Christopher joined Ammunition in 2008, and has played an integral role within the studio’s ID group to create meaningful product experiences for clients such as Beats by Dre, Polaroid, Skype and Sky, as well as numerous startups. In his current role, Christopher focuses on managing Ammunition’s ID team, providing ongoing project leadership, coordination, creative direction and mentoring.

Chad has been leading design in a range of innovative environments, such as start-ups, consultancies and corporations. At Airbnb, Chad collaborates with a small group of highly creative and curious wizards building the future of living, consumption and sharing. After studying in Canada where he grew up, Chad moved to the bay area, where he has been designing products with Fitbit, Microsoft and Google among others for the past 15 years. Chad believes that good design has power in minimalism yet still values warmth and humanity in its perception. For a design to be truly meaningful, it needs to be loved by the people that use it, as well as engaging viscerally and intellectually.

In his spare time, Chad loves designing and renovating his mid century home, riding his bike and cooking with friends.

Chloe Georgiades is a Senior Industrial designer at Cricut, where she is fortunate to spend every day designing tools for creatives. Previously she worked in the consulting world, designing products for startups and Fortune 500 companies alike at NewDealDesign.

Chloe embraces a messy and iterative creative process as a means to achieving thoughtful, polished results.

She is passionate about design education and increasing diversity in the field, regularly mentoring aspiring industrial designers through programs like Offsite and Women in Design.

Chloe is based in the Bay Area where the hills and the weather suit her love of cycling perfectly.

Hanna Bossmark is an independent designer based in San Francisco with focus on making products and experiences that connect purpose, culture, beauty and commercial viability. Previously, Hanna led industrial design efforts at Branch Creative, and also worked for IDEO, Ammunition and Zound, turning ideas to reality for companies such as Hims, Equal Parts, Lyft and Urbanears.


Outside of design work, Hanna is a certified yoga teacher and founder of Space For Stillness, creating tools to encourage meditation practices in promotion for a healthy lifestyle.

Nicolas joined Ammunition in 2014. As a senior designer, he works closely with clients to help shape ideas into elegant, manufacturable solutions. Notable examples of his work include the UNICEF Kid Power Band, the Polaroid Hoop camera, and the Ammunition X Gantri Gio lighting collection.

Originally from a small town in France, Nicolas grew up finding inspiration and beauty in ordinary objects which eventually led him to pursue a career in industrial design. Prior to joining Ammunition, he worked with companies including Decathalon, Electrolux, and frog design. Nicolas graduated with a master’s degree in industrial design from ISD in France. His work has been featured in TIME magazine and was recognized by IDEA, Fast Company, Core77 and the Halo design awards.

David Lipkin is Managing Director, North America at argodesign where he helps new and existing clients with their product strategies. Before joining argo, he co-founded Method, one of the first technology-led, integrated brand, product, and UX design firms. At Method, David's work focused on design of brands, products, and services across digital and analog platforms for clients like Comcast, McDonalds, Microsoft, Google, Gucci, and the TED conferences. This work has been influential on a global scale, setting standards for best practices in design, brand, and products and service design. David lives in Brooklyn with his wife, two daughters, in a creaky 1880s brownstone.

Aaron Day is an experience designer with 23 years of work in sound, vibration and environmental design. He collaborates with strategists, product owners, engineers, designers and artists from around the globe. In 2017 he co-authored a book called Designing with Sound 2018, O’Reilly Media, Inc and is interested in art, music, programming and digital ledger technology.

Aaron has worked across the planet for many different clients in different industries including: Audi, AT&T, BMW, Bruel & Kjaer, Ferrari, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, McLaren, Mozilla, Samsung, Siemens, Sony, Telefónica, Nike, Vodafone and Vision3. Currently he owns and operates Kaidan OÜ, delivering consulting and design to international clients.

Milena Sadée is a Director of Design for Workshop at Airbnb. Prior to this role, she led a 30 person, multidisciplinary team within Amazon Devices that focused on early concept ideation and development across Echo Products, Alexa AI, Emerging Devices and more. Previously she led the interactive team at 2x4, an award winning global design studio with clients such as Prada, MoMA and Nike. There she focused on retail, event, exhibition, and installation design.

After 30 odd years in the global design industry opening doors to new markets through exploratory user research, concept design, and innovation strategies, Niti is pursuing a part time PhD in Product Development at Aalto University, Finland. Her research explores the contribution of collaborative design practices to foster agency and capacity for innovation as a resilience strategy to shocks for micro-enterprises. Her design approach is a transdisciplinary one where participants generate the actionable knowledge for designing their own innovation and transformation roadmaps

Yuko Osawa is a Principal Designer at argodesign in Brooklyn, New York. With a career spanning 20+ years, she has lived and worked in Japan, Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US. Her work spans immersive exhibitions and digital design for subjects as diverse as corporate digital transformation, DNA sequencing, and connected toys for kids. She is inspired by the messiness of complex problems. Outside of work, Yuko is an avid snowboarder, rock climber, and plant mama. Her favorite food is cake. (That’s not a joke.)

