Stephanie Aaron is a design lead at J.P. Morgan Chase where she focuses on making things simpler for employees and customers every day. She has previously worked at quite a few large financial firms and the New York Federal Reserve. She ran her own design firm for more than a decade, with clients including The American Museum of Natural History, Citibank and Barnes & Noble.
Outside of work she is North America regional coordinator for IxDA.
A native New Yorker, she holds a BFA from the Cooper Union and an MFA in Interaction Design from the School of Visual Arts. In her free time she can be found with her nose in a book and a 62-pound pit bull on her lap or in a kayak on the Hudson River.

Alex Wilcox Cheek is a New York-based designer. For more than ten years, he taught in the School of Design, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon. His courses blended design, architecture, technology, and the humanities, reecting his cross-disciplinary approach to his practice. In that time, he spun o a number of start-ups including Classroom Salon, Macromicro, and Skale. Alex has long been involved with the Interaction Design Association, co- founding the rst chapter in the Middle East, IxDA Doha, and later serving as local leader for New York City. Today, he leads a design team at Google.

Jeni is an experience design strategist based in New York City. Born and raised in Australia, she established a design business at the age of 24, which thrived in Australia and Canada before she embarked on a new journey in New York City a decade ago.

Driven by a keen interest in strategic decision-making, Jeni transitioned into design and research roles within consultancy and in-house settings. Her experience encompasses both Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX), where she has spearheaded strategic design initiatives and digital transformation programs across various industries. Her portfolio boasts an array of national and global brands, including Samsung, Meta, Square, IKEA, AIG, Better.com, and KraftHeinz, among others.

In January 2023, fueled by her entrepreneurial spirit, she founded Peoplemade LLC, a Service Design and UX Research consultancy.

Outside of work, Jeni finds joy in taking her dog on long walks and hosting dinner parties featuring seasonal produce sourced from farmers' markets.

Jess Greco is an experience design and research leader with deep experience in tying customer insights into business priorities that drive design-led organizational change. She has a proven track record in creating an environment that fosters team collaboration and builds design maturity. Her experience is a mix of consumer and enterprise work across industries including financial services, payments, insurance, consulting, healthcare, education and media.

Meghan is a UX Design Lead at JP Morgan Chase, where she uses service design and collaborative design techniques to improve customer and employee experience. Prior to Chase, she designed new products in the healthcare industry to support nurses and patients and also worked in K-12 and higher education in a number of roles. Meghan lives in northern Delaware with her husband and enjoys Saturday morning yard sales, travel, margaritas, and talking about whatever tv shows she has been watching recently.

I'm a strategist who doesn't believe in conned thinking.
I like using provocative approaches and out-of-category parallels to arrive at solutions. I live for problem-solving and apply that kind of critical thinking to both business and brand challenges.
My experience with established brand behemoths and scrappy start-ups— from technology to CPG, B2B and B2C—has given me an invaluable perspective.

While at Nike for 13 years, Alero was responsible for some of the most pivotal brand transformations for the sport and culture giant. Most notably, Alero created Nike's Purpose Marketing division, leading Nike's role in sport and social impact alongside key athletes Colin Kaepernick, Serena Williams, Kobe Bryant and many more. She led Nike New York where she orchestrated the launch of Nike's collaboration with Virgil Abloh at New York Fashion Week-- a first for the brand, and one of Nike's most successful collaborations of all time.
Alero now serves as the Vice President of Global Brand for The LEGO Group. She is responsible for transforming the impact of the 89-year-old Danish brand globally to become a proactive cultural leader through play advocacy, inclusion, and innovation. She has led integrated brand strategy and global initiatives, and campaigns such as Rebuild the World, 90 Years of Play, Play Unstoppable, and Everyone is Awesome. Alero is committed to inspiring a world play movement to ensure creative play remains a birth rite to all children.

Nermin is a brand alchemist, design director, and co-founder of Field of Practice, a women- and member- owned creative studio that designs for change.

A whole-hearted champion for form, function and care, Nermin translates thoughtful strategies into holistic design systems. She’s reinvigorated hyper-local to global brands and led boundary-breaking campaigns for Karam Foundation, Planned Parenthood, Type Directors Club, Dentologie, and the Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity. Her work has been recognized by the STA 100, Typewolf, Brand New, Communication Arts, and Fast Company Innovation by Design. She holds a BSc in Visual Communications from the American University of Sharjah (UAE), and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts, Media and Design from OCAD University. She’s living and working from her Chicago home.

Nu Goteh is a multi-disciplinary creative & designer who works in audio, visual, and written mediums. He is the co-founder of the strategy and design studio, Room for Magic, and co-founder and creative director of partner publication, Deem Journal. Nu’s practice is informed by his love for counter/subculture(s), his background as a Liberian-born refugee, and a lifelong dedication to building platforms that enable communities to engage in shared experiences.

With nearly three decades of experience, Erich stands as a seasoned professional in the dynamic realm of technically challenging projects. His extensive portfolio boasts successful leadership across the globe, encompassing diverse ventures such as theme-park attractions, large-scale exhibits, experiential and environmental activations, restaurants and public spaces.

Erich's expertise lies not just in project execution, but in his role as a guiding force. His primary focus is on meticulously navigating clients and partners through the intricacies of project planning. Whether it's aligning the design vision or establishing a robust foundational project plan, Erich ensures precision and alignment in every step of the process.

Based in the vibrant city of Toronto, Erich finds joy in the simple pleasures of life. Outside the dynamic world of project management, he shares his home with his wife and dogs. Erich's leisure activities reflect his creative spirit, indulging in drawing and model-making. His green thumb finds expression in gardening, and he embraces an active lifestyle by embarking on long-distance bicycle rides. Beyond the boardroom, Erich's passions reveal a well-rounded individual with a zest for both the creative and the outdoors.

As a Creative Director at Entro, Jacqueline brings over 12 years of multi-disciplinary design experience to the team. Her expertise spans a wide spectrum, including experiential graphics, exhibition design, identity, branding and interior design. Drawing inspiration from all aspects of life, Jacqueline strives to create dynamic, user-friendly environments of all types and sizes. Jacqueline’s education in Graphic Design, Architecture, and Fine Art History allows her to approach each project with a unique perspective. She is a valuable member of the senior design team with a skilled ability to work with international and specialized consultants, architects and fabricators to deliver highly tailored, award-winning solutions.

Kristin Kreppner is a Senior Project Manager with CBRE’s Project Management team in Atlanta, GA. Ms. Kreppner utilizes her twelve years of experience in the architectural and interior design industry to consult some of the most notable owners and occupiers in the Atlanta area as well as nationally including Cox Enterprises, Nike, and Google. Her understanding of experiential design, as well as her attention to detail and client service, brings tremendous value to her clients throughout the region. Before joining CBRE, Ms. Kreppner practiced interior design and project management at both Gensler and, most recently, Interior Architects (IA). As an interior designer, Ms. Kreppner has been involved in large-scale projects, experiential and exhibition design, and branded environments that focus on the end-user and visitor experience. This includes the renovation of approximately 2.3M SF of Coca-Cola’s headquarters Campus. With a special focus on leading the storytelling and showcasing the replica of Robert Woodroof’s office and display of his innovative thought leadership in the Central Reception Building (CRB). In addition, she has also managed the design and construction of multiple production studios and innovation labs for Nike, Papa Johns, and Cox Enterprises. She had led efforts on interior renovations for Cobo Hall Convention Center and Ritz Carlton Japan Lobby and amenity spaces. Kristin has led several large headquarters assignments in the Atlanta Metro area and multimarket accounts. Most recently, Ms. Kreppner served as the design team lead for Brown Forman’s Immersive visitor experience center and renovation of a historically registered barrel warehousing facility showcasing their vast amount of products, local distilling process, company history, and tasting room.

Lyndsey's journey in design began at Walt Disney Imagineering, where she spent over a decade contributing her creativity to projects like EPCOT World Celebration, Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, Shanghai Disneyland Resort and World of Disney flagship retail. Her expertise in crafting immersive experiences across retail, hospitality, and attractions has earned her recognition, including a coveted spot in Design:Retail Magazine’s “40 under 40.”

In October 2021, Lyndsey embarked on a new adventure, co-founding Studio Archer and taking her lessons learned in themed entertainment design to the masses “beyond the berm.” From luxury hospitality to landmark sporting venues, Lyndsey aims to inspire, engage, and delight guests of all ages and backgrounds with her adventurous designs & artistic approach.

With over 25 years of experience at SimEx-Iwerks, Sal has honed his expertise in architecture and design to perfection. He is Vice President of Architecture and Design, Responsible for crafting captivating attractions found in top theme parks, museums, zoos, and aquariums globally, Sal’s drive for innovation and commitment to quality has positioned them as a respected leader in the industry. Based in Toronto, Sal finds inspiration in the city's vibrant atmosphere and thriving creative community.

"Design aficionado who finds inspiration in every corner of the globe. Whether it's a unique architecture or a simple piece of street art, I am always seeking new ways to incorporate creativity into my work. When not immersed in design, you can find me hitting the pavement on my bike or going for a run."

Scott creates design-driven experiences and environments for the best-known brands in the world. He leads teams that specialize in experience design, digital media, architecture, place making, interactivity, environmental graphic design and fabrication to develop branded environments that are multi-sensory and nontraditional. Scott is a tech-savvy storyteller that connects brands to massive markets with immersive digital and physical interactions. His journey has taken him from boutique West coast studios to global East coast agencies, and he is currently the Creative Director for the World of Coca-Cola, a first-mover in branded spaces.

