Tracy Brandenburg, Ph.D. is a researcher, writer and founder of The Wells College Innovation Lab. She is an anthropologist, semiotician, and professor of Innovation with a fascination for language, signs, and the human condition.  She conducts ethnographic research among the Zapotec in Oaxaca, Mexico investigating whether or not indigenous cultures still practice the pre-Hispanic technique of writing without words.  She is the author of “In Search of the Invisible World: Uncovering Mesoamerican Pictorial Writing in Contemporary Oaxaca”; “Journey to the Centre of Visual Thought”; and “Rap and the Semiotically Real.”  Tracy also founded I-LAB, an Innovation teaching and consulting firm.  In fall of 2012 she will join the faculty of the first MFA design program in Social Innovation at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.