Sarah leads a Strategic Foresight practice within IBM design. Her 20+ years of research and practice center on the personal and organizational capabilities individuals and teams need to confidently navigate uncertainty, imagine, and work toward regenerative and equitable futures. She is an intrapreneur who has operationalized design education and practice across enterprise, startup, non-profit, Federal Government, and community contexts. She lives by the ocean in Montauk, New York with her husband Freddie and their dog, Juno.

Omari Souza is an assistant professor in the Communication Design program at Texas State University. He is the organizer of the State of Black Design Conference (online, April 2021). He previously organized and hosted a multipanel event titled "The State of Black Design" (online, Sept. 2020), which drew a live audience of 2,071 — the second-largest Livestream audience for an educational event in Texas State's history.

Omari is a first-generation American of Jamaican descent, raised in the Bronx, New York. Before arriving at Texas State, he gained work experience with companies and institutions such asVIBEmagazine, the buffalo News, CBS Radio, and Case Western Reserve University. He earned a BFA in Digital Media from Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA in Design from Kent State University. Omari's research explores the idea of perceptions and how visual narratives influence culture — how we view ourselves and others around us.

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?

Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar is the Nerman Family President-select of the Kansas City Art Institute.

Originally from Chennai, India, Ruki draws from her international experiences as a designer to reimagine education and improve access to creative career pathways. Most recently, she has served as the Acting Director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design museum. At the height of the pandemic, Ruki was the Smithsonian’s Acting Under Secretary for education, responsible for leading a Smithsonian-wide team that responded to the distance-learning needs of families that were caught in the digital divide. Ruki has also served as the Smithsonian’s Associate Provost for education and was Director of education at the Cooper Hewitt.

Before joining the Smithsonian in 2017, she was the Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Central Oklahoma, where she had advanced from Professor to Director of graduate programs and Chair of the Department of Design.

Ruki has served in leadership roles at all levels of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), including the AIGA Design Educators Community and local and national boards. She has been recognized by AIGA's Oklahoma Chapter with the Fellow Award in 2015 and her alma mater, Iowa State University with the Design Achievement Award in 2021.

Shalini Agrawal is trained as an architect and brings over 25 years of experience in community-engaged practice. She is Founder & Principal of Public Design for Equity, a practice that re-envisions and activates new systems towards equity-driven outcomes, and Director of Pathways to Equity, a leadership experience for ethical community-engaged design. She is an award-winning educator at California College of the Arts as Associate Professor in Critical Ethnic Studies, Individualized, Interdisciplinary Design Studios and the Decolonial School. Shalini’s research and practice focuses on revealing the historical legacies of colonization in architecture and design and dismantling its lasting impacts.

Pickett has spent his career igniting social change. He is the founder and managing principal at Joltage, a social change design firm that champions innovative solutions to social challenges, and serves as full-time faculty in the Master of Arts in Social Design (MASD) at the Maryland Institute of Art (MICA).

Pickett has deep experience connecting and working with communities, for profit businesses, nonprofit institutions and government partners to address complex, systemic social issues.

Pickett holds a Master in Social Work, with a concentration in organizations and communities, from the University of South Carolina. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife and two kids and enjoys woodworking, sailing and sci-fi.

Ian founded Gantri in 2016 to reimagine how design is developed, made and sold. After joining the San Francisco TechShop, he became fascinated with the potential of 3D printing and sought to build a new way for creators to bring original designs directly to consumers that’s simpler, more accessible and more sustainable.

Prior to founding Gantri, Ian led product and growth at Lovely, a design-forward apartment rental marketplace that exited in 2014. He was also a business strategy consultant at OC&C, advising Fortune 500 technology and consumer goods companies.

Ian graduated from the London School of Economics with honors in 2010. He was awarded Apartment Therapy’s Design Changemaker and House Beautiful’s 2020 Visionary.

Eny Lee Parker is a spatial designer based in New York, emphasizing in objects, furniture and lighting, using clay as her main medium. Parker reclaims the essence of making used in traditional craft from our past – the slowness, the intention, the respect for natural resources, creating contemporary objects that brings awareness to our presence as well as to non-living things.

Estelle Bailey-Babenzien is of British and Ghanaian descent and was born and raised in the UK. She graduated from Central Saint Martins in London, with an honors degree in Fashion- communication and promotion, and moved straight to New York City. Since then, she has built her career as a creative director in the fields of music, fashion, and interior architecture and design. In 2015, she cofounded the men's/unisex clothing brand Noah with her husband, designer Brendon Babenzien. Noah has two stores in the United States, two stores in Japan, and shop-in-shops in three Dover Street Market stores globally. Simultaneously, Estelle continues to grow her design studio, Dream Awake Design, which focuses on experiential and interior design, and creative direction for commercial and residential projects and brands. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband and their six year-old daughter, Sailor.

