Biography

Dr (Bozhena) Bo Kelestyn is a design thinking academic and practitioner with a diverse teaching and consulting portfolio. Since joining Warwick as a staff member in 2018, Dr Kelestyn created and led on a number of interdisciplinary modules on design thinking, innovation and entrepreneurship. Bo is the Course Director of the MSc Management of Information Systems and Digital Innovation (which she she is also an alumna of) and one of WBS Ambassadors. Bo is also the creator of Challenge X: A Design Thinking Sprint, offered as a co-curricular design thinking experience to all students at WBS, and the Change Maker Book Club, open to all Warwick students and funded by the Inclusive Education Fund.

Outside of the School, Bo is the Founder of the pioneering Leadership for Educational Transformation programme created to support the post victory transformation of education in Ukraine. Dr Kelestyn is the creator of the Warwick Secret Challenge, a problem-solving workshop with elements of design thinking, which has become a key methodology to tackle innovation challenges at Warwick. Bo co-led on the Warwick Employability Challenge and the Warwick Sustainability Challenge. Passionate about impact, Bo was the lead design thinking tutor for The Guardian Masterclasses, co-founded the Warwick Design Thinking Award, the first and only in the UK school design thinking qualification in partnership with Warwick School, and is working on the Design Thinking Lesson in a Box. Bo co-founded the award winning Designing Together project and deck of cards and hosted the Student Experience by Design podcast, championing the use of design thinking in Higher Education.

Dr Kelestyn was educated at the Warwick Business School and the Durham Business School. Bo holds several awards for her contributions to teaching & learning and community & public engagement at Warwick. She is the youngest at Warwick and only second at WBS to hold the Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA), and one of three at Warwick and first at WBS to hold the Fellowship of Enterprise Educators UK (FEEUK).

Research Interests

Design Thinking
Student Engagement
Student Voice
Interdisciplinary Pedagogy