ANNE ASENSIO
VICE-PRESIDENT DESIGN
DASSAULT SYSTEMES
WDO — PRESIDENT-ELECT CANDIDATE 2025-2027
WDO — REGIONAL ADVISOR 2023-2025
WDO — BOARD MEMBER 2019-2023
ELLEN MACARTHUR FOUNDATION — CIRCULAR DESIGN LEADER
APCI & VIA FRENCH DESIGN — BOARD MEMBER
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ABOUT
Design is undergoing an unprecedented transition. The importance of design and designers has never been greater. Leadership requires to demonstrate design impact.
I believe WDO’s role is to advocate strategic policies to promote the power of design in all instances from innovation to business growth to address the major economical, societal and environmental transitions ahead.
I believe in the imaginative force of design, enlightened by virtualization and simulation, allowing the emergence of scientific and technical social environments of trust, accelerating the adoption of virtuous individual and collective behaviors.
DESIGN FOR HUMANITY
In the face of necessary changes, citizens' experience acute awareness combined with feelings of powerlessness. We need to foster a favorable social justice environment. Rethink education and define the conditions for a social and societal impact and health prevention, “well-being” and quality of life systems with a focus on city and the definition of a World Design Index.
DESIGN FOR HUMAN-CENTERED TECHNOLOGY
The extreme technological upheaval of our human activities questions our human capacities and our capacities for change. Support the metamorphosis of our living environments by working at the heart of industry and technology.
BEHAVIORAL DESIGN FOR THE PLANET
Design is a driving force for sustainable industry and public policies aimed at fostering the integration of innovation in society transformation strategies. Place design at the heart of the circular economy to rethink everything (products, economic models, cities and historical linear systems...) and change our behaviors.
Who I am ...
As a design leader in large companies in different industries, a circular design practitioner and regenerative future enabler, with extensive experience in digital design, computation & systems, virtual design, collaborative & social design, sustainability… I believe that I have relevant professional experience, insights, stamina and vision to contribute to WDO’s mission, serve the global design community and ultimately, strive for a better life on our planet.
I aim to specifically promote and advocate:
The Voice of DESIGN
— Ensure design recognition as a key enabler for change, in decision-making places, companies and governments alike in their search for new policies in sustainability with balanced social justice.
— Expand WDO’s representation beyond the design communities, reaching out toward a range of influential bodies (United Nations with regards to achieving the SDGs but also regional public assemblies setting up changes by design).
— Increase cooperation among industrial design bodies and form strategic partnerships in every region, embracing the possibilities and capabilities of multi-culturalism.
— Enhance pride and awareness of our design communities beyond borders.
Circular Design
— Shift in activating a circular economy and meet the SDGs with a well-defined roadmap.
— Develop current and future WDO program projects in the long-term project for a definitively deeper impact on our ways of living.
DESIGN Digital Strategy
— Define and implement the WDO's digital strategy for years to come.
— Create a digital platform for our all WDO members to access high-quality relevant resources (magazine, research proceedings, etc.), facilitate networking among members and stimulate inter-generational dialogue.
— Enable better monitoring of WDO programs through a more evidence-based approach (World Design Index, virtual twin, data strategy...) as well as identifying new value streams for the organization.
WORLD DESIGN ORGANIZATION
PRESIDENT-ELECT 2025-2027
CANDIDACY
Anne's pledge for the World Design Organization
« The targets of Lille Métropole 2020 were therefore both the actors and inhabitants of the region and all those who will come to live and discover an experience of reinventing the city through design. »
Anne Asensio standing in for WDO PRESIDENT SRINI SRINIVASAN at the inauguration of Lille World Design Capital 2020 (due to COVID-related travel bans)
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WDO
FRENCH MEMBERS SUPPORT
DEAR WDO FRIENDS
We are collectively honored to recommend Ms. Anne ASENSIO as President-Elect candidate for the upcoming Executive Board elections (2025-27 term).