Jeremy Cai was born and raised in Illinois where his entrepreneurial streak began while operating a lending business at his middle school lunch table. Jeremy studied at Babson College before dropping out as an early member of the Thiel Fellowship to pursue a career in technology. Since then, Jeremy has brought many successful companies to life, including Fountain, a leading software platform that businesses such as Uber and Amazon use to hire millions of people each year, Not Pot, a cult-favorite wellness brand, and Tonari , a Japanese anime
studio.

In his current role as CEO of Italic, Jeremy oversees global strategy and culture.

Christina Harrington (she/her) is a designer and qualitative researcher who works at the intersection of interaction design and health and racial equity. She combines her background in electrical engineering and industrial design to focus on inclusive approaches to support historically excluded groups such as Black communities, older adults, and individuals with differing abilities in areas of health, wellness, and community building. She looks to methods such as design justice and community collectivism to broaden and amplify participation in design as a universal language of communication and knowledge. Dr. Harrington is the Director of the Equity and Health Innovations Design Research Lab at Carnegie Mellon University.

Boriana Viljoen is a hybrid UX/service designer with extensive experience in the wellness and health tech industry. Boriana utilizes a human-centered design approach to create experiences that aim to improve people’s lives. Based in San Francisco, CA, Boriana has a passion for displaying complex information in easy to grasp ways, simplifying complicated user interactions, and making digital products intuitive and appealing.

Nadia Beyzaei (MRes, BSc) is a designer and researcher working in the spaces of health and community engagement. Nadia is the Coordinator of the Health Design Lab at Emily Carr University and an instructor in the Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media. Through her role at the Health Design Lab, Nadia has been a communication designer and design researcher on Indigenous health, aging, and complex care projects, while supporting the dissemination of research both locally and internationally.

Nadia holds a Master of Research in Healthcare + Design degree from the Royal College of Art, with her thesis work focusing on how design can enhance engagement in evidence-based medicine.

Through her 7 years at BC Children's Hospital Research Institute, Nadia has worked on a range of behavioural health research projects, including UX/UI projects which aim to improve access to care, and service design projects across clinics at BC Children's Hospital. Her practice focuses on making complex topics accessible and approachable through visual and strategic design.

Rachael is the founder of Social Workers Who Design and speaks publicly about, educates on, and advocates for greater awareness to the value of social work in design, as well as responsible and respectful trauma responsive, healing focused, and care centered design practices and research. Her current work draws from north of 20 years of experience across serious and complex cause-driven social justice issues in health and human rights, student rights advocacy, housing and homelessness services, and teaching and program management at the intersection of social work, social impact, and design in higher education.

Raja Schaar, IDSA (she/her) is Director and Associate Professor of the Product Design Program at Drexel University Westphal Collage of Media Arts and Design. She co-chairs IDSA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council is the past Education Director for the organization. Raja studies the ethical implications of design and technology through the lenses of speculative design and climate change. Her current projects address biases maternal health through wearable technology and participatory design; community-based co-design for engaging black girls and underrepresented minorities in STEM/STEAM; and generating frameworks and tools to embed Afrofuturism, biomimicry, sustainability, and climate justice into Design praxis.

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.

For more than 17 years, Alexis has held a multitude of roles within the design and architecture industry, spanning editorial writing for a home and garden publication, marketing, consulting and client relations. Currently, Alexis serves as Senior Manager at the Diversity in Design (DID) Collaborative, which was initiated in 2021 to foster systemic change by increasing diversity and improving conditions for Black creatives across the design industry. DID is a group of companies united by a common belief in the critical role that diversity plays in creating strong, impactful businesses and innovations in the design world and beyond. Alexis lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two dogs, and is passionate about sustainability, supporting local businesses, and empowering youth.

Hector Silva brings over 7 years of teaching experience at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Notre Dame, the Academy of Art University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Rochester Institute of Technology at their nationally-acclaimed industrial design programs. Recognized for his contributions in academia, Hector was awarded the Young Educator of the Year by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). An active professional in the field, Hector works as an industrial design contractor through his own studio, H Design, partnering with Crate & Barrel, DesignLab, Nickelodeon, LeapFrog, Foster Grant, Insight Product Development, Lund & Company Invention, as well as various entrepreneurs. Hector is also the founder of the design nonprofit, Advanced Design (AD), an organization awarded the Special Achievement Award by the IDSA for making design education more accessible and through disrupting the mediums through which design education has been traditionally offered. AD continues to grow today, connecting students and working professionals to foster a community of design excellence. Most recently, Hector founded Offsite, a 12 week pilot program catered towards furthering design education outside of traditional academia space. This program was developed to translate the needs of the industry into course content taught by design industry leaders. The goal is to help students develop the right skill set and mentorship to thrive on the job and support them along the way.

