Kelvy Bird

Kelvy Bird is an artist, internationally recognized scribe, and Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. For over three decades, she has helped groups and organizations navigate complexity through the application of visual practice. Her work spans real-time scribing, teaching, writing, coaching, and illustrating concepts to support reflection and decision-making. At Sloan, she brings this experience to executive education, faculty collaboration, and research, while developing learning modules that introduce visual approaches more broadly into the classroom.

Kelvy is a pioneer of Generative Scribing—a real-time visual practice that draws out emerging potential—and co-developed System Scribing, which is an approach to mapping dynamics for identifying patterns and leverage points for change. She cofounded the Presencing Institute, where she helped shape its core tools and methods, and now serves as senior faculty at u-school for Transformation, leading the Visual Presencing Pathway and contributing to global programs such as MITx u-lab. Her work has also included collaborations with UMass Amherst’s Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science, Perth’s Centre for Social Impact, and other initiatives specifically focused on Indigenous knowing and practices.

Beyond her facilitation work, Kelvy has published extensively about visual thinking and systems change, including her book Generative Scribing: A Social Art of the 21st Century (translated into multiple languages) and chapters in The Routledge Handbook of Systems Thinking and The World of Visual Facilitation.

Throughout her career, Kelvy has partnered with organizations in diverse fields—including conservation, education, finance, healthcare, international-multilateral organizations, local and national government, manufacturing, philanthropy, and technology—to make ideas visible and support collective sensemaking. She holds a BA and BFA from Cornell University and is committed to helping individuals and groups see their ideas more clearly and act with intention.