Our world is experiencing multiple disorders (geopolitics, economic, social, cultural and environmental) that lead to further disruptions in our lives across borders. We, designers, cannot remain confined in our certainties, away from the challenges of the world. These challenges are complex and critical to every citizen’s future well-being and security: developing and implementing answers requires the brightest minds in design.
Additionally, as practitioners, we face acute challenges: the new workforce paradigm, reskilling and upskilling strategies, AI, biotech, robotics, and automation. Rethinking and shaping the future of our discipline is becoming an imperative. In the current global context, our mission as WDO members is essential. We are committed to proactively and effectively serve WDO’s vision to design a better world with our means and talents.
For the last 6 years, Ms. Anne Asensio, both as Member of the Board and Regional Advisor, has actively connected with the global Design community, in all its cultural and economic diversity, as a relentless ambassador for WDO’s strategy, actions and community, for Design impact.
With her highly recognized experience as an industrial designer, as a design leader in large multinational companies, and key contributor to a diverse range of design bodies, institutions, design schools, research labs, executive boards and consulting practices all around the world, we believe that Anne Asensio has the necessary qualities for the position of President-Elect of the WDO.
With her human qualities and robust ethical values, “standing on the shoulders of giants” attitude, we are confident that Anne Asensio will provide leadership at the crossroads of Design and humanized technologies, building the most relevant WDO initiatives, yielding positive impact for design worldwide, citizens and society.
By giving your support to Ms Anne Asensio, we believe that you will enable the emergence of an enhanced and plural design approach and that our future will be built collectively.
THEY TRUST ME
«The new technological changes, especially generative models from AI, promise to cause radical changes in the jobs of designers. WDO needs someone who can help make these transitions. »
DON NORMAN, Writer, Sir Misha Black Medal for Design Education, Honorary Fellow Design Research Society, UC San Diego, The Design Lab
WHAT'S UP
TEDxSACLAY Serendipity 2025 Speaker
LEADERS IN BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY 2025
Speaker
FLUPA UX DAYS 2025
Speaker
IDSA WOMEN IN DESIGN 2024
Speaker
K-DESIGN AWARD 2024
Judge
DON NORMAN
DESIGN AWARD 2024
Judge
DMI WOMEN & DIVERSE DESIGN LEADERS 2023
Nominee
DESIGN KOREA Conference 2023 Speaker
TAIPEI DESIGN AWARD 2023
Judge
JIDA DESIGN CROSSTALK CONFERENCE 2023
JAPAN, Speaker
EYES ON DESIGN Awards 2023
Judge
ADAPTATIVE STRATEGY FOR CIRCULAR DESIGN
Ellen Mac Arthur Foundation Circular Design Leaders,
Contributor to the Report 2023
DBA DESIGN EFFECTIVENESS AWARDS
2025
Speaker
SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR CLIMATE ACTION, Contributor to the Report
June 2023
GERMAN DESIGN AWARD 2025
Jury
DESIGN COMMUNITY NETWORK
BEDA DESIGN FORUM (Bureau of European Design Associations) Brussels May 2025
FRANKFURT RHEIN MAIN WORLD DESIGN CAPITAL Milan April 2025
SAN DIEGO TIJUANA
WORLD DESIGN CAPITAL June 2024
RABAT DESIGN WEEK Morocco July 2023
w/ David Kusuma, WDO President
DESIGN CLUB Podcast July 2024
"Switching to Circularity"
RABAT DESIGN WEEK
Morocco July 2023
w/ Prof. Mugendi K. M'Rithaa, WDO Senator
IF DESIGN AWARD Ceremony
Berlin May 2023
& WDO Board Meeting
WORLD INDUSTRIAL DESIGN DAY
& WDO 65th Anniversary
Paris June 2022
WASTE AGE Exhibition
DESIGN MUSEUM
London October 2021
w/ Don Norman
ELLEN MACARTHUR FOUNDATION Summit,
London June 2022
w/ Janine Benyus
(Biomimicry 3.8)
CIRCULAR4GOOD
Podcast "Reinvent the World"
WDO Board Meeting
& visit to Spread Design
Bangalore July 2023
w/ Thomas Garvey, WDO President 2023-25
AUTOMOTIVE CLUB DE FRANCE
Jury deliberations 2023
DESIGN IN THE AGE OF EXPERIENCE Conference, Milan 2019
w/ John Maeda
CIRCULAR DESIGN project w/ Satyendra Pakhalé, 2023
GALERIE NATIONALE DU DESIGN Ambassador 2025
w/ Emmanuel Thouan, APCI President
BIOGRAPHY
Anne Asensio, Vice President Design, DASSAULT SYSTEMES
Anne Asensio joined Dassault Systèmes (3DS) in 2008 as Vice President of Design Experience. She founded the DESIGNStudio, a multidisciplinary team in innovation strategy by design (Design Experience), design research, design management and consultancy.