Afshin Mehin is the founder of Card79, a creative studio based in San Francisco. The studio focuses on tackling complex and future-facing projects, working on everything from Brain Computer Interfaces to Autonomous Vehicles for agile Startups like Postmates as well as large companies like Amazon and Lululemon. Afshin’s experience blends the old and new, having worked for traditional furniture designers like BarberOsgerby and Terence Conran as well as futuristics institutions such as M.I.T. ’s Media Lab Europe and Elon Musk’s Neuralink.

From creating lovable robot sidekicks to defining the future of food, Anthony Prats is a product and design leader with a decade of experience building category-defining hardware and software products. He got his start at Anki, helping to bring their Cozmo robot to life, built a molecular beverage printer at Cana, and explored the future of human-robot interaction at Google. He currently leads robotics and automation efforts at a stealth startup in the food space.

Kendra is a Group Product Manager at Google DeepMind where she leads product innovation for new research products. For the last 5 years, Kendra has worked with teams to ground research in user-centered needs and help bring new technologies to life.

Before joining Google DeepMind, Kendra held product leadership positions at X the Moonshot Factory, Bot & Dolly, and Formant. At X, she co-founded the project that graduated as Intrinsic, a robotics software and AI company at Alphabet. At Bot & Dolly, Kendra was responsible for developing easy to use interfaces for robotics in cinematography and visual eects.

Rhys is the Global Head of Design & User Experience at ABB E_Mobility. He previously worked as a consultant and led multi-disciplinary Design teams at Google X's Everyday Robots, Casper Sleep, NOKIA, and Lego. He co-founded his entrepreneurial venture, OMATA in 2015.
As a Design Leader, he has a reputation for building happy and motivated studios where designers want to work, creativity is the priority, and innovation happens. He is obsessed with nurturing cultures of creativity, optimism, and the value of Design and Designing as a perspective and a practice.
Rhys has a Master’s Degree in Product Design from the Royal College of Art in London, and a First Class Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Wales, Cardiff, UK. He has been a part-time lecturer at Art Centre, Pasadena; Goldsmiths University, London; Denmark Design School, Copenhagen; and the Royal College of Art, London. He has also served on the jury of numerous competitions, was Chair of the IDSA IDEA Awards, and has multiple patents.

As the Vice President of Design at fuseproject, Qin Li leads the creative team, overseeing Industrial Design, Experience Design, Environments, Visual Design, and CMF. Harnessing her creativity and leadership, she takes a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to the team and design, and engaging all the disciplines within a fully informed, thorough, and integrated process.

Qin's philosophy is rooted in a human-centered approach. She firmly believes that designers have the power to drive cultural change, enhance the quality of life, and address some of the world's most pressing issues. In her time at fuseproject, she has played a pivotal role in guiding designs to market for a diverse range of clients, spanning Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, non-profits, and entrepreneurs. These designs have encompassed various categories, including AI & robotics, health & wellness, wearable tech, consumer electronics, furniture, retail & exhibition, packaging & soft goods, among others.

Qin’s work has been honored with global recognition and numerous awards, including Gold and a Special Award from IDEA for the Snoo bassinet and Ori Living, 100 Best Inventions of 2020 from TIME Magazine for a smart bot, Moxie, designed for Embodied, and 2023 Design Project of The Year Award from Dezeen for the Cionic Neural Sleeve. Qin is also the recipient of the 2020 Distinguished Alumni Award from the Academy of Art University.

Dual-decade champion of design innovation culture for multi-sensory scenery and visceral joy. Product leader from the explorer teams that built iconic physical product experiences like Jawbone hearables, Jawbone Jambox, Sonos Trueplay auto-tuning, Sonos Move, multimodal UI, ambient interaction, generative moodscapes, and over 50 patents for tomorrow's experiences.

I consider myself a versatile 'Swiss Army Knife' of design, focusing on connecting the dots between brand, product, and user by emphasizing human-centered design to maintain a value-oriented experience. Initially trained by fuseproject and Studio F.A. Porsche, I have spent the past fifteen years working for leading design studios in Europe, the USA, and Asia. During this time, I collaborated with startups and Fortune 500 companies across multiple industries, picking up a few design awards every now and then. Being naturally curious, I am fascinated by human-machine collaboration as part of the creative process and always wondering what’s next.

Tingbin has been a designer, educator, and serial entrepreneur. As a designer, his works have won many design awards, were reported by Time magazine, ABC Good Morning America program, BBC news, etc. And was permanently collected by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum. He has been teaching and managing at three institutions in three different countries. He was the Dean of the School of Design of Pearl Academy in India; an Interaction Design professor at San Jose State University in California, USA; and he was the founder and director of the Transportation Design program at CAFA Central Academy of Fine Arts in China. He founded Gopackup, which connects travelers with locals; he cofounded Trisenx, which brought the third sense, smell into the internet; he founded Nearal, a location-based professional networking platform; and he also founded and worked on MeiCAD, an AI-powered CAD tool.

My professional experience is a melting pot across multiple continents, agency to in-house, vision to execution, and design to business.

Always asking "why", I believe good designers strive to understand basic human needs. Like culture, I believe good design is basic fabric of human life.

Sabiha Basrai is a co-owner of Design Action Collective — a worker-owned cooperative dedicated to serving social justice movements with art, graphic design, and web development. She is co-coordinator of the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, where she works with racial justice organizers on international solidarity campaigns. Sabiha is also part of the Center for Political Education advisory board, an affiliate trainer with Race Forward, and a faculty member in the University of San Francisco's Department of Art and Architecture.

Originally from Chicago, Indya McGuffin is a designer, storyteller, and creative strategist currently based in Oakland, California. Indya has dedicated her career to empowering Black creatives, entrepreneurs, and those envisioning more equitable futures through design.

Inspired by her self-designed major at Stanford University, she co-founded PURSUIT Design, a studio that leveraged visual storytelling and creative strategy to help people understand themselves and others. Indya has since returned to Stanford to teach "Print on Purpose," a design course investigating how social justice is imprinted in our local, national, and global consciousness.

In her current role as a Design Operations Lead at Netflix, Indya works with the Design Systems team, ensuring that their work effectively supports the company's creative vision.

When Indya isn't designing, she is competing with her friends to spot music samples, attempting to replicate her mom's recipes, and exploring the spaces around her on foot.

Menaja (currently in-between bodies and in-between names) is a gay Tamil & Bengali artist originally from Kolkata and currently based in San Francisco. Their practice lies between language and presentation, familiarity and loss. It manifests thru printmaking, multi-media installation, writing, and a sporadically maintained sketchbook. Their curatorial practice is born from and constantly dying within the archives. Their inspirations range from the fashion of 90s Karan Johar movies, to Arundhati Roy’s texts. They love independent publishing, and handloom saris. They currently work at Letterform Archive, activating the permanent collection through public programming. In their personal and professional life, they are always preoccupied with the conversation between preservation and access. They think of their grandmother daily.

Noopur Agarwal is a visual communication designer and educator dedicated to increasing critical public engagement with issues of global and local concern. Her practice is based both on service: working collaboratively and interdisciplinarily to make a strategic difference within an organization; and authorship: producing exploratory works. Her creative output often takes the form of “experiential graphic design” (physical and digital interactive environmental graphics) and includes brand identity concepts for events, organizations, exhibitions, publications, and advertisements.
Agarwal is currently is an Associate Professor and Design Program Director in the Art + Architecture department at the University of San Francisco. She maintains an active consultancy practice in addition to her teaching, where her client list has included nonprofit, publishing, and technology organizations.

Sarah is a Partner at MTWTF, where she has been shaping design processes, managing interdisciplinary design teams, and facilitating community engagement since joining the studio in 2014. MTWTF is a communication design studio that believes that good design has the power to help individuals, organizations, and businesses clarify what they do and manifest their ideas to make change happen. The studio situates itself within the broadest discipline of design — the shaping of our shared physical and electronic environment — and creates communication tools that foster discussion and facilitate change.

Acting as project manager and art director, Sarah develops design strategies for projects that are drawn from a rigorous engagement with their content. This approach has driven exhibitions including ‘Utopia— Dystopia’ a multimedia exhibition at the Audi Design Incubator in Brooklyn; ‘Seeing Equal Rights in New York State’ an interactive exhibition at the Equal Rights Heritage Center; ‘Climates of Inequality’ an interactive exhibition of student work on environmental justice by the Humanities Action Lab; and 'Maneuvers at Millers River' a case study exhibition currently in development for the National Pubic Housing Museum in Chicago.

Alex is co-founder of Approach Studio and has been designing and manufacturing products for over 20 years. He spent the best part of a decade at Map Project Office, where as studio co-director he oversaw the studio's creative output including projects for Sky, Google and Deutsche Telekom
Since 2020 his focus at Approach has been on crafting tomorrow’s technology products. Approach’s clients are a mixture of big tech (Google, Logitech, Nothing) and upcoming hardware startups.

After many years working for industrial design consultancies worldwide and across a wide range of scales, Julie is now the co-founder of Approach Studio. Approach is a design agency developing hardware solutions using emerging technology for a mixture of startups and larger established brands. At Approach she also experiments on speculative and future technology usage.

