At
only 4 foot 11 inches, Sara Little Turnbull may be
small in stature, but she’s a giant in design
and widely regarded as “the mother of invention.”
Born
in Manhattan in 1917 as Sara Finklestein, Sara attended
Parsons School of Design on a scholarship from the
Women’s
National Jewish Council. After college, she worked
at
Marshall Fields, then became an ad agency art director,
and later an editor of House Beautiful magazine, where
she worked for nearly two decades. Nicknamed Little
Sara, she changed to Sara Little along the way.
At
House Beautiful, Sara anticipated and helped develop
postwar changes to the home, recognizing that women
would remain in the workforce after the war while still
handling household duties. In 1958, Sara left the magazine
and officially became Sara Little Design Consultant,
offering product design, development, and marketing
services.
In
a practice that has spanned six decades, Sara has traveled
internationally in her design research, from the tribes
of Borneo to work with Dr. Richard Leakey in Africa.
As a product research consultant, she has worked with
CEOs of America’s largest and most innovative
manufacturing firms, including Procter & Gamble,
3M, Coca-Cola, Corning, General Mills, Macy’s,
Pfizer, Revlon, Nike, and Volvo. She has translated
her observations of consumers and culture into a number
of successful products, including: Corningware products,
the 3M dust mask, soy-based candy, and even the first
successful chocolate cake mix to be sold in England.
Sara
has also consulted for government institutions, including
those in India, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Great
Britain, and was a consultant to NASA. She has also
served on many advisory councils and boards of trustees,
including the Board of Trustees of Parsons School of
Design and as Chairman of the Scholarship Committee
of the School Art League in the City of New York.
In
1965, Sara married Jim Turnbull, a forest products
and
plywood executive, and they resided in Tacoma and Vantage,
Washington, during Jim’s retirement years. In
1974, they established the Sara Little Center for Design
Research at the Tacoma Art Museum, where collections
from her world travels illustrated items of cultural
design, beauty, and utility.
Most
recently, Sara was founder and director of the Process
of Change at the Stanford Graduate School of Business,
a position she held for nearly 20 years. At Stanford,
she also co-developed an innovative multidisciplinary
course that emphasizes collaborative product development
between engineering and business school students. In
the process, she has mentored students in the design
of products such as ski racks, alarm clocks, and water
bottles, and helped them develop a deeper understanding
of culture and its influence on product design. Her
students have become executives and designers in some
of America’s top innovative companies.
Sara has
received multiple awards and honors, including the distinguished
Design Fellowship from the National Endowment for the
Arts, the Trailblazer Award from the National Home Fashion
League, and an honorary doctorate from The Academy of
Art. Before moving back to the Pacific Northwest, the Modern Art Council of the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art designated her a Bay
Area Living Treasure. In 2006, Sara received the prestigious Lifetime
Achievement Award from ICOGRADA.
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