Dr. Alessandra Wood is an author, educator, and design historian with an eye towards the future. She studied design history & theory and is obsessed with applying that knowledge to understand what makes products beautiful/useful/successful, and what inspires people to love those products. With expertise in scaling design processes, she has a refined eye for style, and strives to make art and design accessible to all. Her roles in tech, including as VP of Style at Modsy, have allowed her to work on the compelling challenge of reimagining the way we design our homes.
She is a nationally recognized expert on design history and has engaged in critical conversations on design in hundreds of articles for print and digital media including in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, Forbes, Architectural Digest, and Business Insider.
Alessandra is the author of Designed to Sell: The Evolution of Modern Merchandising and Display (Routledge, 2020). With a PhD that focused on Design History and an M.A. in the History of Decorative Arts and Design, she has intense academic training in style, production, and consumption of furniture and decorative arts—a bona fide design expert, taught by the best of the best curators and historians.
In her spare time she is an adjunct professor teaching history, theory, and criticism of design.