second year and a full semester. 

Much more on the class -- and its continuing evolution -- in future posts...