Alice Rawsthorn

Alice Rawsthorn is an award-winning design critic and author of the books Design as an Attitude and Hello World: Where Design Meets Life. Her design column for The New York Times was syndicated worldwide for over a decade.

An influential public speaker on design, Alice has participated in important events including TED and the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Her TED talk has been viewed by over a million people worldwide. Based in London, she is chair of trustees at Chisenhale Gallery and the contemporary dance group Michael Clark Company, and a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery. A founding member of the Writers for Liberty campaign, Rawsthorn was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to design and the arts in 2015 and was appointed as a member of the Honours Committee for Arts and Media in 2019.

Born in Manchester, Alice graduated in art history from Cambridge University. From 1985 to 2001, she was an award-winning journalist for the Financial Times, working as a foreign correspondent in Paris and pioneering the FT's coverage of the creative industries. Alice was director of the Design Museum in London from 2001 until 2006, when she became design critic of the global edition of the New York Times.

An honorary senior fellow of the Royal College of Art with an honorary doctorate from the University of the Arts, Alice has served on many cultural juries including the Turner Prize for contemporary art, Stirling Prize for architecture, PEN History Book Prize, Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Buckminster Fuller Challenge and the BAFTA film and television awards. A judge of the 2015 Museum of the Year prize and a member of the Bank of England's Character Advisory Committee for the new £20 note, she is a founding member of Writers at Liberty, a group of writers who are committed to supporting the human rights charity Liberty.

A trustee of Arts Council England from 2007 to 2013, Alice was previously ACE’s lead advisor on the visual arts and chair of the Turning Point review of the contemporary visual arts, which led to a record increase in public funding. She is a past chair of the British Council’s Design Advisory Group, and a former member of the Design Council and the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Design.