Hillary Cottam – last year’s UK Designer of the Year is not a designer in the normal sense. She has designed process, policy and environments for schools and prisons and is now the director of the Design Council’s RED unit which is looking at other areas eg. health.  In fact,  she answers  "How do you describe what you do?" with..

A. I use design to tackle some of the more intractable social issues of our day. I see myself as a facilitator, problem solver and inventor. All the projects are developed by a team which includes designers, other professionals from a range of disciplines, front-line workers and members of the public who, with me, are challenged through the design process to abandon their initial preconceptions and co-create something new and beautiful that works.

which sounds like a not irrelevant answer from our point of view.

There are worse people we could involve to challenge some of our thought processes, particularly around the business strategy and more broadly in the department (e.g. Hear4me type propositions).

More on her here…