Doreen Toutikian is a consultant, social entrepreneur & cultural producer with a background in qualitative research, human-centered design & communication.
 
She is the founder and former Executive Director (2011-2018) of Beirut Design Week, founder & President of MENA Design Research Center, and Co-founder of LOOP /Listen Observe Organize Prototype. In 2021 she launched her latest venture omgyno.com , a tech-enhanced platform focusing on SRHR .

Since 2018, she has been collaborating with other European arts institutions on cultural projects such as PROSPER, The Ways of the Heroes, and Under a low Sky; co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

She has a keen interest in the dynamics of groupwork, conflict resolution and the understanding of values as core drivers to healthy working environments. So along with colleagues Aniko Racz and Dorota Ogrodzka, she has developed the Gamified Workshop Toolkit, as part of the EU project: Reshape. This game has been translated to over 6 languages and is played worldwide by cultural institutions and gatherings.

She is the former Communication Coordinator at Mophradat, an arts institution (Brussels & Athens) that supports Arab artists. As an Art Fellow of the institution, she curated the Arab Feminist Films program (2019) at State of Concept, in Athens, Greece.

She has lectured Master students on design research, history, and theory at Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts, where she has also been a member of the pedagogical committee of the Design department (2013-2020).

Her consultancy work focuses on human-centered design with non-profit organizations such as UNRWA for Palestinian refugee camps development in Lebanon (2017-2019) and IOM for Creative & Cultural Industries development in Kurdistan (2017-2018).

Her book, 'Design Education in the Middle East', which was awarded the Cologne Design Prize in 2010, marked the beginning of her career in Beirut where she set out to build a collective design community and enhance the understanding of human-centered design & research in the region.
 
She believes that multidisciplinary collaboration and community building is essential to the success of all cultural projects. With that in mind, she has initiated in Lebanon ‘Public Design Intervention: Beirut’ (2010), 'Desmeem: Rethinking Design though Cross-Cultural Collaboration (2012)', 'Disrupt!/ Design!' (2015/16) and 'Beirut Design Week' (annual event since 2012). In 2013, Beirut Design Week was awarded the Lebanese Social Economic Award.

Doreen is an advisor to various global networks including the ‘International Gender Design Network’ (2013), the 'Board of International Research in Design/BIRD' (2012), a fellow of Salzburg Global Seminar (2013), fellow of Mophradat (2019) and a member of the Young Cultural Innovators of the British Council (2012). She has often served as a mentor and juror for student examinations and start-up competitions, she facilitates workshops on design & creative economy, and is a regular public speaker at various conferences around the world. 
 
Doreen holds a Master degree from Koeln International School of Design in European Design Studies (Germany), a Product & Service Design degree from The Glasgow School of Art (Scotland), and a bachelor in Communication Design from Notre Dame University (Lebanon).
 
She speaks six languages (English, Arabic, French, German, Greek and Armenian) and is currently based between Beirut & Athens.