Alifiya is a design researcher and strategist at Quicksand. She practices participatory and speculative methods, grounded in lived realities for social equity. She's motivated by social innovation that centres community building and ecological sustainability, at the pace of care. Having an entrepreneurial bent, she co-founded Local Forecast, a storytelling platform and online store for artists and designers exploring creative culture in Sri Lanka. She holds an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons School of Design and a B.Eng in Mechanical Engineering from Monash University.