Trustee
Elizabeth Akers ’90, P’26, ’29, ’32 is a Chicago-based innovation strategist, graphic facilitator, and founder of the creative consultancy, erazerbelt, LLC.
A proud MPA alumna and parent of three MPA students, Akers brings over 25 years of experience working with Fortune 50 companies to visualize complex challenges, distill insights from diverse perspectives and create compelling visual frameworks that foster alignment and innovation. Akers expertise spans strategic visualization, human-centered design, ethnographic research and workshop facilitation, with a career that has included long-term collaborations with Accenture, McDonald’s, Ernst & Young, and more. She is known for her ability to rapidly generate high-impact ideas, connecting disparate dots into meaningful opportunities, as well as her skill in using design thinking techniques to frame opportunities from stakeholder pain points, lead targeted ideation sessions and guide teams through prioritization of ideas.
Akers holds a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a Master’s of Design in Human-Centered Product Design from Chicago’s Institute of Design, part of the Illinois Institute of Technology. She is passionate about contributing her creative energy, curiosity and strategic thinking to the next era of MPA’s evolution as a vibrant, future-focused, top-tier independent school.
Akers lives in the Beverly-Morgan Park community with her husband and three children.