Svafa Grönfeldt is a professor of the practice in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. She is a founding member and faculty director of MITdesignX, a program focused on design innovation and entrepreneurship.

She is a member of the board of directors of three publicly listed companies on Nasdaq OMX and the New York Stock Exchange. Prior to joining MIT, Grönfeldt was a member of a team that created two global life science companies. She is a former president of Reykjavik University, and holds a PhD from the London School of Economics. 

Applying the lens of design to complex problems is a focal point of her work. Driven by a need to understand the dynamic relationship between people and their environment, Grönfeldt combines her academic, entrepreneurial, and executive careers with her lifelong passion for design to develop ideas and new enterprises through design innovation and the development of design-based entrepreneurship theory and methods.