Matt Brown is an independent designer based in Los Angeles. Most of his work is in early-stage invention and prototyping in software and hardware for new products, services, media and environments. Recent clients include Google X, R&D at The New York Times, and The Berggruen Institute. He also runs Extraordinary Facility, a small design studio focused on learning and play.

Joey Zeledón (they/she) is a designer who helps objects find their purpose in life. They do this by creating aspirational narrative identities – sticky stories that drive meaning – for object archetypes. Is it just a printer? or could it be furniture that prints? Is it just a coffee maker? or could it be a barista in your kitchen? Is it just a clothes hanger? Or could it be a closet you can sit on? In 2022, they founded a design studio based on this approach, creating purposeful objects for people and market differentiation for clients. Prior to starting their own studio, Joey brought dozens of products to market from shoes and furniture to housewares, consumer electronics and consumer packaged goods during their 15-year career working for Clarks, Continuum, Smart Design, Steelcase and HP. Their designs have won 40+ awards and have been featured in leading publications. Joey is a proud RIT alum.

Ayako Takase (she/they) is the co-founder/principal of Observatory, an award-winning, multi-disciplinary design studio founded in 2001. Observatory balances innovation and simplicity to foster meaningful connections with people, culture, and audiences. With work spanning creative fields, Observatory relies foremost on an intuitive process that allows a natural interplay of form and function to take place in their designs. The studio has worked for leading companies such as Herman Miller, Google, and Procter & Gamble. Ayako is also an Associate Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design and a director of the graduate program in the Industrial Design Department. They teach hands-on studios focusing on audience-centric, emotive, and iterative design. Ayako lives in Cranston, Rhode Island, with her partner and too many creatures.

Fernando Ramirez is a designer dedicated to exploring the intersection of sustainability and community and how it drives value in design. Specializing in industrial design, furniture design, and environmental design, he has left his imprint on diverse projects, collaborating with both major corporations and innovative startups. His deep commitment to sustainability propels him beyond conventional boundaries, driving him to explore pathways that lead into the realm of regenerative thinking.

As a co-founder of Common Object, a design studio aligned with his values for people and the planet, Fernando has forged a path guided by these principles. At the core of his studio's philosophy is a "planet- centered" design approach, empowering companies to take steps toward sustainability while fostering more inclusive connections with people. Their versatile portfolio spans industrial, furniture, medical, and interiors. A notable aspect of their work involves community projects, actively participating in co-design workshops specifically crafted to empower and uplift communities.

Common Object's experience in sustainability has led to the studio's regenerative design experiment, Okaterra—a project that focuses on creating regional supply chains that collaborate with farmers to create materials for furniture. Since its release, Fernando and his design partner, Justin Beitzel, have seamlessly integrated workshops and talks into their studio flow. They are diligently working to share this thinking and posing the question, “Can the future of product design be regenerative?”

After studying Architecture and Land Development at Texas A&M University, Sunshine spent 15 years navigating lawyers, liars and leeches before returning to her first love - clay. Sunshine's background in architecture informs her always curious - artistic and design practice. Sunshine believes in taking risks, in pushing boundaries. She’s always asking, “why?” Or more often, “why not?” Her work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Dwell, Surface, Wallpaper and Elle Decor among others.

Yuka is a Japanese industrial designer based in Michigan. She has over fifteen years of experience designing and consulting for companies in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. She is lead designer at MillerKnoll’s Tailored Studio.

Tim Hulford is a design leader with a passion for delivering thoughtful, functional and intentional design. His background is deeply rooted in technology, producing influential designs that have spanned across many industries and categories. Tim is currently Industrial Design Director at Meta, working to bring the audacious dreams of Reality Labs to life as beautifully integrated, compelling consumer products.

Following a master degree in Industrial design in France (ISD), Ben had the opportunity to work with numerous talented individuals through dierent design consultancy (design continuum, Teague, Artefact) and is now working for Valve where he focuses on video game hardware equipment such as Steamdeck . For him , Understanding users and targeting issues and opportunities is key to create successful projects , collaborating with complementary skilled people is key to create meaningful and market ready products and experiences.

“After 20 years of strategic innovation and design consulting, I still maintain a strong urge to experiment and explore the frontiers of what comes next with the goal of merging and blurring the boundaries of Industrial Design, User Experience, and Interaction Design.
I am a strong believer in creating multi-sensorial experiences rather than simply designing hardware products”

Executive Creative Director by day and professional illustrator by night, Norio brings 30 years of design experience to every program he directs at PA Consulting (formerly Astro Studios). Since studying at the Institute of Design, IIT in Chicago, he has collaborated with diverse clients such as Microsoft, Nike, HP, Disney, Samsung, Nissan and Sony, among many others. His passion for emerging technologies has him constantly looking towards the future while his keen awareness of user needs and experiences keeps him focused on the present.

Paul Danial is a creative and technical industrial designer with an interest in product and experience design. Bridging his academic backgrounds in human kinetics and industrial design, he creates human centered designs that empower and optimize user experiences. Paul works with Noble-Metaphase, Part of Aptar Pharma, to consult and design hand-intensive products with a focus on medical devices. He finds passion and motivation in finding solutions to challenges that improve the quality of life of patients and effectiveness of practitioners. Paul has always been curious about how things work and often takes things apart and reimagines them. He could also be found sketching and doodling on any surface available. In his free time, Paul is passionate about aerospace and aviation, motivating him to pursue his private pilot's license. He also loves to travel the world with his wife, and he is excited to be a dad soon.

Dr. Rutter is Head of Consulting Services for Nobel, and Aptar Pharma company. He is a worldwide expert in the research, ergonomics and design of handheld medical devices, products, and packaging. Aptar acquired Metaphase, a design consultancy specializing in research, human factors, and industrial design founded by Dr. Rutter in 1991. His leadership and vision has consistently delivered award-winning, innovative breakthrough designs for several of the world’s most prestigious and influential Fortune 500 brands having earned 120+ Global Design Excellence Awards, 115+ patents, 2 products included the Museum of Modern Art, several designs in the Chicago Athenaeum’s Good Design Museum Collection, 2 Edison Innovation Awards, and a Design of the Decade Award. Dr. Rutter has been profiled, an invited guest, and interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, CNN, CTV, IdeaCity, CityTV, The Chicago Tribune, The Ottawa Citizen, The Globe & Mail and Business 2.0. Dr Rutter holds a Bachelor of Industrial Design from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and a Master Degree in Industrial Design and Ph.D. in Kinesiology, specializing in motor hand function, both from the University of Illinois.

Julianna Schneider is the lead Usability & Human Factors Engineer for the Bausch + Lomb Surgical product lines. She is an innovative engineer who is committed to developing intuitive, useful products for users. Having the ability to resonate with users, she prioritizes simplistic and meaningful designs. She leverages human centered design elements partnered with a risk based approach to ensure interfaces are optimized for users’ applications, and ultimately safe and effective for use. Harnessing her previous experience as a mechanical engineer, she frequently assesses design-related and use-related failures prior to product launch and creates solutions to mitigate these failures. Similarly, she understands the value input from multiple functionalities has and works cross functionally to ensure input is captured and incorporated into designs. She enjoys learning new things, meeting new people, and embracing challenges because they all bring growth - both personally and professionally.

Praveen is a Human Factors Engineer with a Master's in Kinesiology, focusing on Cognitive and Motor Neuroscience and a foundation in I&C Engineering. Praveen's professional passion lies in the intersection of technology and healthcare, using biomechanics, neuromechanics, and a blend of quantitative and qualitative methods to understand people, their strengths and limitations and design user-friendly medical devices. In his role at Aptar Pharma, Praveen is instrumental in consulting on medical device design projects, ensuring they are accessible and effective. His enthusiasm for technology extends to incorporating AI and cutting-edge innovative methods to optimize medical device design, functionality and user experience. As a tech geek, Praveen is always exploring the latest technological advancements and their potential applications in healthcare. Outside of work, he is passionate about outdoor activities and fitness.

Sunil Achia is an award winning industrial designer at HealthCraft Group, a Canadian manufacturer of fall prevention products designed to help people live more independently at home.

During his +20 years with the company, Sunil has become a leader in all aspects of product design and business development. He leads a team of talented designers through product development, manufacturing and creative marketing initiatives. He is also part of the leadership team at HealthCraft, responsible for the strategic direction and culture of the company.

His design approach is smart and curious, never shy to challenge the social stigmas and assumptions surrounding mobility support products. This curiosity led to the development of a new product category: 2- in-1 combination grab bar + bathroom accessories. This category has won HealthCraft several universal design awards at major exhibitions across North America, and most recently a 2023 Red Dot Design Award (a bucket list item for Sunil) for the Plus Series.

In his spare time, Sunil does what he loves - Design! He is the Chapter President of Carleton University's Industrial Design Alumni Association, where he partners students with alumni professionals for one on one mentorship. Sunil is involved in design education, teaching ID courses at Carleton. He also runs a freelance business with his wife (also a successful industrial designer), providing environmental graphics services.

Sunil makes time for his #1 love - music. He can be found playing bass in bands around town, or playing solo acoustic guitar at fancy dinner events.

Life motto: Do what you love.

