Lina Maria Giraldo is a Colombian-born, Boston-based designer, interactive media artist, and storyteller with a Co-design, Civic Media, Art, and Technology background.
She is currently an Assistant Professor of Data Visualization at the Journalism Department at Emerson College. Her work focuses on interactive storytelling for social change through immersive tools and research. With a diverse body of work, ranging from digital educational tools, data visualization, grassroots storytelling, public installations, and screen-based computer-generated work, Lina’s work explores questions related to identity, including a focus on Latino and Haitian experiences in the US; the environmental impact of consumption including projects focusing on e-waste; and the extinction of birds through the power of collective storytelling. Over the last 15 years, her work has focused on creating messages where she portrays our environment’s fragility, community, equality, and immigration concerns. She likes to think of her work as a visual tool with an educational and civic purpose.
Her achievements include being a Journalist in Residence at Emerson College, an artist in residency for the City of Boston (Boston AIR 2.0), a recipient from Now + There accelerator program for creating Public Art at the City of Boston, and the receiver of the Creative City Grant. She was part of the team that created the award-winning educational website JFK50.org while working as an Interaction Designer at ESI Design. In addition, she is the recipient of the Hispanic Scholarship Foundation Grant and interviewed Madeleine Albright, Stephen King, Harry Belafonte, and Nancy Pelosi for the JFK Library.
Lina Maria Giraldo holds a Master of Professional Studies in Interactive Telecommunications (ITP) from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where she received the Paulette Goddard and the Tisch School Scholarships. She was also awarded the Tsongas Scholarship at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her work has been covered in media, including The Boston Globe, ABC News, The Artery, Artlink, WBUR, WGBH, NPR, to name a few.