FLOX is a community design and strategy studio that supports mission-driven organizations to animate the practice of their values.
Everyday FLOX works to put community back in design. Using facilitation FLOX engages social impact leaders to collaboratively design their culture, strategy, and organizational development efforts. Rooted in black feminist theory, Afrofuturism, and social justice FLOX is on a mission to improve the embodied experience of social impact workers and the institutional communities that they comprise.
Our Mission
Ultimately FLOX is on a mission to decrease the distance between an institution's values and what it feels like to work there.
Our Values & Philosophy
Our practice is deeply relational and as such, we follow these tenets in our work with every client and stakeholder:
Communicate Bravely // Rest // Reach for Nuance // Show Care // Sit with Silence // Discover the Story // Resist the Binaries // Embrace Slowness // Land on Gratitude
our journey
January 2019
FLOX launched as an experiment in community design (FLOX Labs). A small group of designers, futurists, creatives and nonprofit professionals gathered 200 people over 10 dinners in NYC to sketch, dream and solve pressing issues together in New York City and San Francisco.
August 2020
FLOX Studio launched in August 2020 and built upon the gatherings by providing new offerings in strategic management consulting and design education. FLOX has worked with clients ranging from national nonprofit advocacy organizations fighting for democracy (The Movement Voter Project) to a community foundation co-designing a micro-grant program to accelerate economic justice in Brooklyn, NY. In the Summer of 2021, FLOX launched Community Design For Leaders, a learning lab for social justice curious designers, currently offered at The School of Visual Arts Design for Social Innovation Graduate Program.
Summer of 2021
FLOX launched Community Design For Leaders, a learning lab for social justice curious designers, currently offered at The School of Visual Arts Design for Social Innovation Graduate Program.
“There is no design without community and no purpose without justice.”
sloan leo (they/them) | Founder
Design pillars
FLOX Studio Inc.’s community design pillars, guide our our work:
Design With People
(not for personas)
We believe in meeting leaders and teams where they are. We focus on designing solutions together; and prioritize building new capacities that exists long after we’re gone.
Hold a Facilitator
Mindset
(not expert led mindset)
We use collaborative methods to create with people rather than for them. Responding to real needs identified through iterative and inclusive conversations.
Build on
Existing Assets
(not a deficit model)
Rather than framing through a deficit lens, we focus on building based on what’s working. From this place of strength we support organizational communities to build the momentum they need, for the changes they seek.
Aim for Engagement
(not aimed for abstraction)
We resist abstraction through direct engagement with groups and individuals during workshops, consultations, and co-creation activities. We co-create using specifics, real opinions, and lived experiences.
Design-Infused Process
(Not design led)
We infused multi-disciplinary processes with valuable design competencies like facilitation, visualization, and modeling, offering a path to more meaningful and durable progress.
Our Team
Sloan Leo
Founder & CEO
@therealsloanleo (Instagram) / LinkedIn
Sloan Leo (they/he) is a Community Design theorist, educator and practitioner.
Under Leo’s leadership, FLOX Studio’s partnerships include The Movement Voter Project, The Wikimedia Foundation, The Ms. Foundation For Women, The New York Women’s Foundation, The National Institute for Reproductive Health, The Donors of Color Network, and others.
In January 2020 they were appointed as the inaugural Designer-in-Residence at the School of Visual Arts Design for Social Innovation Master’s program. For seven years they were an adjunct professor of non-profit management at NYU Wagner’s Graduate School of Public Service and now is on faculty at The School of Visual Arts (SVA) Design for Social Innovation Master’s Program, and SVA’s Products of Design Program. In partnership with SVA, Sloan launched Community Design for Leaders, a learning lab for design practitioners looking to orient their practice towards mutuality and justice in Summer 2021.
Featured
Organizations & Leaders We Admire
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