Valerie Fletcher is Executive Director of the Institute for Human Centered Design, an international educational non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and founded in 1978. The mission is to advance the role of design in expanding opportunity and enhancing experience for people of all ages and abilities. Design includes the spectrum of design disciplines from urban design, architecture and landscape architecture to product and information design. They’ve hosted or co-hosted five international conferences on Universal Design since 1998. Prior to 2008, the Institute was known as Adaptive Environments. Fletcher currently oversees projects ranging from universal design at the urban scale, in public transit, in mixed use development and in residential and school design. She is a Special Advisor to TOTO Ltd. and to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. She lectures and writes internationally. Fletcher’s career has been divided between design and public mental health. She was founder and principal of Fletcher Studio Design. As Deputy Commissioner of Mental Health in Massachusetts, she oversaw the participatory planning process that redirected $74m from institutional care to community support systems. Fletcher has a masters degree in ethics and public policy from Harvard University. The Boston Society of Architects awarded her the Women in Design award in 2005.

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