Courtney Babcock is the Visual Communications and Design Specialist at WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. They work to create high-level content that helps raise awareness of and engagement with WRI’s work among key and new audiences. Courtney is skilled at distilling complex ideas into compelling visual products that engage audiences and encourage them to explore more, from animated GIFS, to printed brochures, to video profiles of on-the-ground projects and communities from around the world. Courtney also conceptualizes data-driven content into visual forms and contributes to web design and web strategy.

Prior to joining WRI, Courtney worked as graphic designer, data visualization specialist and project manager. They wore many hats in their time with the World Justice Project (WJP) to grow their design team and refine WJP’s brand. Courtney produced over 30 reports while at WJP, and created the data visualization brand standard’s manual. Courtney has also done interesting freelance projects ranging from infographics for a U2 Conference to breaking down a martial arts studio’s champion wall. They have also been cited by Lisa Muth of Datawrapper in an article about choosing a data visualization color palette. Courtney holds a B.F.A. in Graphic Design + Digital Media and a B.S. in Communications, Journalism, both from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Fl where they graduated with Latin and University honors. At graduation, Courtney was awarded Outstanding Graduate by their Graphic Design faculty and received the Porter Prize at the AIGA Jacksonville Portfolio review.

Courtney lives in Washington, D.C. with their sweet service-pup-in-training, Jupiter Moon and rambunctious cat, Banksy Apollo. In their free time they enjoy all things music – from learning music theory to amateur guitar/uke/piano sessions, and even finding a new artist or album to listen to.