A proud native and longtime resident of Mexico City, Daniela Macías is an NYC-based global industrial design manager with 15 years of experience, leading the creation of global household and consumer products for Colgate-Palmolive. In her current role as an Industrial Design Manager, she is responsible for the design leadership of expert cross-functional teams working on packaging structures and brand experiences for Personal Care, Pet Nutrition, and Home Care brands that hundreds of millions of people around the world love and use daily.
Throughout her career, she has overseen the design process of bottles, caps, bar soaps, dispensers, soluble pods, and new experiences across a variety of users, categories, brands, packaging formats, scopes, and markets. Her professional journey—starting at one of Colgate’s manufacturing facilities, moving up to regional corporate offices in Mexico City, and elevated to a cross-category industrial design development role at Colgate-Palmolive’s global headquarters in NYC—has forged her as a resilient industrial designer with deep empathy for both the business side and the people she designs for.

Divya Chaurasia is an award-winning industrial designer, with a background in engineering. An expert in user-centered research, sustainable practices and design for manufacturing, she has a Masters in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute, New York and Bachelor’s in Technology from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India.

Currently, Divya works as a senior industrial designer and user experience lead at Spitfire Industry, a design consultancy based in Brooklyn, New York. She designs products and experiences for brands like Clorox, All Clad, Tefal, Bausch & Lomb, Cook’s Direct, Hunter Douglas, GoTrax, and Nectar. Divya’s work is inspired by the everyday pursuits of people. She is fascinated by the connection between humans, objects and environments, and captures this relationship in delightfully functional products. Her work has been exhibited at NYCxDesign and NYC Media Lab Annual Summit and received recognition by Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award and International Design Awards.

James Pryor is the co-founder and creative director of Touch, an agency that stands at the forefront of sustainable innovation in packaging and product design. His agency collaborates with renowned FMCG brands like Mondelez, PepsiCo, Colgate Palmolive and Nestle, pioneering future-proof solutions for brand growth. James leads Touch's design and innovation team, managing everything from conceptual exploration to design for manufacture. He frequently liaises with clients, presenting Touch's latest works and proposals.
Under James's guidance, Touch has achieved significant milestones, including the award-winning Carlsberg Export redesign and the creation of Häagen-Dazs' Loop reusable packaging system. His commitment to sustainability has led to the elimination of thousands of tonnes of packaging waste and enhanced the recyclability and reusability of numerous products. James's innovative contributions are also evidenced by his numerous patents for major clients.
A passionate advocate for sustainable design, James is a regular speaker at global industry events and has contributed to the European Packaging Design Agency Boost Book. He holds a master’s in consumer product design from Coventry University and has a rich background in design and innovation, having worked with agencies like Impact, 1HQ and 3T.
Beyond his professional life, James enjoys travel, movies, reading, and photography. He is also an avid guitarist and musician. His greatest joy comes from spending time in the High Wycombe with his wife, Rachel, and their two children, Madeline and Michael.

Joo Young Lim is an Industrial Designer at Vanderbilt Home, a lifestyle product manufacturing firm based in New York City. As a designer, Joo Young specializes in studying people’s shifting lifestyles and using the findings to create useful designs for their various aspects of living, especially in cooking and entertaining. Joo Young draws inspiration from his experiences of multi-national upbringing and a deep interest in the history of home entertaining. He has over a decade of experience working in various categories, including food prep, tabletop, decor, organization, and pets.
Joo Young earned a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2010. Since then, he has held design director roles at Martha Stewart Living and Barkbox and a co-founder role at Gruppo Atelier Home.

Pinar Guvenc is a partner of SOUR, an international, award-winning hybrid design studio with the mission to address social and urban problems through sustainable, adaptive, and inclusive methodologies. They are doing so by active end-user involvement and co-creation sessions throughout the design process. In addition to managing the business operations, Pinar also leads strategic planning, design research, and partnerships of the studio.
Pinar is also part-time faculty at Parsons School of Design, School of Design Strategies, and serves on the Board of Directors of Open Style Lab, a nonprofit organization initiated at MIT, with the purpose of making style accessible to people of all abilities. She created and teaches a strategic collaborations workshop series for the Pratt Center for Community Development and the Made in NYC initiative. She is also the author and instructor of the Inclusive Design class for the School of Visual Arts MFA Interaction Design, which is the first multidisciplinary inclusive design graduate course in the United States.
Pinar is a frequent public speaker and a guest lecturer and hosts the panels and podcasts of What's Wrong With, a series of discussions and podcasts with progress makers and experts to diagnose real problems, ideate solutions, and raise awareness to the general public.
Pinar has a BSc in Industrial Engineering and MSc in Economics & Finance.

Stephanie Aaron is a design lead at J.P. Morgan Chase where she focuses on making things simpler for employees and customers every day. She has previously worked at quite a few large financial firms and the New York Federal Reserve. She ran her own design firm for more than a decade, with clients including The American Museum of Natural History, Citibank and Barnes & Noble.
Outside of work she is North America regional coordinator for IxDA.
A native New Yorker, she holds a BFA from the Cooper Union and an MFA in Interaction Design from the School of Visual Arts. In her free time she can be found with her nose in a book and a 62-pound pit bull on her lap or in a kayak on the Hudson River.

Alex Wilcox Cheek is a New York-based designer. For more than ten years, he taught in the School of Design, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon. His courses blended design, architecture, technology, and the humanities, reecting his cross-disciplinary approach to his practice. In that time, he spun o a number of start-ups including Classroom Salon, Macromicro, and Skale. Alex has long been involved with the Interaction Design Association, co- founding the rst chapter in the Middle East, IxDA Doha, and later serving as local leader for New York City. Today, he leads a design team at Google.

Jeni is an experience design strategist based in New York City. Born and raised in Australia, she established a design business at the age of 24, which thrived in Australia and Canada before she embarked on a new journey in New York City a decade ago.

Driven by a keen interest in strategic decision-making, Jeni transitioned into design and research roles within consultancy and in-house settings. Her experience encompasses both Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX), where she has spearheaded strategic design initiatives and digital transformation programs across various industries. Her portfolio boasts an array of national and global brands, including Samsung, Meta, Square, IKEA, AIG, Better.com, and KraftHeinz, among others.

In January 2023, fueled by her entrepreneurial spirit, she founded Peoplemade LLC, a Service Design and UX Research consultancy.

Outside of work, Jeni finds joy in taking her dog on long walks and hosting dinner parties featuring seasonal produce sourced from farmers' markets.

Jess Greco is an experience design and research leader with deep experience in tying customer insights into business priorities that drive design-led organizational change. She has a proven track record in creating an environment that fosters team collaboration and builds design maturity. Her experience is a mix of consumer and enterprise work across industries including financial services, payments, insurance, consulting, healthcare, education and media.

Meghan is a UX Design Lead at JP Morgan Chase, where she uses service design and collaborative design techniques to improve customer and employee experience. Prior to Chase, she designed new products in the healthcare industry to support nurses and patients and also worked in K-12 and higher education in a number of roles. Meghan lives in northern Delaware with her husband and enjoys Saturday morning yard sales, travel, margaritas, and talking about whatever tv shows she has been watching recently.

Scott Henderson is an American designer, artist, writer, and curator from New York City where he has risen to the pinnacle of his profession as one of the world’s leading industrial designers.

Scott has designed iconic, best-selling products for companies including OXO, Microsoft, Krups, Intel, Skip Hop and Alessi, and over fifteen of Scott’s products have been best sellers at the Museum of Modern Art's MoMA Design Store. Scott believes that the goal of good design is meet the mind of the user with unimpeded flow.

Scott has spoken about design throughout the world; he has won over fifty international design awards including a 2023 Red Dot Award, he has represented the United States as their Design Ambassador, he has chaired the International Design Conference, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum and the Alessi Museum.

A designer, entrepreneur, inventor and creative director, Joe Doucet is one of the most sought-after creative talents working in America today. After graduating from the Art Center College of Design, Doucet quickly began exporting his vision into product, furniture, environment, and technology to find solutions for daily and societal challenges through design. His work deftly hybridizes function and visual appeal while conveying layers of meaning and message. Doucet believes that design and, more importantly, a designer’s thought process can play a larger role in innovation and problem solving, as well as aesthetics. He currently holds numerous patents for his designs and inventions.

Doucet’s work has been exhibited globally, including the London Design Museum and the Biennale International Design in Saint-Etienne. He has received numerous international awards, including a World Technology Award for Design Innovation and multiple Good Design Awards. He was also named the only ever AvantGuardian for Design by Surface Magazine. In 2017, Doucet was named the 2017 Winner of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award as Product Designer—the highest honor in his field.

Doucet holds over 50 patents, and as an entrepreneur, he has created and launched a myriad of businesses aimed at making the world a better place through design, including OTHR and Airiva.

Born 1958, Ross Lovegrove graduated from Manchester Polytechnic with 1st Class BA Hons Industrial design in 1980 and took a Master of Design at the Royal College of Art, London in 1983. In the early 80’s worked as a designer for Frog Design in West Germany on tech projects for companies like Sony and Apple; he later moved to Paris as a consultant to Knoll International, for which he created the highly successful Alessandri Office System.

Invited to join the Atelier de Nimes in 1984, alongside Jean Nouvel and Phillipe Stark, he consulted amongst others: Cacharel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes and Dupont. Returning to London in 1986 he has since worked on projects for Airbus Industries, Kartell, Ceccotti, Cappellini, Moroso, Luceplan, Driade, Peugeot, Apple, Issey Miyake, Vitra, Motorola, Biomega, LVMH, Narciso Rodriguez, Yamagiwa, Tag Heuer, Swarovski, Herman Miller, Artemide, Renault, Japan Airlines, Toyo Ito Architects, Kenzo, Valextra, GH Mumm, LG, F1, Samsung and KEF.

