Founded on the conviction that transformative work begins with clarity of direction.
Aretee began with a simple observation: institutions facing complex change rarely struggle because they lack technical capability. They struggle because the most important questions have not yet been named: what is changing, what matters now, who needs to be aligned, and what future the work is meant to serve.
Aretee guides institutions and design partners through that early, consequential stage, creating the shared direction that allows major initiatives, investments, and environments to move forward with purpose.
Francesca Birks
Francesca Birks is the founder of Aretee, a strategic design practice that helps institutions define direction, engage the people who shape it, and move through transformation with clarity.
Her work sits at the intersection of foresight, strategy, facilitation, and institutional change, with deep experience across campus, civic, and learning environments. She brings a human-centered approach to complex transformation, helping leadership teams surface shared purpose, listen across stakeholders, and translate insight into strategic direction.
Before founding Aretee, Francesca held senior strategy and foresight leadership roles at Arup and Woods Bagot, advising higher education, civic, and urban institutions on complex questions of growth, transformation, and long-term direction. At Arup, she created the original Drivers of Change demographics cards, a futures tool adopted across the firm’s global practice.
A Principal-Led Practice
Aretee is a principal-led practice designed to stay close to the work.
The practice brings experience across institutional strategy, facilitation, and the built environment, with a track record of making complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives legible. Clients include research universities, major design and engineering firms, and institutions planning for the next generation of applied sciences, arts, and technology environments.
The work is recognized for making the difficult legible: surfacing the questions beneath the brief, resolving what needs to be understood before design begins, and producing direction that holds.
How We Work
Signals & Systems
Our Core Values
With over two decades of experience as design strategists, innovation consultants, and foresight practitioners, we believe in the importance of evidence-based and creative approaches to designing a future that aligns organizational goals with its future users.
Innovation
We believe in the importance of sparking positive future change.
Co-Creation
We partner with our clients to co-create optimal futures and user experiences.
Inclusivity
We build teams that harness the power of collective intelligence.
Quality
We are uncompromising in our pursuit of authenticity and integrity.
Fiona Cousins
Chair, Arup Americas
Troy D’Ambrosio
VP of Innovation, University of Utah
Siqi Zhu
Former Director of Planning, Sidewalk Labs
Associate Principal & Director of Planning and Urban Technology, Sasaki
FAQs
We've included a list of FAQs to help answer some initial questions but don't hesitate to contact us if you have other questions.
We want to keep it easy. Just hit any of the contact us buttons and we will do our best to respond in a timely manner. We understand that everyone is busy!
Our primary service areas include facilitation, design strategy, and foresight consulting. We have also been engaged in conducting research, curating cultural event programming, and developing thought leadership reports.
We have worked with clients across several sectors like architecture, engineering, construction, and technology, however, we primarily choose to work with clients in education, the public sector, and AEC. That's short for architecture, engineering, and construction! This is a FAQ section after all.
If you visit the work section of our site on the upper righthand corner, you will find examples of projects we've delivered in the past.
The correct spelling is arete; in Greek philosophy, it means excellence, goodness, fulfillment, or virtue. These are cultural aspirations and mirror some of our core values as a collective. The word is pronounced "arte" which reminds us of art, which we love, and arête, and that's French for stop.