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Kate Burch Canales '96 Selected as 112th Commencement Speaker
The Hockaday School is pleased to announce Kate Burch Canales ’96 as the 2026 Commencement Speaker. Mrs. Canales is a designer and educator who has spent her career pursuing a deceptively simple idea: that design is for everyone and that everything designed can be redesigned.
After graduating from Hockaday in 1996, she earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, where she also studied Studio Art. She began her career at design and innovation firms IDEO and frog, where she worked across a wide range of projects, from consumer products and a Barbie Dream House to complex systems in finance and healthcare, helping shape the practice of human-centered design.
She later founded the Master of Arts in Design and Innovation (MADI) program at Southern Methodist University’s Lyle School of Engineering, developing it into a distinctive interdisciplinary graduate program that continues to thrive there today.
Since 2018, Mrs. Canales has been a Professor of Practice in the Department of Design at The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Design and Creative Technologies. She served as the inaugural Department Chair, leading the creation of a new academic program from the ground up, designing everything from curriculum and faculty hiring to physical spaces, admissions practices, and cross-campus partnerships. Her work focused on expanding access to Design education and redefining what “counts” as Design within the university context. In 2024, she stepped away from administrative leadership to return full-time to teaching, research, and her growing consulting practice.
Her teaching and creative work explore how design shapes human behavior, especially through what she calls “mundane design systems,” the everyday experiences that structure our lives, from healthcare to transportation to life at home. Known for her collaborative, high-energy approach, she does her best work alongside others, whether in the classroom or in the field. She is also part of a national group of educators, Future of Design in Higher Education, working to rethink long-held assumptions about learning and evaluation in Design, bringing more joy and hands-on learning into the classroom while questioning traditional grading models in favor of more meaningful measures of student growth.
In parallel with her academic career, Mrs. Canales maintains an active consulting practice and is co-founder of the design firm TWOxTWO, where projects are structured as collaborative learning environments. In her 2025 TED talk, she reflects on how small, everyday observations of the designed world reveal both the delight and the imperfections of human interaction in an increasingly technological age.
She is also a mother to two teenagers and partner to her husband in a lively and curious household. She is an avid reader, knitter, and solver of word puzzles, all of which continue to shape how she sees, questions, and designs the world around her.
Eugene McDermott Head of School Dr. Laura Leathers remarked, “I am thrilled to welcome Kate Canales back to Hockaday as our 2026 Commencement Speaker. Her passion for solving complex problems and her desire to make the world a better place through innovation and design inspire us all. She truly exemplifies Hockaday’s commitment to educating girls to lead lives of purpose and impact.”
The Hockaday School
Within the private school community, The Hockaday School is an independent college-preparatory day school for girls from grades PK–12 located in Dallas, Texas. Students realize their limitless potential through challenging academic curricula, arts, athletics, and extracurricular programs so that they are inspired to lead lives of purpose and impact.
The Hockaday School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, ethnicity, creed, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or any other status protected by applicable law in the administration of its educational, admissions, financial aid, athletic, and other policies and programs.
The Hockaday School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, ethnicity, creed, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or any other status protected by applicable law in the administration of its educational, admissions, financial aid, athletic, and other policies and programs.