Winner of numerous international awards his work has been extensively published and exhibited internationally including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum NY, Axis Centre Japan, Pompidou Centre, Paris and the Design Museum, London, when in 1993 he curated the first permanent Design collection. His work is held in permanent collections of various design museums around the world including the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA), the Design Museum in London, the Vitra Design Museum, in Basel, the Die Neue Sammlung, in Munich and the Centre Pompidou, in Paris.

Sahar Madanat is a Jordanian designer and the founder of Twelve Degrees Design. She is considered as one of the most acclaimed and awarded industrial designers in the Middle East. Having dedicated more than 20 years to the field she has been at the forefront earning recognition for her work showcased in numerous exhibitions around the world. Sahar’s curious nature has led her to approach design with a mindset focused on exploration and discovery.

Her design work spans from healthcare, to wearable tech, lighting, bath and tableware as well as new concept furniture. She has worked with brands such as Nokia, OXO, Stelton and RAK ceramics. Sahar is also a design advocate at heart, she is passionate about supporting emerging talent and fostering design thinking. She actively delivers engaging talks, mentorship programs, workshops, and engages in community and governmental initiatives that leverage the transformative power of design.

Shani Sandy is an artist, multidisciplinary designer, and executive who believes in the transformative power of design. Shani serves as VP, Experience Design at IBM leading design-driven innovation. Her mission is advancing human-centered design with an emphasis on crafting desirable and usable products, services, and experiences alongside cultivating the design culture. Prior to joining IBM, Shani was the Executive Creative Director at S&P Global, where she led the enterprise-wide creative agency, and the creative strategy, communication design, and ux practice areas. From launching her independent design studio in 2002, to present day, Shani continues to explore the many possibilities of a creative calling.

Shani holds a BA in Art History and BFA in Painting and Computer Art from Tufts University along with an MBA from the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. She also attended AIGA & Yale School of Management, Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders.

Shani is actively engaged in the creative and design community, speaking, teaching, and mentoring others and has a passion for nurturing emerging talent. She has been honored by several design institutions including GDUSA and the Design Management Institute and has served as a juror for AIGA, the Service Design College, and America by Design. Her work appears in Stanford University’s Black Graphic Design History Collections.

Shani resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Davide Mosconi (born in 1981) is an Italian Designer and Art Director with over 20 years of experience in the field of communication and design. After spending 7 years at McCann-Erickson as an Art Director working on international brands, in 2011, he shifted his focus to branding and design. He became a co- founder and Creative Director of Apart Collective, working on projects for international museum institutions and prominent fashion brands. Starting in September 2016, he has held the role of Co-Founder and Creative Partner at Auge Design, an acclaimed Italian design agency specializing in packaging and branding, with offices in Milan and Florence. In just a few years, Davide has made a significant contribution to elevating Auge Design's status as the most globally recognized Italian packaging design agency, achieving notable awards including Cannes Lions, Clio Awards, D&AD, ADCE, Dieline, Pentawards and has represented Italian creativity on various international design juries.

Dario Volpe is a designer with more than 20 years of experience in brand design, passionate about illustration, type design, and contemporary art. By experimenting with eclectic languages, he crosses multiple and diverse stylistic barriers, encouraging a deeper understanding and interpretation of the project's core message.


In 2010, after several important international experiences as a designer (at Landor, Interbrand, Cb’a), he established Lettera7, a brand design studio based in Vietri sul Mare - Amalfi Coast, where he is both the founder and creative director.
His ability to work across multiple disciplines has led Lettera7 to handle a variety of projects in different industries over the years, continuously improving their approach to meet a wide range of challenges: "There's no preferred industry for Lettera7; we're designers and any visionary idea well-structured can be turned into a virtuous project, no matter the industry tag it goes into"
In his experimentation with visual languages, he has successfully led cultural initiatives including international festivals in cinema, music, and theatre, developed complex wayfinding systems in diverse locations, and enhanced brand design for Italian firms to spotlight their true market value. Especially in the food sector, his unconventional approach has blended artistic visuals with business needs, rapidly earning multiple projects international recognition.

Johanna is CEO at Pond Design, a Stockholm School of Economics alumni and former Bocconi University student. She’s received several international awards over the last few years such as gold and silver in Pentawards as well as wins in the Dieline and D&AD awards.

With professional experience in architecture, marketing and advertising, before her career started at Pond Design some twelve years ago, Johanna has developed a holistic approach in her work. She has the ability to look at packaging design and brand strategy from both a business perspective as well as the creative sides of it – working hands on when developing Pond’s award winning designs. Johanna’s portfolio includes iconic local brands and global heavy weights such as Absolut Vodka, Jameson Whiskey, Unilever, Barilla and Eckes-Granini – all whom she’s delivered international packaging, innovation and strategy to, which has contributed into making Pond Design one of Sweden’s most successful design agencies over the last decade.

Sebastien Greffe is an award winning creative director at WeWantMore® Studio, renowned for a demonstrated history in brand- and packaging design, in both the design- and advertising industries, having worked for clients like Coca Cola, Heineken, Pioneer DJ, Microsoft, Cristal, Loop Earplugs and Neuhaus. With a keen eye for design and a strategic mindset, they have consistently delivered compelling creative solutions that not only resonate with target audiences but also drive substantial brand growth and recognition.

Afshin Mehin is the founder of Card79, a creative studio based in San Francisco. The studio focuses on tackling complex and future-facing projects, working on everything from Brain Computer Interfaces to Autonomous Vehicles for agile Startups like Postmates as well as large companies like Amazon and Lululemon. Afshin’s experience blends the old and new, having worked for traditional furniture designers like BarberOsgerby and Terence Conran as well as futuristics institutions such as M.I.T. 's Media Lab Europe and Elon Musk’s Neuralink.

From creating lovable robot sidekicks to defining the future of food, Anthony Prats is a product and design leader with a decade of experience building category-defining hardware and software products. He got his start at Anki, helping to bring their Cozmo robot to life, built a molecular beverage printer at Cana, and explored the future of human-robot interaction at Google. He currently leads robotics and automation efforts at a stealth startup in the food space.

Kendra is a Group Product Manager at Google DeepMind where she leads product innovation for new research products. For the last 5 years, Kendra has worked with teams to ground research in user-centered needs and help bring new technologies to life.

Before joining Google DeepMind, Kendra held product leadership positions at X the Moonshot Factory, Bot & Dolly, and Formant. At X, she co-founded the project that graduated as Intrinsic, a robotics software and AI company at Alphabet. At Bot & Dolly, Kendra was responsible for developing easy to use interfaces for robotics in cinematography and visual eects.

Rhys is the Global Head of Design & User Experience at ABB E_Mobility. He previously worked as a consultant and led multi-disciplinary Design teams at Google X's Everyday Robots, Casper Sleep, NOKIA, and Lego. He co-founded his entrepreneurial venture, OMATA in 2015.
As a Design Leader, he has a reputation for building happy and motivated studios where designers want to work, creativity is the priority, and innovation happens. He is obsessed with nurturing cultures of creativity, optimism, and the value of Design and Designing as a perspective and a practice.
Rhys has a Master’s Degree in Product Design from the Royal College of Art in London, and a First Class Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Wales, Cardiff, UK. He has been a part-time lecturer at Art Centre, Pasadena; Goldsmiths University, London; Denmark Design School, Copenhagen; and the Royal College of Art, London. He has also served on the jury of numerous competitions, was Chair of the IDSA IDEA Awards, and has multiple patents.

As the Founder of Protopia Futures, Monika Bielskyte is the architect of a platform and a community to proactively prototype inspiring and actually livable future visions. Her journey as a nomadic explorer in over 100 countries has given her first-person experience of the interconnectedness between human cultural priorities and the unfolding future.

Monika was born in the Soviet Union, and grew up in the newly liberated Lithuania, before leaving the country at age 17. Her perspectives as a futurist have been shaped by the collapse of the physical boundaries of a totalitarian regime, and the opening up of the digital world – its opportunities and its harms. She currently resides in Johannesburg, South Africa – which gives her deeper insights into broader futures perspectives, beyond the imaginations of the Global North.

Monika started her career as a creative – working on movie sets in her late teens and progressively moving towards the bleeding edge of technological innovation and scientific research by her mid-20s. Her multicultural and multidisciplinary background, as well as an uncompromising focus on the intricate relationship between future fictions and real-life, have guided her on a journey that makes her voice clearly distinct in today’s foresight industry.

Monika has worked not only with established global media, tech and lifestyle companies such as Universal, Google, Nike, BBC and the WEF, but also various governments and cities. Her contributions have resonated across both industry corridors and academia, from The Royal
Society to CERN.

Angela Bains currently serves as the Acting Associate Dean within the Faculty of Design at the OCAD University (OCAD U), Toronto, Canada. Her previous role involved serving as the Graduate Program Director for the Strategic Foresight & Innovation (SFI) program. Notably, a member of the Solid Black Collective research group at OCAD U. She is the co-creator of the SFI’s Decolonising Futures BIPOC Speakers Series, and Black SFI (Strategic Foresight & Innovation). In addition to her academic roles, Angela holds the position of Co-Founder and Strategic Director at TransformExp, an esteemed commercial and social change strategy and design firm located in Vancouver, Canada.