Joy is a Creative Director at Astro Studios, a brand and industrial design studio based in San Francisco. As a designer, she focuses on crafting compelling stories and experiences that are tailored for brands and people. She works with the team at Astro Studios to build products that bring meaningful and positive experiences to everyday life. Spending much of her upbringing in both Taiwan and New Zealand has given Joy a unique cultural background from which to draw inspiration. Joy has over 14 years of professional experience as an Industrial Designer working in agencies in Asia, Europe and North America. She has worked on a diverse range of categories ranging from homeware, furniture, consumer electronics, health & wellness and medical.

Nicola is an accomplished Designer and Design leader with extensive experience building and leading design & innovation teams for global brands. Having had a Design Career in Automotive design working for brands such as Ford, Hyundai, and Kia she then moved on to Nokia inspired by their global reach and their way of connecting people. For Microsoft Windows and Devices group Nicola built and led a multi-disciplinary, human centered, design team across Design and Human Factors that worked to articulate disruptions, product, and experience opportunities with a focus on edge devices, and looking to ambient futures. Most recently, Nicola has joined Dell Technologies as VP, Global Innovation Studios, responsible for leading the Experience Innovation Studio teams that envision, define, and build differentiated customer experiences and proof of concepts, driving innovation and disruption across Dell’s business units and product portfolios. Nicola has worked and lived as a designer in the UK, Italy, Germany, Finland, and the US.

Raquel Breternitz is an award-winning design leader + strategist with a resume spanning service with the USCIS and as Elizabeth Warren’s Design Director to private sector credits at the New York Times, Pivotal Labs, and IBM. She has also spoken at Lesbians Who Tech, PluralSightLIVE, Wonder Women in Tech, and O'Reilly Design.

Raquel’s work and speaking topics are connected by a passion for accessibility and inclusion, research-driven design thinking, and a hunger for tackling complex and challenging problems. She believes in strong, empathetic leadership for empowered, creative design teams. Outside of her day job, she loves to write, illustrate, make comics, and take pictures of her cat.

Desirée is a designer, speaker, and editor whose practice has spanned a diverse range of spaces in interaction design. She is driven by a desire to push the boundaries of interaction design in service of creative expression, and giving people agency over their own presence and opportunities on the web.

Today she leads teams of product designers at Webflow, a no-code website publishing platform. Her editorial work enables designers to influence discussions about web technologies, standards, and frameworks. In 2013, her design of personal finance tools for funding a college education were the runner-up for the Core77 award in government. She also works as an editor at A List Apart

Jordan Shade is a designer, researcher and leader with a bent towards a business context. She has led work in enterprise design thinking, online learning, community building, the art of facilitation, transforming organizations, engaging experiences for local government, and creating insight-led strategy. She lives in Austin, TX and currently works for IBM. Her other projects include founding the group A Functional Democracy and its calling card 'zine: A Beginner's Guide to Local Government, as well as the art collective and podcast The City Says So with partner Hal Wuertz.

Romello is a Computational Designer located in Washington DC. He believes that computers can make us more creative and that tool building can be a labor of love. In the past, he’s worked with software in various industries from media to aerospace and politics. Currently, he works on the Polaris team at Shopify and teaches in the Graphic Design department at MICA.

Ruihai is a product designer who loves teaching organizations and individuals how to do user-centered design well. He has worked with organizations in healthcare, government, ecommerce, and esports to implement regular user research, accessibility practices, and lean UX. Ruihai trained the first product designers at Ford UK, the FAA, and the US Air Force. He's currently helping teams deliver cancer research data faster.

Outside of work, Ruihai fosters cats, skates, translates video games, and collects vintage Carhartt.

Ryan Swedenborg is an artist and designer based out of NYC, where she currently works for Spotify. Her work takes the form of visual identities, applications, apparel, reports, celebrations, prints, sculptures, and paintings. Being a WNBA fan, collecting Reba merch, and wandering around New York are her hobbies.

Kim is a marketing, communications, and innovation executive with 20+ years of experience driving profitable revenue growth, leading marketing and strategy departments on both the client and agency sides. As the CMO of Common Good, she led the creative agency’s brand, growth, thought leadership, and reputation initiatives. Kim was also the Chief Futurist at Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve, a think tank with over 90% accuracy on predicting the future.

As the leader of The FutureFactor Lab at Common Good, she worked with fortune 200 enterprises and start-ups to help predict, navigate and leverage the future to generate meaningful business transformation, creative innovation, incremental revenue and share growth initiatives.

Gail Anderson is an NYC-based designer, educator, and writer. She is Chair of BFA Design and BFA Advertising at the School of Visual Arts and the Creative Director at Visual Arts Press. Anderson has served as senior art director at Rolling Stone, creative director of design at SpotCo, and as a designer at The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine and Vintage Books. She has taught at SVA for thirty years and has coauthored 15 books on design, typography, and illustration with the fabulous Steven Heller. Anderson serves on the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee for the US Postal Service and the advisory boards of Poster House and The One Club for Creativity. She is an AIGA Medalist and the 2018 recipient of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Lifetime Achievement Award for Design. Her work is represented in the Library of Congress’s permanent collections, the Milton Glaser Design Archives, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Jared is the Global Head of Design for Colgate-Palmolive, and is responsible for driving the cultural transformation towards a design-integrated organization.
Before joining Colgate-Palmolive, Jared co-founded The Velo Group as Chief Creative Officer, was Chief Creative Officer at Fahrenheit 212, Design Director at Futurebrand and Designer at Arnell Group.
He believes Design is a change agent for social good and is proud to work with brands such as Colgate, used in more homes than any other brand, to create maximum positive impact. He is also a proud Kiwi.

