Jody Turner is an American entrepreneur and futurist known for her international brand insight and trend futurism research, writing and keynote presenting. In early 2020, Turner was ranked among the world's Top 50 Female Futurists by Forbes and joined global marketing agencyThe Marketing Arm as Innovation Education Lead / Strategic Trendwatcher.
Biography
Born in the U.S. and raised in part overseas, Turner settled on the West Coast as a young adult. Turner received a Liberal Arts degree from Evergreen State College Olympia, Washington, a self-generating curriculum school, where her studies centered on the understanding of current-to-future human endeavors in design and culture.
Career
Turner began her professional career as a visual communications designer, working 15 years+ from San Francisco to New York City, including tenure as communications designer with Nike’s trend resource team. Subsequent design and trend insight work included consulting with Starbucks international retail brand teams and a full-time role instigating a trend library for The Gap/Old Navy with Ivy Ross. In 2003, Turner met Reinier Evers of at a round table in France, and cites this encounter as critical to launching her career as a trend hunter futurist. That same year Turner founded her company . Turner speaks at international conferences across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and within developing nations. She is a regular speaker at the Sustainable Brands Conference in Istanbul. In 2009 she was awarded a World Brand Congress Leadership Award in Mumbai and has worked on numerous global projects focused on empowering women and girls, including the Nike Foundation Girl Effect out of London, and the Forbes Girl Quake project with Denise Restauri. In 2010, Turner mentored then-Creative Studies design student Veronika Scott, and assisted her in the founding of American humanitarian project the Empowerment Plan. The organization provides employment and training to homeless women as they hand-make sleeping-bag coats distributed to the homeless of Detroit, as well as globally via disaster relief programs. Turner has written strategic insights for Fast Company Magazine, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, GOOD Magazine and Shareable.net.
Publications
In April 2019 Turner published a global insight trend report entitled that summarizes her findings as a cross-generational global trendwatcher.
Content curator for the San Francisco impact entrepreneur and investor conference
Former Member of the Advisory Board for the Empowerment Plan, a Detroit-based project aimed at easing homelessness by employing homeless women to create coats that transform into sleeping bags, distributed free of charge to those who need one.
Former Member of the Advisory Board for , the organization charged with creating the social legacy guidelines for the Rio 2016 Olympics.