Advocating a participative approach with regards to new technologies and virtual universes, the DESIGNStudio collaborates with Dassault Systèmes’ clients in various industry sectors as they transform their processes of ideation, creation and ultimately the value proposition for their end customers. In response to intensive innovation and complex human-centred challenges, the DESIGNStudio imagines, formalizes and models experience concepts accelerating the adoption of Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE Platform.
Anne’s mission is to reveal the full potential of Design on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to Dassault Systèmes’ customers, designers, architects, innovators through innovation by design approaches: Upstream Thinking, design methodologies and innovation projects, Innovation by Design, System Thinking Design & Experience Thinking, Business Transformation, Consulting & Innovation Management.
Imagining alternative scenarios to transform the world we live in into a more sustainable and desirable one, the DESIGNStudio reflects, experiments and confronts approaches combining social and technologies through creation and, ultimately, bringing about the value of design for the well-being of users, citizens and society.
Anne Asensio was previously Executive Director in charge of Advanced Design for GENERAL MOTORS' eight brands, Interior Design and Brand Character (2000-2007). She started her career with RENAULT as Design Director for the Twingo, Clio, and Scenic ranges (1987-2000).
Anne also contributes to a number of publications and is a member of several boards in industry, business and academia:
Independent administrator on the board of Plastic Omnium
Board Member of the World Design Organization
Administrator of Strate School of Design
Board Member of APCI (Agence de Promotion du Design & de la Création Industrielle)
Board Member of French Design by VIA (Valorisation de l’Industrie de l’Ameublement)
Founding member of the Design Code collective of design managers
Member of the research chair “Modélisation des Imaginaires” at Telecom ParisTech
Member of the research chair “Théorie et Méthodes de la Conception Innovante” at Mines ParisTech
Member of research chair “Economie des Communs de Données” at Institut Mines-Telecom (Paris)
Member of the group “Circular Design Leaders” of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Think Tank “Industrialité & Ecoumène” at the Institut d’Etudes Avancées (Nantes)
She is also an active jury member of international design and strategy competitions:
James Dyson Award, Eyes on Design, Festival de l’Automobile, Louis Vuitton, ADC Super Design, L’Observeur du Design, Golden Pin Awards, Taipei Design Awards, Car Design News…
Anne holds a Master of Arts in transportation design from Detroit-based Center for Creative Studies; as well as a DSAA of industrial design from Paris-based Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués.
Anne Asensio has been made Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Officier de l’Ordre du Mérite.
AWARDS & ACCOLADES
Woman of the Year in Automotive, Automotive News, 1997
25 Rising Stars, Fortune magazine, 2001
Top 100 Women in Automotive, Automotive News, 2000 & 2005
25 Female Leaders in Automotive, Automotive News Europe, 2008
Top 50 Female Leaders in France, Challenges Magazine, 2009
Woman of the Year in Industry, Innovation category, L’Usine Nouvelle, 2015
Honorary Doctor, Umea University (Sweden), 2019
Women & Diverse Design Leaders (Design Management Institute), 2023