Our angle
Academia meets real-life chaos
The Magic Department ambition is to transform how people collaborate, learn and connect with each other — in the workplace and beyond. Our work builds on our unique combination of backgrounds: a strong academic bedrock paired with solid, 21st century collaboration and design methods. Our theoretical backbone of neuroscience, psychology and education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education is complemented by the experience and process design approaches of Kaospilot, a trailblazing Danish school of design and enterprising leadership.
The building blocks
We approach our work by...
Creating
psychological safety.
We strive to make sure people feel safe to bring their full-selves to the conversation.
Engaging everyone in the room.
By working with methods that decentralize the conversations, so that teams to learn, create and evolve together.
Playing at it.
We approach creative challenges with lightness - images, stories, play and humour. It’s the only way to invite creativity to the table.
Creating wonder, surprise and magic.
When experiences are emotionally engaging, we learn more and we connect on a deeper level. And have more goosebumps. Life is too short.
The Magic Department team
Anu Paajanen
Process and Experience Designer, Graphic Recorder
Anu Paajanen is a Kaospilot-trained facilitator and experience designer with 16 years of facilitation experience in NGOs, public sector organizations and businesses. She approaches her work with a strong systems-thinking perspective and an impressive selection of colorful pens, which she uses to record conversations and insights in a playful, visual way.
Anu's recent work includes designing and facilitating a participatory vision process for Sitra and Demos Helsinki.
Dorothy Zablah
Experiential Learning Designer & Facilitator
Dorothy combines a nomadic research background with learning design & facilitation to bring about regenerative learning systems. She holds a Masters in Education from Harvard University where she focused on re-designing learning systems to respect human capacity in our rapidly changing time.
Dorothy's latest work includes prototyping new kinds of University models in Latin America, as well as new forms of teacher training in Costa Rica, Mexico and Finland. She's also spent some time in kindergartens around the world, learning about learning directly from babies.
Noora Sirén
Facilitator & Connection Designer
Noora has a passion for creating authentic human encounters. Her educational background is in creative leadership and process facilitation from the industry-leading school Kaospilot in Denmark. She also holds a BBA in International Business and is a self-taught graphic designer.
Noora's latest experience includes hosting a 2-day internal knowledge-share event for an organisation of 100 people, and working with Spain's leading sustainability agency in clarifying the action steps to reaching their vision.
Veera Hyytiä
Process Designer, Sensemaker, Project Manager
Veera is good at making sense of complex systems in order to define effective frames for action. She studied creative leadership in Kaospilot, Denmark, and her knowledge of current market trends is a great asset in any project.
Veera’s latest experience includes working with impact assessment strategy of a think tank. She finds it important to bring culture and societal change more into the focus of business and to get businesses involved in building a better future together.
© 2019 The Magic Department