Originating from the United Kingdom, Angela brings with her more than three decades of extensive experience in the creative industry. Her professional achievements extend to being a sought-after speaker and host, notably participating in events such as The State of Black Design, Design Management Institute - Diversity in Design Conference, Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD) – International DesignThinkers Conference and Black Design, Past, Present & Future. Furthermore, Angela has dedicated her expertise to part-time teaching in Strategic Design at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). This multifaceted professional background underscores Angela Bains' substantial contributions to the fields of design, strategic foresight, and innovation.

Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay leads the international research group CoFUTURES, and is the principal investigator of “CoFutures: Pathways to Possible Presents” (European Research Council), and “Science Fictionality” (Norwegian Research Council) which explore contemporary global futurisms movements. He is manager and co-founder of Theory from the Margins, a research collective with over 16,000 followers worldwide. Chattopadhyay is an Associate Professor of Global Culture Studies at the University of Oslo. He is also an Imaginary College Fellow at the Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University. He has served as an innovations consultant with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and has been a visiting researcher at the Department of Informatics at the University of California at Irvine and the Evoke Lab/Calit2, as well as the Department of English, University of Liverpool. Chattopadhyay has written or edited ten books, published numerous articles, exhibited in six transnational art projects, and produced the award-winning lm Kalpavigyan: A Speculative Journey, the rst documentary on science ction from India and Bengal. Other than his research and artistic research grants, he is also the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the prestigious World Fantasy Award (2020), the Johannes H Berg Memorial Prize (2019), the Foundation Essay Prize (2017), and the Strange Horizons Readers’ Poll Award (2013).

Gem is an author and senior academic specialising in the interrelations between human behaviour, speculation, and spatial design. Currently teaching at the Royal College of Art, she was awarded a coveted National Teaching Fellowship in 2019, is Senior Fellow of AdvanceHE, and founding chair of QuEAN - Queer Educators in Architecture Network. Gem’s work in the future(s) space comes to life through her advisory, research, teaching and leadership of superFUTURES at the RCA, her directorship of the Experimental Realism platform and consultation services offered through her Office for Speculative Spatial Design (O-SSD).

Kevin Bethune is the Founder & Chief Creative Officer of dreams • design + life, a "think tank" that delivers design & innovation services using a human-centered approach. Kevin's background spans engineering, business and design in equal proportion over his 25+ year career, positioning him to help brands deliver meaningful innovations to enrich people's lives.

His work represents creative problem-solving that brings multidisciplinary teams together to see the future through an open aperture, and a deep industrial design approach to inform and influence desirable, feasible and business-viable design outcomes.

Kevin began his career as a mechanical engineer in the nuclear power industry. This chapter gave him deep product experience working with high performing teams across 14 nuclear reactor upgrade campaigns. After his MBA, Kevin joined Nike, Inc. in a business capacity, but quickly navigated to the Global Footwear product engine to drive advanced digital product creation capabilities, discovering the world of design in the process. After solidifying his creative foundation through further studies at ArtCenter College of Design, Kevin co-founded distinct design & innovation capabilities at two Tier 1 management consulting firms in Booz & Co. and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). As Vice President of Strategic Design at BCG Digital Ventures, he led a large cohort of designers that would influence and shape every corporate venture spun out from the incubator. Kevin left BCG Digital Ventures to carve his own path under the banner of dreams • design + life, focusing on unlocking human potential through strategic design, industrial design and the building of new ecologies.

Kevin also serves as a Board Trustee for ArtCenter College of Design and a Board Director for the Design Management Institute (DMI).

Malina is a multidisciplinary Design Lead in Arup’s Foresight team. They design experiences and strategies that reimagine our relationship with the built environment.

Visionary designer adept at bridging ancestral wisdom with cutting-edge innovation. Expertise in graphic and experience design, specializing in colorimetric research, exhibition curation, and speculative design for post-planetary futures. Proven track record of success in luxury brands, architectural studios, and art institutions. Passionate about sustainability, minimalism, and community-driven design

Phoenix Perry specializes in developing accessible machine learning tools, founds value-driven creative coding organizations, and creates games that explore our collective interconnectivity. As the founding Course Leader for the MSc in Creative Computing at the University of the Arts London, Phoenix Perry blends embodied gaming, inclusive design, and advanced machine learning in interactive systems. She holds a PhD in Computing from Goldsmiths where she focused on Disability Led Game Design. Founder of the Code Liberation Foundation, Perry has empowered over 6000 women to explore computational creativity with games. She also creates tools and open-source resources for game designers and artists, most notably InteractML. Her installations and games work has shown at museums and festivals such as Wellcome Collection, Somerset House, A Maze, Indie Cade, and GDC

Dr. Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon is an innovation catalyst, researcher, facilitator, and evaluator, impassioned by the space between transformation and liberation.

As the Director of the Equity Innovation studio at Think Rubix, a Black-led social innovation consultancy. Dr. Gordon serves as a shepherd for Equity Innovation to shape our collective future.

He’s taught courses in design, evaluation, international development, and equity across four continents, co-designed partnerships, products, and services with local and international changemakers to support social change, and researched the complexity, evaluation, and emergence of design and innovation across the world.

What can we build together?

My practice is multi-disciplinary.
Using my background as an artist and development practitioner by training, I design experiences, products and futures that center often overlooked narratives.

I am a director and partner at by lue. and MM+co, two visionary African woman founded design agencies that use art and design as tools to elevate experience building in the Global South.
At by lue. we use our creative approach to advance arts and culture with a focus on honouring heritage; and at MM+co we are leaders in African Life Centered Design and infuse our principles of indigenous knowledge into the design process.

Through my work as a creator, speaker and advisor; I have partnered with African Union, Soho House, MTN, the Clinton Foundation, Roddenberry Foundation, and Roche to name a few.

Overall, my TL;DR is that I am driven to ensure that the aesthetic realm is recognised for its importance in shaping socio-economic outcomes in a tangible way.

Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman is a highly accomplished design professional working at the intersection of design and technology with a focus on wearable product, smart textiles and soft goods. With a background in performance apparel, product design and consumer products, she is a pioneering researcher in design methodologies and smart materials, and is Professor of Industrial Design at Pratt Institute. She is the author of Smart Textiles for Designers: Inventing the Future of Fabrics; has published many articles; and speaks internationally on design, innovation and the future.

With over 25 years of corporate experience in athletic, medical, wearable, and consumer product design, she has held positions as Design Director for Fila, Champion and Nike and has been a key influencer in shaping innovative products. As the founder of Interwoven Design Group, she has led the creation of award-winning projects, including the Apex Exosuit for HeroWear, the Perci Emergency Preparedness V est, and the upcoming GLDN PNT padel collection. For the Core 77 Design Jury in the Sports and Outdoor category, Rebeccah emphasizes her extensive corporate background. Her dual role as a design leader and academic, coupled with her commitment to diversity in design, positions her as a valuable contributor to the evaluation of sports and outdoor design.

Charlotte is a Footwear Designer at Nike WHQ in Portland, Oregon. She received her Bachelor of Industrial Design from Pratt Institute and Master of Science in Integrated Design, Business and Technology from USC ’s Iovine and Young Academy. Her work is imbued with a strong aesthetic sensibility and a heightened sense of how people emotionally connect with a product.

Evan Huggins is a San Francisco based designer with deep roots in the outdoor adventure community. He directs industrial design for the bike computer category at SRAM, a global leader in bicycle component design and manufacturing. Evan’s work has spanned hard and soft goods from conceptual projects through to shipping products in both startup and corporate environments. He is a firm believer in a user- first research based approach that places technology in service of the humans who use it.

Jayson is a design leader turning design thinking into action. He leverages the experience from his diverse creative career for the benefit of every challenge he takes on, bringing focus to the fuzzy front end, embracing the difficult challenges, collaborating transparently, leading with integrity.

Jayson has led some of the industry's best industrial design and user experience teams through complex programs to create successful product + brand solutions in nearly every industry imaginable.

Nichole is Founder and Creative Director of level, a West Coast, women-led industrial design shop based in San Francisco. The level studio is on a mission to create a global positive and progressive influence through smart, thoughtful design.

Nichole’s work at level has helped create new industry categories and propelled products into the global spotlight. The studio’s portfolio encompasses the likes of Microsoft, Google, Logitech, FitBit, North, HTC, AliveCor, Tempo and Nex.

level’s work has garnered wide recognition, including design awards such as FastCo., IDEA, Red Dot, iF and Spark. Notably, level was recognized as #03 in FastCompany’s Most Innovative Design Companies of 2021.

Nichole remains committed to creating a diverse, inclusive industry. She has dedicated her career to balancing motherhood and empowering the next generation of female designers through mentorship, having served as chair of IDSA’s Women in Design from 2017-2021. level are active members of the Diversity in Design (DID) Collaborative, initiated in June 2021 to foster systemic change by increasing diversity and improving conditions for Black creatives across the design industry.

Farrell is a purpose-driven leader with over 20 years of experience spearheading strategic communications and impact initiatives within Fortune 500 and Top 100 companies. She is passionate about integrating sustainability into company culture and operations while driving transformative change through collaboration. Skilled in developing ESG goals and scalable sustainable solutions with multiple stakeholders, she has extensive experience working across sustainability, marketing, product design/engineering, and innovation teams, fostering innovation and challenging norms. She is a driver of the idea that business can be used as a lever for positive impact, and is a sought-after professional to position products, technologies - often resulting in building good brand from the inside out.

You can see her advocating for this work as she speaks on Purpose x Sustainability as a Framework for high-performing companies, as well as the positive impact designers can have on the sustainability of products, services and innovative/novel ideas.

