Tent Talks Featuring Sunni (Sun) Brown & Liya James: The Deep Self Design Method

On Tuesday, November 21st at 5:00pm Central, Sunni (Sun) Brown and Liya James join us for a live Q&A session: “The Deep Self Design Method.”

Sunni (Sun) Brown

Sunni (Sun) Brown is the founder of creative consultancy Sunni Brown Ink and recently reincarnated the Center for Deep Self Design (getting its second life after a tragicomic opening in March of 2020!). Sun was named one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” and one of the “10 Most Creative People on Twitter” by Fast Company. Her TED talk has drawn over 1.6 million views and her work on visual thinking has been featured in every major U.S. publication including The New York Times, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, WIRED, and Entrepreneur, as well as being featured twice on CBS Sunday Morning and on The TODAY Show. She was recruited by the former CEO of MURAL to be their first and only Innovator-in-Residence.

Sun’s two globally-beloved books—Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers and Changemakers, and The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently—have been translated into 25 languages and counting, and she’s working on Gamestorming 2.0 for analog and digital environments with her co-author, Dave Gray. She’s one of the educators widely credited with the rise of visual thinking as a tool for deeper inquiry and is currently designing a system of collaboration literacy.

Sun’s two globally-beloved books—Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers and Changemakers, and The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently—have been translated into 25 languages and counting, and she’s working on Gamestorming 2.0 for analog and digital environments with her co-author, Dave Gray. She’s one of the educators widely credited with the rise of visual thinking as a tool for deeper inquiry and is currently designing a system of collaboration literacy.

As a collaboration designer and facilitator, Sun and her team have designed and led hundreds of group experiences in diverse industries, and Deep Self Design reflects her evolution after 16+ years of interactive work. Drawing on her expertise in creatively solving external challenges in business, Sun turned her attention toward resolving internal challenges, the source of much unnecessary struggle. She’s crafted a method of inner science called Deep Self Design™, which will be featured in a future book, part-memoir, part how-to. You can find her writing, gamestorming, and building a community of practice on Substack @NothingintheWay.

Like many on the contemplative path, Sun began her investigation of inner science in 2007 after a series of personal crises catalyzed a personal and spiritual awakening. Sun trained for thousands of hours in za-zen, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Right Use of Power, and two mind-body practices called Hakomi and Internal Family Systems. She continues to be a devout student of the American Zen tradition (an innovative branch of Sōtō that integrates Western psychology) and is the highest-level practitioner of a revolutionary, evidence-based therapy called Internal Family Systems, developed by one of her mentors, Dr. Richard Schwartz, whom she assisted in IFS Level 3. She has trained for 16 years (the path is ongoing) with two revered teachers, Dr. Margaret Syverson, Sōtō Zen Priest with Dharma Transmission and Dr. Flint Sparks, Sōtō Zen Priest and former Clinical Psychologist, and is a Zen Chaplain-in-formation with the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe.

Liya James

Liya is co-founder of The Center for Deep Self Design. She joined the Center as it was re-incarnating post-pandemic, bringing a welcome set of insight and expertise that is harmonious and complementary to the mission. Due to the breadth and depth of her career, Liya’s role at CDSD is multi-faceted. She manages strategy and operations, as well as co-leading UX and customer research, method design and testing, course architecting, workshop facilitation, and service innovation. Liya also offers individual Deep Self Design™ sessions that focus on helping learners, seekers, and/or high achievers find clarity and focus while softening internalized fears, limiting beliefs, and negative thought patterns.

Like Sun, Liya’s origin story fueled an intense drive to succeed that was natural and understandable but not sustainable. In her previous life, she was a high-achieving entrepreneur, design leader and innovation consultant, starting and running multi-million dollar businesses including Idean where she was the head of the Austin studio (now Frog Design) and Totally Human, an inclusive design consultancy. She coached, advised, and consulted with entrepreneurs in various industries, often working with them from the inception of their ventures and leading to exits that total $3+ billion. She also worked for over a decade as an innovation consultant for Fortune 500 companies, facilitating teams to take products from idea to launch and leading innovation and creativity training globally.

Liya’s professional success was notable but ultimately unfulfilling, and it took a huge toll on her body, heart and mind. Her awakening began when she accidentally found herself walking alongside pilgrims on the road to Lhasa in 2010. She turned toward this invitation by journeying for several years into expanded states of consciousness assisted by Aya, Bufo, Huachuma, skilled facilitators, and her own breath. From these experiences was born a true passion for inner work and a commitment to techniques that serve human healing and human potential. This lifelong journey of growth and recovery motivates Liya to continue her personal internal work while giving clients and students at CDSD the compassionate support they need to create results. Her certifications in personal development include Trauma-Informed Coaching, Embodied Processing, Root-Cause Therapy from the Centre for Healing, and Certified Somatic Healer from the International Institute for Complementary Therapists.

For more, keep up with Liya at Deep Self Design.

About Tent Talks

Chicago Camps hosts irregularly scheduled Tent Talks with people from all across the User Experience Design community, and beyond. Who really likes limits, anyway–If it’s a cool idea, we’d love to hear about it and share it!

What is a Tent Talk? That’s a great question, we’d love to tell you.

Tent Talks are short-form in nature, generally lasting from 10-20 minutes (ish) in a recorded format–we like to think of them as “S’mores-sized content” because that’s pretty on-brand. Tent Talks can be a presentation on a topic, a live Q&A session about the work we do, or the work around the work we do, or really just about anything–we don’t want to limit ourselves, or you.

You should send along an idea or topic of your own so we can learn from you, as well! You don’t have to be a published author or a professional speaker on a circuit to be good at your job, so please, put yourself forward, and let’s have some fun, talk, and share your experience with others!