Robyn is a mindful creative leader and intentional mentor, working in advertising, content and editorial. She has concepted and directed global campaigns, launched and reimagined brands, and managed creative teams worldwide. With a focus on beauty and fashion, she’s worked with some of the most loved brands, agencies and startups, both in-house and as a consultant. A widely published writer on travel, trends, fashion, beauty, and badass women, Robyn is a public speaker on women’s empowerment and has taught courses in feminist theory, media and contemporary fashion studies at NYU, Hunter College and Hobart & William Smith Colleges. Based in Brooklyn with her boyfriend and their dogs, Princess and Frank.

Janet Lieberman-Lu has more than a decade of experience bringing products to market. As an MIT-educated mechanical engineer and entrepreneur, she's worked on everything from dustpans to 3D printers to bathmats. As the co-founder of Dame Products, she's been a key figure in originating the sextech industry, growing the company into an industry leader while managing the design, engineering, and manufacturing of their products. Her current project, TINKR, is still pre-launch.

Adriana is co-founder and CEO at Lilu. She has a Masters in Integrated Product Design from UPenn and a BSc from MIT in Mathematics and Computer Science. Prior to Lilu she worked at Morgan Stanley's Liquidity Risk software team. She was named one of the top 30 Femtech Healthcare Influencers in 2019 and has won awards such as the SheKnows BlogHer competition (2019) and the AlphaLabGear Hardware cup (2018). She has represented Lilu at SXSW, TechCrunch Battlefield, and PitcHer at GraceHopper, and she's inventor of the Lilu Massage Bra, which was recognized as Philadelphia’s invention of the year in 2019 In her spare time Adriana loves to run, cycle and attempting to snowboard.

After receiving his MID from Pratt Institute in 2005, David Block spent his early career at the well-known branding firm Desgrippes Gobe—now Brand Image—and other elite studios/brands. He founded Studio Redeye in 2013, with a focus on products in the juvenile, kitchen, and sports equipment categories. David specializes in designing products with and for innovative startups with whom he forms long-lasting relationships, helping these companies grow into leaders in their category.
And now, you can understand Dave’s unique aesthetic. A rare mix of high-end craft with grounded sensibilities. He excels at making products that fit into your life, that you can connect with emotionally. His is a proven track record of award winning and exceptional design.

Reid Schlegel is a NYC based Industrial Designer with a solid history working in the design consulting and education space. He is currently an Associate Design Director at Aruliden and previously worked at frog and SMART Design. As a design educator Reid teaches process drawing + digital visualization and Junior Year Studio at the Parsons School of Design and visits Universities to guest lecture and teach his design process methodologies. Additionally, Reid runs an Instagram account with 136k+ followers showcasing his work and other design related content.

After earning her Bachelors in Graphic Design from North Carolina State University, Kirsten started her career as an Experience Designer at Second Story Interactive Studios where she did work for cultural clients including the World of Coca-Cola, the College Football Hall of Fame, and the National Archives. She then moved in-house to the Art Institute of Chicago as one of the founding members of the Experience Design studio, initially recruited to lead the strategy and discovery work for the website redesign. Kirsten eventually became Creative Director, Visual Design where she led all visual design and design strategy work in the digital, print, brand, and environmental workstreams. After six years at the museum, she joined Fjord's midwest team to expand her service design capabilities. Outside of work, Kirsten is passionate about her art practice, rockhounding, birding, and cultivating a native prairie landscape in her backyard.

Chris Lezama is an experience researcher and former non-profit administrator with a deep interest/background in design research and social impact strategies.

Michael Correy is an Associate Director, Creative Strategy at Code and Theory where he applies human centered research and design methodologies to uncover challenges and create thoughtful, engaging experiences.
In a previous life, Michael was a Principal Designer at Chicago based design agency IA Collaborative.
Michael originally hails from Indianapolis but currently lives in Brooklyn. He truly is a believer that immersive and empathetic research is vital to strategic, equitable and impactful design solutions. If you happen to ever encounter him in the flesh, start the conversation off with the Muppets, basketball, or 90s R&B music.

Alisha Bhagat is a futurist and strategist whose work focuses on the creative use of futures tools such as strategic foresight and scenarios planning to impact long term positive change, particularly around social justice. She is based at Forum for the Future, a non-profit, and is a part-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design. Alisha is passionate about changing the narrative around who the future is for - and convenes the Diaspora Futures Collective, a group of POC working on decolonizing, reframing, and taking action for the future. When she isn't thinking about the future, Alisha is an avid gamer and science fiction nerd. She holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and Georgetown University.

