Career
Born in the United States. and raised in part overseas, Turner settled on the West Coast (United States of America) as a young adult. Turner received a Liberal Arts degree from The Evergreen State College Olympia, Washington, a self-generating curriculum school, where her studies centered on the understanding of current-to-future human endeavors in design and culture. Turner began her professional career as a visual communications designer, working 15 years+ from San Francisco to New York City, including tenure as communications designer with Nike’s trend resource team
Subsequent design and trend insight work included consulting with Starbucks international retail brand teams and a full-time role instigating a trend library for The Gap/Old Navy with Ivy Ross.
In 2003, Turner met Reinier Evers of Trendwatching.com at a round table in France, and cites this encounter as critical to launching her career as a trend hunter futurist. That same year Turner founded her company Culture of Future (CoF).
Turner speaks at international conferences across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and within developing nations. She is a regular speaker at the Sustainable Brands Conference in Istanbul.
In 2010, Turner mentored then-Creative Studies design student Veronika Scott, and assisted her in the founding of American humanitarian project the Empowerment Plan.
The organization provides employment and training to homeless women as they hand-make sleeping-bag coats distributed to the homeless of Detroit, as well as globally via disaster relief programs. Turner is a strategic insights writer for Fast Company Magazine, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, GOOD Magazine and Shareable.net. Content curator for the San Francisco impact entrepreneur and investor conference SoCap14
SEEDtime Mentor for Business Innovation Culture, Singapore
On the Board of Directors for the Empowerment Plan, a Detroit-based project aimed at easing homelessness by employing homeless women to create coats that transform into sleeping bags, distributed free of charge to those who need one.
Collaborator with Hyper Island strategic digital business leadership institution.