Farrell is a well-respected, empathetic human who values integrity, collaboration, and wellness for herself and others.

Barry Waddilove joined Electrolux Group in 2017. He first led the company’s North American design team and joined the global sustainability leadership team in early 2022 to oversee partnerships and collaborations. In early 2023, he became Head of Circular Economy and Partnerships. In this expanded role, Barry remains responsible for supporting partnerships while leading new work to develop Electrolux Group’s Circular Economy approach and priorities.

Barry has over 30 years experience in design and sustainability, working with brands and organizations across 25 countries. During various roles across global corporates, he has developed deep knowledge of innovation processes and business model development. His academic research for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation explored the role of system thinking in circular design.
He holds an MDes in Design and Innovation for Sustainability from Cranfield University and is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Barry is British and lives with his family just north of London, UK.

Charlie works with the Design Studio at JPL where he has designed and manufactured installations, along with posters and artifacts, that help break down the complicated science behind a new climate change satellite called NISAR. While this helps educate and inspire the public, his work is also used to motivate and honor the engineers who work on these critical multi-year missions designed to help us better understand, and thus better protect our planet.

He is the founder of the sustainable toy company called Archamelia that produces escape-room style pop-up puzzles. Made with FSC certified paper, and manufactured within a 20 mile radius of his home in Inglewood, CA, Archamelia has won numerous gold medals in industrial design competitions, merits for sustainability and social impact, and been highlighted in books for its inclusive design and featured on television for its effective STEAM engagement.

At ArtCenter, he teaches an upper-term course called DesignLab2 which focuses on the environmental impact of the products we create. Using sustainable heuristics, he guides students through the deconstruction of existing products in order to evaluate their true lifecycle (from material source to disposal) all in order to pinpoint the strongest opportunities for sustainable design intervention.

Prior to design, Charlie was a professional dancer. In addition to the 20 years he has spent working with Twyla Tharp, he has also collaborated with artists like Barbara Kruger, Frank Stella, Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, the Sinatra Family, Maurice Sendak, Christopher Wool, Jon-Michel Othoniel, and Alejandro Inarritu.

When he is not designing or dancing, he is either growing vegetables in his garden or training his frenchie, Maurice.

Erik Haug is the Founder & Chief Vision Officer of LIGHT CoCreative, a global innovation and impact collective.

Alongside a dynamic network of talent at LIGHT, Erik is focused on community-driven solutions to major global issues and basic human needs:
• Food
• Water
• Livability • Energy
• Air
• Care

LIGHT has a range of core capabilities and codified consulting offerings including deep research, human- centered design, strategic visioning, technology enablement, stakeholder engagement, thought leadership and facilitating win-win-win partnerships across value chains.

The core objective of LIGHT is to cultivate more collaboration, inclusion, sustainability, trust, collective action and long-term value creation in the private sector.

Prior to LIGHT, Erik was the CoFounder & CEO of a venture-backed social technology startup — dedicated to building community and bringing people together in-real-life.
In his consulting career, he has led dozens of strategy, design and innovation projects with leaders at top organizations including Deloitte, Nike, Intuit, Cisco, Lowe’s, Masdar, Li & Fung, Visa, AirBus, DHL, NEOM and Stryker.

Zoé Bezpalko is an environmental engineer, and designer who strongly believes in the strategic use of technology and design as keys for solving global issues like climate change. At Autodesk she leads the sustainability strategy for the Design & Manufacturing industries where she develops innovative technology to help customers reduce the environmental footprint of their design and make processes, and reach their sustainability goals.

Scott Henderson is an American designer, artist, writer, and curator from New York City where he has risen to the pinnacle of his profession as one of the world’s leading industrial designers.

Scott has designed iconic, best-selling products for companies including OXO, Microsoft, Krups, Intel, Skip Hop and Alessi, and over fifteen of Scott’s products have been best sellers at the Museum of Modern Art's MoMA Design Store. Scott believes that the goal of good design is meet the mind of the user with unimpeded flow.

Scott has spoken about design throughout the world; he has won over fifty international design awards including a 2023 Red Dot Award, he has represented the United States as their Design Ambassador, he has chaired the International Design Conference, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum and the Alessi Museum.

A designer, entrepreneur, inventor and creative director, Joe Doucet is one of the most sought-after creative talents working in America today. After graduating from the Art Center College of Design, Doucet quickly began exporting his vision into product, furniture, environment, and technology to find solutions for daily and societal challenges through design. His work deftly hybridizes function and visual appeal while conveying layers of meaning and message. Doucet believes that design and, more importantly, a designer’s thought process can play a larger role in innovation and problem solving, as well as aesthetics. He currently holds numerous patents for his designs and inventions.

Doucet’s work has been exhibited globally, including the London Design Museum and the Biennale International Design in Saint-Etienne. He has received numerous international awards, including a World Technology Award for Design Innovation and multiple Good Design Awards. He was also named the only ever AvantGuardian for Design by Surface Magazine. In 2017, Doucet was named the 2017 Winner of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award as Product Designer—the highest honor in his field.

Doucet holds over 50 patents, and as an entrepreneur, he has created and launched a myriad of businesses aimed at making the world a better place through design, including OTHR and Airiva.

Born 1958, Ross Lovegrove graduated from Manchester Polytechnic with 1st Class BA Hons Industrial design in 1980 and took a Master of Design at the Royal College of Art, London in 1983. In the early 80’s worked as a designer for Frog Design in West Germany on tech projects for companies like Sony and Apple; he later moved to Paris as a consultant to Knoll International, for which he created the highly successful Alessandri Office System.

Invited to join the Atelier de Nimes in 1984, alongside Jean Nouvel and Phillipe Stark, he consulted amongst others: Cacharel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes and Dupont. Returning to London in 1986 he has since worked on projects for Airbus Industries, Kartell, Ceccotti, Cappellini, Moroso, Luceplan, Driade, Peugeot, Apple, Issey Miyake, Vitra, Motorola, Biomega, LVMH, Narciso Rodriguez, Yamagiwa, Tag Heuer, Swarovski, Herman Miller, Artemide, Renault, Japan Airlines, Toyo Ito Architects, Kenzo, Valextra, GH Mumm, LG, F1, Samsung and KEF.

Winner of numerous international awards his work has been extensively published and exhibited internationally including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum NY, Axis Centre Japan, Pompidou Centre, Paris and the Design Museum, London, when in 1993 he curated the first permanent Design collection. His work is held in permanent collections of various design museums around the world including the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA), the Design Museum in London, the Vitra Design Museum, in Basel, the Die Neue Sammlung, in Munich and the Centre Pompidou, in Paris.

Sahar Madanat is a Jordanian designer and the founder of Twelve Degrees Design. She is considered as one of the most acclaimed and awarded industrial designers in the Middle East. Having dedicated more than 20 years to the field she has been at the forefront earning recognition for her work showcased in numerous exhibitions around the world. Sahar’s curious nature has led her to approach design with a mindset focused on exploration and discovery.
Her design work spans from healthcare, to wearable tech, lighting, bath and tableware as well as new concept furniture. She has worked with brands such as Nokia, OXO, Stelton and RAK ceramics. Sahar is also a design advocate at heart, she is passionate about supporting emerging talent and fostering design thinking. She actively delivers engaging talks, mentorship programs, workshops, and engages in community and governmental initiatives that leverage the transformative power of design.

Shani Sandy is an artist, multidisciplinary designer, and executive who believes in the transformative power of design. Shani serves as VP, Experience Design at IBM leading design-driven innovation. Her mission is advancing human-centered design with an emphasis on crafting desirable and usable products, services, and experiences alongside cultivating the design culture. Prior to joining IBM, Shani was the Executive Creative Director at S&P Global, where she led the enterprise-wide creative agency, and the creative strategy, communication design, and ux practice areas. From launching her independent design studio in 2002, to present day, Shani continues to explore the many possibilities of a creative calling.

Shani holds a BA in Art History and BFA in Painting and Computer Art from Tufts University along with an MBA from the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. She also attended AIGA & Yale School of Management, Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders.

Shani is actively engaged in the creative and design community, speaking, teaching, and mentoring others and has a passion for nurturing emerging talent. She has been honored by several design institutions including GDUSA and the Design Management Institute and has served as a juror for AIGA, the Service Design College, and America by Design. Her work appears in Stanford University’s Black Graphic Design History Collections.

Shani resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Kevin Williams, a product developer based in coastal South Carolina, graduated with a Masters in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute in 1995. He has since founded several design-focused companies including MAKE, CAKE, Everest Columbarium, Ogosport, and Plan C. In 2006, alongside Rick Goodwin, he started Ogosport, a toy and game company. Ogosport's innovative products are distributed in over 40 countries and have earned multiple nominations and awards, including the TOTY (Toy of the Year) from the Toy Industry Association. Kevin is deeply passionate about design, emphasizing user experience and play value in his work.

Alex Hochstrasser is a Swiss designer and inventor and one of the pioneers of contemporary open-ended toys.

He studied industrial design at the University of Art and Design in Zurich and worked for renowned design firms in Barcelona, San Francisco, New York, and Tokyo. In 2001, he launched his first toy, Bilibo. The open- ended play shell was an instant critical and commercial success, winning a TOTY and numerous other international awards. Alex continued his vision of analog, abstract play objects that encourage children to move and explore with MOLUK, a label he founded with his sister in 2011 - developing an iconic range of open-ended toys that all work together and complement each other. 16 MOLUK toys have won Germany's prestigious spiel gut® award for their unique design and outstanding play value. Alex's work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris, and has been featured in exhibitions at the Vitra Design Museum and MoMA New York.