Doc Martens is a designer, creative technologist, maker, teacher, lifelong student, and geek working to help people embrace the potential of speculative practice for building futures-agency, the ability to act upon our preferred futures in a complex world.

They are a UX Designer at Teach For America by day and serve on the Design Futures Initiative Board by night. They also organize the Speculative Futures NYC meetup and publish SciFly, a newsletter connecting people to global events & resources related to speculative design, art, and technology. Most recently, they helped develop and teach a new speculative futures framework, Futures x Design.

Holly Friend is a trend forecaster and futurist obsessed with consumer behaviour. As The Future Laboratory’s deputy foresight editor and in-house Generation Z expert, her work shapes the trends intelligence platform LS:N Global, including micro and macro trend reports, renowned Trend Briefing events and Futures Forums. As well as being quoted by The Guardian, The Times and Dazed, Holly also consults on projects for some of the world’s leading brands and presents insight-packed keynotes at industry events around the world.

Passionately Curious, a Reverse Superhero (in defiance of the superhero norm, she attempts her world building & saving by day), Mansi is the Founder of Future Tense Inc., an award-winning futurist and NGFP Fellow. A consummate generalist she experiments in the liminal spaces between the past, present & futures, real and imagined with projects like Variations on Tomorrow and collectives like the Diaspora Futures Collective. A full-stack strategist she researches culture, designs innovative business models, and does scenario planning for brands like Playboy, Bacardi, The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, UK’s largest warranties provider, etc. and social impact orgs like Balipara Foundation.

Susan L. Sokolowski, PhD is the Founding Director and Professor of the Sports Product Design Graduate Program, at the University of Oregon. She has over 25 years of performance footwear, apparel, and equipment design experience; working at Nike, Burton Snowboards, Fila, the US Department of Defense, and tech start-ups prior to coming back to academia in 2016. Her work is holistic in nature, where consideration of the user’s body shape/dimensions, performance, sport, materials, and styling are addressed to develop innovative solutions. She is specifically focused on issues surrounding design of products for underserved populations, including women and adaptive athletes. Susan has been recognized internationally for her achievements in design and innovation, including 40+ utility and design patents, awards from the United States Olympic Committee, Nike and Volvo, and featured product at the Design Museum London.

Carly Mick specializes in manufacturing innovation for soft-goods including on-demand manufacturing. Currently she is leading the fabric development team as the Director of Manufacturing innovation at Skyscrape, a company that created the first of its kind thermally adaptive insulation. Also, a textile addict who spends her free time dyeing yarn and weaving rugs.

Christel is currently a Senior Sports Apparel Designer at Pas Normal Studios in Copenhagen. responsible for the womenswear line. She received her MS in Sports Product Design from University of Oregon (2019), and previously came from a fashion background with a MA in Fashion Design from Designskolen Kolding (2009) and trained at the French fashion houses Chloé and Christian Dior Couture in Paris. She has worked in various creative fields from Apparel Designer, Costume Designer and Product Designer. She is passionate about women's sports apparel and strives to innovate within the space. She is also a ceramist, and her work has received recognition throughout Scandinavia and been published in lifestyle magazines: RUM International, ELLE Decoration, Space Magazine, Politiken, and Cover Magazine. Her work has also been profiled by Vitra and the Centre George Pompidou at Interieur Design Competition and repeatedly funded by the Danish Arts Foundation.

As Principal: Design Ambassador, John is the face and voice of design for footwear, apparel, and innovation at Under Armour (UA), focusing on recruitment, internal engagement, and cultivation of design culture. In his work, John is defining the next ten years of UA’s creative class; establishing a diverse and inclusive community that empowers individuals to reach their highest potential. As a Creative Director: Innovation, John provides strategic oversight in design, strategy, and development of footwear technologies & apparel innovation at UA with a focus on domestic manufacturing, digital experiences, automation, and wearable technology - working in categories such as running, cross-training, basketball, boxing, and space travel. John is a graduate Roger Williams University, where he received a Bachelor of Architecture.

Yuki Aihara has over 20 years of innovation, performance apparel and equipment experience, delivering innovation for Formula One drivers and track & field athletes competing on the world stage to sustainable solutions for future products. He is a critical thinker and meticulous in nature, holistically viewing each solution and value proposition through the persona, user moments, design, product creation, development, manufacturing, and scalability to deliver performance benefits and new experiences. Yuki has held roles with brands such as Alpinestars, Nike, IKEA, and PVH. Currently he is the Sr. Director of Advanced Concepts at Lululemon Athletica helping to inspire and push the boundaries of performance apparel.

Natalie Nixon is the creativity whisperer to the C-suite, helping leaders make better business decisions through wonder and rigor. At Figure 8 Thinking she’s a creativity strategist, global keynote speaker and author of the award winning The Creativity Leap. Real Leaders named Natalie one of the top 50 keynote speakers of 2022 and she’s been featured in Forbes and Fast Company. She received her BA from Vassar College, and her PhD from the University of Westminster. These days you can find her on the ballroom floor fine-tuning her cha-cha and foxtrot. Learn more at figure8thinking.com and follow her @natwnixon.

