Professor Rachel Troye has been the Head of the Institute of Design at AHO from January 2012. The Institute educates Masters and PhD Candidates within Industrial, Interaction and Service Design. Rachel is also Pro-Rector with responsibility for branding, PR and communication for AHO. She teaches visual communication, brand identity design and design management at AHO as well as other design schools in Norway. She has also initiated and conducted several interdisciplinary projects across AHO such as the AHO WORKS EXHIBITIONS and she is editor of The AHO WORKS STUDIES series of publications.
In her 20 years of professional practice as a graphic designer in Switzerland and Norway Rachel Troye has taken part in and had responsibility for a broad range of clients and projects. These have ranged from big international corporations like BMW Worldwide, ABB, The Airport Express Train in Norway to a variety of cultural projects and NGOs. Rachel is proactive in her approach to design education and management and is passionate about design as a powerful approach to problem solving and as a catalyst for positive social and environmental change.
Rachel Troye was born in Oslo on 1 February 1962. Living abroad from the age of seven until her return to Norway as a design professional, she has considerable international experience and a web of global contacts.
She speaks fluent Norwegian, English, German and French. This provides her with unique access to a variety of design environments at a European and global level.
Rachel has a BA in Psychology and French from Duke University in North Carolina, USA. She subsequently studied graphic design in Paris and London and has a BA Honours in Graphic Design from The London College of Printing. She then worked for 8 years in Zurich (at Interbrand Zintzmeyer & Lux and WBG). In 1995 she moved to Oslo and worked for Enzo Finger Design until 2003 where she was employed as a senior designer and project leader with responsibility for developing her own design teams. From 2003 she ran her own design consultancy and started teaching and enjoyed sharing her knowledge and experience within the industry and higher education design schools. She holds positions as external examiner, lecturer and is a frequently invited guest speaker, she takes an active part in on a variety of design related boards and participates as a member of juries, and also sits on several advisory boards.
At AHO Rachel stands out as the first female Head of the Institute for Design and the first woman to hold the position of Pro-Rector. At the Institute she has been dedicated to effecting major curricular revisions and processes of transformation to better address the demands of educating designers to meet the demands of today as well as anticipating those in the years ahead. Drawing on her expertise and experience in design management, she has initiated closer internal design education leadership and management. She works closely with the Director of the Centre for Design Research at the Institute of Design at AHO in devising research directions and strategies and is a member of a number of national and international research projects on design and sustainability, service design and design management. Rachel is central to the new strategic research domain of design education at AHO.
All in all, Rachel Troye adopts a holistic and broad understanding of design. She is passionate about design’s potential to improve life and its potential for innovation and ability to create value for people, the planet and profit. She is a dedicated and inspiring design leader who genuinely enjoys developing solutions and achieving goals with others across disciplines. She also enjoys leading and organizing these processes. Rachel is known for her zest for life and her dedication to design related innovation and attention to detail and follow through at project and personal levels. She is an excellent collaborator and a design leader who motivates teams and her diverse staff to reach for what is beyond the given and the ordinary. This is reflected in her re-election for a second term as Head of the Institute of Design at AHO. Her interest in visual communication remains a lively one in her managerial roles and in her professional education and practice.
Rachel currently lives in Oslo with her husband and their two sons.
In her 20 years of professional practice as a graphic designer in Switzerland and Norway Rachel Troye has taken part in and had responsibility for a broad range of clients and projects. These have ranged from big international corporations like BMW Worldwide, ABB, The Airport Express Train in Norway to a variety of cultural projects and NGOs. Rachel is proactive in her approach to design education and management and is passionate about design as a powerful approach to problem solving and as a catalyst for positive social and environmental change.
Rachel Troye was born in Oslo on 1 February 1962. Living abroad from the age of seven until her return to Norway as a design professional, she has considerable international experience and a web of global contacts.
She speaks fluent Norwegian, English, German and French. This provides her with unique access to a variety of design environments at a European and global level.
Rachel has a BA in Psychology and French from Duke University in North Carolina, USA. She subsequently studied graphic design in Paris and London and has a BA Honours in Graphic Design from The London College of Printing. She then worked for 8 years in Zurich (at Interbrand Zintzmeyer & Lux and WBG). In 1995 she moved to Oslo and worked for Enzo Finger Design until 2003 where she was employed as a senior designer and project leader with responsibility for developing her own design teams. From 2003 she ran her own design consultancy and started teaching and enjoyed sharing her knowledge and experience within the industry and higher education design schools. She holds positions as external examiner, lecturer and is a frequently invited guest speaker, she takes an active part in on a variety of design related boards and participates as a member of juries, and also sits on several advisory boards.
At AHO Rachel stands out as the first female Head of the Institute for Design and the first woman to hold the position of Pro-Rector. At the Institute she has been dedicated to effecting major curricular revisions and processes of transformation to better address the demands of educating designers to meet the demands of today as well as anticipating those in the years ahead. Drawing on her expertise and experience in design management, she has initiated closer internal design education leadership and management. She works closely with the Director of the Centre for Design Research at the Institute of Design at AHO in devising research directions and strategies and is a member of a number of national and international research projects on design and sustainability, service design and design management. Rachel is central to the new strategic research domain of design education at AHO.
All in all, Rachel Troye adopts a holistic and broad understanding of design. She is passionate about design’s potential to improve life and its potential for innovation and ability to create value for people, the planet and profit. She is a dedicated and inspiring design leader who genuinely enjoys developing solutions and achieving goals with others across disciplines. She also enjoys leading and organizing these processes. Rachel is known for her zest for life and her dedication to design related innovation and attention to detail and follow through at project and personal levels. She is an excellent collaborator and a design leader who motivates teams and her diverse staff to reach for what is beyond the given and the ordinary. This is reflected in her re-election for a second term as Head of the Institute of Design at AHO. Her interest in visual communication remains a lively one in her managerial roles and in her professional education and practice.
Rachel currently lives in Oslo with her husband and their two sons.