Jon Levy joined the Spin Master Ventures team in 2021. A passionate entrepreneur in the children’s entertainment industry, Jon co-founded Mastermind Toys, a highly successful Canadian retail toy chain, in 1984. From a niche beginning selling educational computer games for children, Jon’s vision grew into a passion to find the very best of everything kids would be excited to play with and learn from. During his career, he developed a unique expertise for curation, presentation, and marketing toys, defining the Mastermind Toys experience

He now brings his experience cultivating life-long partnerships with toy inventors and creators from around the world and decades of business development acumen to Spin Master Ventures. Jon is continuing his life’s passion to find the most talented entrepreneurs; unique start ups and creative inventors by traveling the world and engaging with disrupters in the industry. At Spin Master Ventures, he is focused on finding the right opportunities to invest in the future of play and accelerate growth through partnering with the aspiring toy business leaders of tomorrow.

A veteran of the toy industry of over 20 years. Selling retailers in all sectors in North America with a focus on trend writing a trend forecasting. My last two projects were launching MIND THE GAP, a game that was acquired by Spin Master and most recently Gel Blaster - one of the fastest growing toy companies in North America!

From prototyping on the shop floor to Vice President of Teague, Lindsey Maxwell holds over twenty years of experience in the aerospace industry. Lindsey leads an interdisciplinary team of over 125 researchers, designers, and engineers at Teague’s Aerospace Studio, and she has been integral in taking the company’s legacy of human-centered design in aviation and expanding it to urban air mobility, space habitats, space travel, and other passenger experiences.

Lindsey is an art lover, design nerd and travel aficionado. But above all, she’s passionate about people. Her greatest strength is building deep partnerships with industry leaders to shape the future of their business and utilize design to create competitive advantage.

Lindsey holds the position of Board Chair of IDSA, the most established Industrial Design Association in the world. Prior to being elected Chair, she was the Co-Chair of the National Women in Design Committee for IDSA. She cares deeply about elevating women in the design industry and continues to support IDSA Women in Design, as well as her own group, Women in Design Executive Team, which offers camaraderie and support for women in design leadership.

Outside of work, Lindsey enjoys being on or near water, remodeling her 1950’s midcentury home, and movie night with her husband and two kids.

After 30 years in various executive and design management positions in the automotive industry, Global Executive Director at General Motors in charge of the Design of the group's eight brands, and Renault Design Director for the Twingo, Clio & Scénic programs, Anne ASENSIO joins Dassault Systèmes in 2008 as Vice President Design Experience. She created the "Design" discipline and design research department of Dassault Systèmes as well as the DESIGNStudio entity, bringing together a multidisciplinary team in innovation strategy through design, experience design, upstream thinking, design research, design management.

Advocating a participatory approach with regard to new technologies and virtual universes, the DESIGNStudio supports Dassault Systèmes’ customers in fast-growing industrial sectors in their needs for transformation, digital and sustainable innovation, towards new business models for a circular economy, towards virtuous design processes, as a manifestation of their value proposition to their end customers. Anne collaborates with designers, artists, maverick thinkers, innovators in diverse industry and public sectors. Imagining alternatives strategies to transform the world we live in in a more sustainable and desirable one, Anne enables cross-thinking, colliding nature inspired and technological approaches through creation and ultimately leverage the value of design for users, citizens and humans’ well-being.

Hillary is an Emmy award-winning, hands-on design leader utilizing bold, disruptive multi-platform innovations to solve the world’s greatest challenges. As SpaceX's first Director of Design, she successfully defined the visual strategy and narrative for human spaceflight in the 21st century through NASA’s Commercial Crew program. She led efforts to conceptualize human experience for future spacecraft, while also leading ground-up product development for the high-speed satellite internet service Starlink.
She is a commercial pilot, astronaut candidate, drag racing record holder and advocate for young women and men entering STEM fields.

Sabine Pannetrat, founder of "Furiously Sustainable", is a creative expert in Color, Materials and Finishes (CMF) Design and Sustainability. She possesses a dual educational background in both materials engineering and industrial design, having received training in France and Canada.

In over 20 years of international automotive design experience, she has worked for Renault, Citroen, Toyota, Lexus, Aston Martin and for over a decade at DS Automobiles - a young French luxury automotive brand part of Stellantis.

She managed the creative CMF design aspects for a wide range of concept and production cars. Additionally, she served as the Creative Director for the DS Automobiles Brand identity during its initial years, overseeing flagship stores, showrooms, artwork, lifestyle products, co-branding, and more. Later, she took on the position of CMF Design Director at DS Automobiles.

Also assigned the task of focusing on sustainable design for DS Automobiles, she spearheaded the development of the DS "SustainObility" design strategy alongside her team. Her passion lies notably in Sustainability in Materials & Design, as well as in broader areas such as collective intelligence and organizational transformation. She was one of the inaugural Collective Intelligence Leaders for Stellantis, contributing to efforts aimed at breaking silos and enhancing the company's performance.

Whether within a company or as a consultant, her (furiously) passionate commitment lies in assisting companies with their Sustainable Design transformation. She eagerly lends support in researching innovative and sustainable CMF, crafting comprehensive global sustainable design strategies, and fostering organizational evolution to streamline the implementation of sustainable design projects. Very knowledgeable about traditional & avant-garde manufacturing processes of materials, she also campaigns for greater recognition of craft as a sustainable value.

On a personal note, she loves learning new languages and indulging in bikepacking.

Sharon Gauci a native Australian, was appointed to Executive Director of Design – Global Buick and GMC on October 1, 2021. An experienced design leader, Gauci has held a variety of different global roles. Prior to her current appointment, Gauci was the Executive Director of Industrial Design at General Motors, a role held since January 2018. In June 2020, Sharon joined GM’s Sustainability Office, where she was one of seven executive leaders working across the organization to implement strategies supporting GM’s Zero Emissions vision.

In her current role, Gauci is responsible for leading studios to create the visual expression and design strategies for Buick, GMC and GMC Hummer trucks, cars, crossovers and SUVs across all of GM’s markets.
In her previous role, Gauci oversaw the redesign of the GM logo, introduced globally in January 2021—only the fifth change in the history of the brandmark.

Gauci is the first recipient of Good Design Australia’s inaugural Women in Design Award in 2019, the first female keynote speaker at Wards Auto Interior Conference in 2018 and the first female to be included as a core judge for the Australian Design Awards in 2005, at the time a 50 year award program. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design in 1993 from Swinburne University in Melbourne.

Gauci worked at both Ford Motor Company and BMW Australia before joining GM Holden in 2004.
In 2021, she commenced service as a Board of Trustees member for PRATT Institute, a global leader in higher education situated in New York City.

Throughout her extensive design career including regional roles and advanced design, Gauci has worked on many global vehicles including trucks, performance cars and mobility solutions such as the award winning ARIV e-bike, Brightdrop and Cruise Origin. Most recent vehicles include the Cadillac Lyriq, GMC Hummer EV, Cadillac Escala, Buick Avista and Avenir – which won the Eyes on Design C&T award.

I'm a strategist who doesn't believe in conned thinking.

I like using provocative approaches and out-of-category parallels to arrive at solutions. I live for problem-solving and apply that kind of critical thinking to both business and brand challenges.

My experience with established brand behemoths and scrappy start-ups— from technology to CPG, B2B and B2C—has given me an invaluable perspective.

While at Nike for 13 years, Alero was responsible for some of the most pivotal brand transformations for the sport and culture giant. Most notably, Alero created Nike's Purpose Marketing division, leading Nike's role in sport and social impact alongside key athletes Colin Kaepernick, Serena Williams, Kobe Bryant and many more. She led Nike New York where she orchestrated the launch of Nike's collaboration with Virgil Abloh at New York Fashion Week-- a first for the brand, and one of Nike's most successful collaborations of all time.
Alero now serves as the Vice President of Global Brand for The LEGO Group. She is responsible for transforming the impact of the 89-year-old Danish brand globally to become a proactive cultural leader through play advocacy, inclusion, and innovation. She has led integrated brand strategy and global initiatives, and campaigns such as Rebuild the World, 90 Years of Play, Play Unstoppable, and Everyone is Awesome. Alero is committed to inspiring a world play movement to ensure creative play remains a birth rite to all children.

Nermin is a brand alchemist, design director, and co-founder of Field of Practice, a women- and member- owned creative studio that designs for change.

A whole-hearted champion for form, function and care, Nermin translates thoughtful strategies into holistic design systems. She’s reinvigorated hyper-local to global brands and led boundary-breaking campaigns for Karam Foundation, Planned Parenthood, Type Directors Club, Dentologie, and the Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity. Her work has been recognized by the STA 100, Typewolf, Brand New, Communication Arts, and Fast Company Innovation by Design. She holds a BSc in Visual Communications from the American University of Sharjah (UAE), and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts, Media and Design from OCAD University. She’s living and working from her Chicago home.

Nu Goteh is a multi-disciplinary creative & designer who works in audio, visual, and written mediums. He is the co-founder of the strategy and design studio, Room for Magic, and co-founder and creative director of partner publication, Deem Journal. Nu’s practice is informed by his love for counter/subculture(s), his background as a Liberian-born refugee, and a lifelong dedication to building platforms that enable communities to engage in shared experiences.