Rachael Dietkus
Founder and Principal, Social Workers Who Design
Care Cartography: Mapping Your Field of Care
Care Cartography is an immersive, two hour workshop that helps participants chart the often unseen forces shaping how they work, lead, and care. Through guided reflection, interactive mapping, and small group dialogue, we explore the emotional, ethical, and relational terrain that designers, researchers, public servants, and social impact practitioners navigate every day.
Participants surface the invisible: the values that steady them, the pressures that drain them, the boundaries they need, and the responsibilities they carry. This session blends elements of social work, ethical design, and systems thinking to create a grounded, dignifying space where people can reconnect to what matters most. Everyone leaves with a personalized care map that supports clearer decision making, healthier boundaries, and more humanizing practice in turbulent times.
About Rachel
Rachael Dietkus is a social worker, design strategist, and founder of Social Workers Who Design. She works at the intersection of care, ethics, and public service design, helping people and organizations create systems that do less harm and more good. As the first social worker-designer at the U.S. Digital Service, she brought trauma-informed and care-centered approaches into some of the country’s most complex civic systems.
Today, she partners with governments, universities, and social impact leaders worldwide to build cultures of care, strengthen ethical design practices, and transform how we support one another in challenging times. Her forthcoming book, Trauma by Design, published by the MIT Press, explores how design can be a force for healing, accountability, and collective dignity.