When Jomo Tariku studied industrial design in the early 1990s, he knew his work would involve solving problems. But what he didn’t know was that he was about to embark on a thirty-year project to remake the design industry itself.
Today, at 56, the Ethiopian-American furniture maker is recognized as one of the most outspoken and impassioned figures advocating for more diversity and inclusion in the field, although he doesn’t think of himself as an activist. 'What industrial design has trained me to do is ask questions, see where the problems are, and respond to them,' Tariku says. 'So I just found this as a problem because of my own personal journey.'