Desmond Dickerson is Director, Future of Work at Microsoft. He studies trends and market forces to help people understand how work is changing and what is required for them to adapt and thrive in this new world.

Farrah Bostic is a champion of empathetic, co-creative, and collaborative strategy, design, and research. Her focus is on helping business leaders make big decisions, with research as an essential tool for facilitating decision-making, advocating for the customer, and delivering audience insight that field great storytelling.

She was a Group Planning Director at Digitas, led the consumer immersion practice at Ipsos/OTX, led the innovation practice at Hall & Partners, and developed her skills as a strategist at Mad Dogs & Englishmen/Mad Logic and TBWA\Chiat\Day in Los Angeles.

In 2011 she founded The Difference Engine, where she works with clients across business-to-business and business-to-consumer categories including JetBlue, HarperCollins, eBay, AARP, Google, the Financial Times, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PRX, New York Public Media, The US Soccer Federation, IHG, Citibank, and Dow Jones Media Group. She is also an advisor to twofivesix, a content agency focused on gamers as customers and gaming as a channel, where she mentors and leads a team of strategists and researchers with clients including Intel, Sansar, Soundcloud, and others.

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).

Janet Lieberman-Lu has more than a decade of experience bringing products to market. As an MIT-educated mechanical engineer and entrepreneur, she's worked on everything from dustpans to 3D printers to bathmats. As the co-founder of Dame Products, she's been a key figure in originating the sextech industry, growing the company into an industry leader while managing the design, engineering, and manufacturing of their products. Her latest project, TINKR, is still pre-launch.

Adriana is co-founder and CEO at Lilu. She has a Masters in Integrated Product Design from UPenn and a BSc from MIT in Mathematics and Computer Science. Prior to Lilu she worked at Morgan Stanley's Liquidity Risk software team. She was named one of the top 30 Femtech Healthcare Influencers in 2019 and has won awards such as the SheKnows BlogHer competition (2019) and the AlphaLabGear Hardware cup (2018). She has represented Lilu at SXSW, TechCrunch Battlefield, and PitcHer at GraceHopper, and she's inventor of the Lilu Massage Bra, which was recognized as Philadelphia’s invention of the year in 2019 In her spare time Adriana loves to run, cycle and attempting to snowboard.

After receiving his MID from Pratt Institute in 2005, David Block spent his early career at the well-known branding firm Desgrippes Gobe—now Brand Image—and other elite studios/brands. He founded Studio Redeye in 2013, with a focus on products in the juvenile, kitchen, and sports equipment categories. David specializes in designing products with and for innovative startups with whom he forms long-lasting relationships, helping these companies grow into leaders in their category.

Reid Schlegel is a NYC based Industrial Designer with a solid history working in the design consulting and education space. He is currently an Associate Design Director at Aruliden and previously worked at frog and SMART Design. As a design educator Reid teaches process drawing + digital visualization and Junior Year Studio at the Parsons School of Design and visits Universities to guest lecture and teach his design process methodologies. Additionally, Reid runs an Instagram account with 136k+ followers showcasing his work and other design related content.

Shel is Co-Director of Design Thinking for Ford. Her role is to grow the capability, its tools and mindsets, across the company. Her work has also touched the Maverick, New F150, Mach-E and more. She has practiced human centered design and creative leadership for 25 years, with side hustles in performative art and music, community development, and a social benefit company. She often takes on transformation roles where the playbook has yet to be written. Shel is committed to inclusion and anti-racism in all its forms. She advocates a post-scarcity mindset, collaboration, curiosity, reflection, rest, and joy.

Francis Pollara is a strategy and innovation executive known for leading transformative work for industry-leading organizations spanning across the public, private and nonprofit sectors. Prior to co-founding Urban Movement Labs, he joined Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office as the entrepreneur-in-residence tasked with establishing a model and organization that could augment city governing authority to design and deploy transportation tech solutions in real urban conditions. Francis is an investor and four-time founder with expertise in scaling organizations commercializing products, and establishing structure in startup and core corporate management functions. Francis holds an MBA from USC’s Marshall School of Business and a Bachelor of Fine Arts double major in Product Design and Digital Media from Art Center College of Design.

Robert Walker is a global automotive design and team leader. He has worked in the automotive design industry for 24 years as a designer, design manager, chief designer, and design director within multiple global automakers.

Walker is currently the Director of Design of the Advanced Mobility and Experience Design Studio at General Motors Design Center, based in Warren, Michigan. As a global advanced design leader, he guides his team in developing what’s next - future automotive and new mobility projects positioned far outside the scope of existing vehicle programs. Prior to joining GM, Walker held the position of Director of Product Design at D-Ford, Ford’s Global Human-centered Design & Innovation LAB, leading the team in both physical and digital product/vehicle design. They challenged assumptions and questioned the status quo, translating human insights into near and far product concepts for the Ford and Lincoln brands.

