Founder and COO of creative agency Intents & Purposes, and bestselling author of The Conscious Creative: Practical Ethics for Purposeful Work, Kelly Riback Small is an award-winning creative director, designer, writer, and educator whose career is driven by the pursuit of practical action toward ethical, inclusive, and sustainable futures.

With nearly 20 years of leading major brands to proven success, Kelly’s driving philosophy is that purposeful work can happen anywhere. Their work centres on providing design direction, strategic creative leadership, ethical design education, and thoughtfully co-created approaches to help clients, practitioners, and students achieve measurably impactful work. A Master of Design graduate and affiliated design researcher with Emily Carr University, Kelly is also a professor of design ethics at the George Brown School of Design and mentor with The RGD and OCAD University. Kelly is currently authoring a book about practical ethics for a youth audience to be published by Groundwood Books in 2024.