Barbara Beskind

Barbara Beskind is a designer, inventor and former occupational therapist who joined the design firm IDEO at 89 after watching its founder on television and writing him a letter. Born in 1924, she wanted to be an inventor as a child but was told women could not attend engineering school, and instead served a twenty-year Army career as an occupational therapist, opening one of the first independent OT practices in the United States and earning six patents for inflatable devices that help children with balance.

At IDEO she has advised on products for older adults, drawing on her own experience of aging and macular degeneration, and is known for a line she delivered at the White House Conference on Aging: design with, not for.