The AIGA Design Educators Community (DEC) seeks to enhance the abilities of design educators and educational institutions to prepare future designers for excellence in design practice, design theory, and design writing at the undergraduate and graduate levels while supporting the fundamental mission of AIGA. Meet our Panelist and AIGA Design Educators Spotlight Rebeca Méndez, Founder and Director of CounterForcelab and Chair of the Design Media Arts program at UCLA, works with vulnerable environments and communities in the Arctic to threatened ecologies in the eastern Pacific Ocean. In her ecological sustainable design philosophy and practice, she examines reciprocal relationships and environmental justice in a multi-species world in the midst of climate change, mass extinction, and a ravaging extractivist society. Holly Robbins, MCAD Adjunct Faculty and partner and creative director of This Is Folly, has collaborated with AIGA/MN, GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design on promoting sustainability, developing design guidelines and award criteria, and advancing professional sustainable design education.