He also loves mentoring the next generation of automotive designers. As an adjunct professor at the College for Creative Studies (CCS), he teaches multiple automotive/new mobility and design theory courses.

Master of Science in Economics and International Markets with 10+ years experience in managing innovative projects in automotive, mobility solutions and new technology fields in multinational and in startups contexts.

Passionate about new technologies, always curious towards future developments, focusing the attention on society change and impacts on people.

In free time, photographer for hobby, enthusiast bike-rider and a no-stop traveler.

Dana is CEO of VSA Partners and a guiding force behind the firm's creation of brand programs, digital initiatives and design solutions for its diverse roster of world-class clients. His career has been steeped in design leadership, policymaking, business and brand consulting, and a long record of public service. He has been recognized internationally by multiple organizations for his contributions to design, including the Smithsonian Institute. Dana is past President of AIGA, a recipient of the AIGA Medal, an ID 40 recipient, DIFFA Unsung Hero recipient, a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale, a former board member of the Architecture & Design Society at the Art Institute of Chicago, and founding board member of Project &. In 2016, Arnett worked with the Obama Administration to brand and launch Spark, the first-ever government led global entrepreneurship initiative. In the spring of 2022, Dana and Kevin Bethune are pleased to be featured as season 11 co-hosts of the acclaimed podcast, The Design of Business, The Business of Design.

Antonio García is Head of Design at TXI, and also the founder of Dadwell & Co. He serves as a Board Advisor to AIGA Chicago.

In addition to design leadership, Antonio is a mentor, educator, and lecturer.

If he’s not hard at work, Antonio is most likely DJing, drawing, or training for his next marathon.

Lisa Babb comes from a rich history of activism and social justice through engaging citizens. She has worked in the Graphic Design field and has taught Graphic Design at the collegiate level for more than twenty years. Lisa came from Brooklyn (before it became the brand that it is now) and has lived in Atlanta for more than fifteen. She has a Master’s from Pratt Institute and a Bachelor’s from Baruch College. The same year she finished Pratt, she became a graphic design professor after September 11 changed the world for everybody.

She started at a Corporate Design firm specializing in award-winning Annual reports. Some stops along the way include a commercial catalog company, a marketing group for Seagrams, two sizeable pharmaceutical advertising agencies, a commercial magazine in advertising, museums, and museums. She has designed things as small as a button, as vast as a congressional campaign, and as big as a billboard. She has also designed things as unconventional as a float for the Bud Billiken parade and as functional as a point of purchase display.

Within design education specifically, she has created a Graphic Design department from the ground up. This design leader has made a point of teaching in places that encourage diversity in demographics, ideologies, and models. She started teaching Design at schools in New York City, the last one being PACE University in the Master’s program, before coming to Atlanta and teaching at SCAD and now Georgia Tech. She lives by the mantra “if you want a better world, make one” and truly believes that design and especially design education is one of the few things that can change lives. It is hard even to blink once you have graphic literacy and finally see.

Silas Munro is a Partner of Polymode, a studio that leads the edge of contemporary graphic design for clients in the cultural sphere. Collaborations include the City of LA Mayor’s Office, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Getty Museum, David Kordansky Gallery, Mark Bradford at the Venice Biennale, MoMA, and MOCA. Munro’s writing appears in the book, W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America featured in Smithsonian Magazine, The New Yorker, and Black Perspectives. Munro expanded this research as a co-author of the first BIPOC centered Design History course: Black Design in America: African Americans and the African Diaspora in Graphic Design, which will be published in book form in 2023. Munro holds an MFA from CalArts and a BFA from RISD. Munro is Founding Faculty and Co-Chair for the MFA in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

For more than two decades, Su Mathews Hale has thrived at the intersection of design and brand strategy. Using the power of design to develop inspiring creations while solving business problems, Su has collaborated with a broad range of notable clients including Citibank, Disney, Chick-fil-A, eBay, Hawaiian Airlines, Hershey’s, Hyatt, IHG, Papa Johns, Sam’s Club, Samsung, Shutterstock, Taco Bell and Walmart.

Currently as CEO and Chief Creative Officer of Hale Design, a branding agency she opened in 2019, Su recently led her creative team on Papa Johns refreshed brand identity – the visual reflection of the new tone set by the brand - a more modern, bold, fun, fresh and tasty experience. The friendly, streamlined logo reflects the pizza chain's momentum, introduces flexibility to scale digitally and positions Papa Johns for continued success and growth. Prior to Hale Design, she was a former associate partner at Pentagram, New York, and a senior partner and creative director in design at Lippincott, where Su led global projects spanning the full gamut of brand creation and identity development. While at Lippincott, she served as creative director on the famed Walmart rebranding – a massive brand repositioning and revitalization engagement that contemporized the global retail giant while retaining the values of its heritage.

Su also serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA.