Margaret Lee is a Leadership Coach helping Design and Product executives and practitioners to lead with authenticity and confidence. Prior to coaching with Design Dept., Margaret was a User Experience leader at Google, where she built and led teams in Chrome, Search, and Maps. She led Google Maps UX from its early days as a groundbreaking desktop experience, to an indispensable tool for navigation and local exploration. Margaret also served as Director of UX Community + Culture at Google, a program she founded to serve and empower the company’s global User Experience organization. Decades in the tech industry has shaped her current commitment: to create conditions for teams to flourish and individuals can uncover their unique potential and leadership style. Margaret speaks and writes about her personal journey as a leader, the importance of a healthy culture in the workplace, and our collective responsibility to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Born in Zimbabwe, Farai was going to be doctor but didn’t get the grades. Now he’s a designer. Make of that what you will.
Using words, scribbles, and pixels he’s spent the last 14 years helping design and build products and teams in the UK, South Africa, and Canada.
Today, he makes a living designing interactions and leading a team as a UX Manager at Shopify in Ottawa.
In South Africa, Farai designed banking apps used by many across the continent. He grappled with unique design challenges because most internet users have never used a laptop or desktop. And some buy data by the megabyte.
Farai enjoys speaking about bridging knowledge gaps between designers. He’s appeared at events worldwide, including IXDA Interaction and IASummit.
He organizes Pixel Up!, a series of UX and design conferences and meetups in South Africa. These events connect designers and developers in Africa with their peers around the world.
Also, he adores verbiage, in all languages, township jazz, nerdy hip-hop, and the number 127.

Kim is a seasoned design leader and has worked at companies like The New York Times, Etsy, and Dropbox. She brings a unique blend of passion and strategic thinking to create industry-defining experiences. As part of the XD leadership team at Netflix, she collaborates with a stunning team of designers to entertain the world.

Scott is someone who throws around words like design, product, and strategy, but ultimately just likes working with interesting colleagues on exciting software products for people who need them. In recent years, he has led design at Capitol AI, a startup aiming to modernize and simplify data storytelling, and Azavea, a geospatial software shop committed to civic, social, and environmental good. Some time ago, he designed & stewarded the local search experience on Google Maps for about 4 years. And threaded throughout his career are sundry adventures in design & strategy for startups known & unknown. He lives in Philadelphia and is desperate to tell fewer dad jokes.

Ye-Jeong Kim is a Korean-born, US-based principal designer and UX leader who has continuously navigated IC and management paths across her career. Currently, Ye is leading Gmail UX at Google. In her time at Google, Ye led teams and efforts building products in the areas of Search, Assistant, Android, Geo, Payments, Social, and Ads. As a founding member of Google Now, Google Assistant, and Search’s innovation and strategy UX team, Ye has extensive experience building assistive experiences and molding innovative technologies to help people in their everyday lives. Prior to Google, her focus was on information visualization and building tools for people to collaborate and make sense of data through shared visualization of information and understanding. Ye appreciates her name to be pronounced Yay!, pronounced with a ghost of joy!

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.

Born and raised in Mexico City, Bryony Gomez-Palacio is co-founder of UnderConsideration, a graphic design firm generating its own projects, initiatives, and content while taking on limited client work. Over the last two decades, Bryony has managed the behind-the-scenes of various blogs and design sites co-created with her husband and partner Armin Vit, including Brand New which is devoted to opinions on corporate and brand identity work.

In 2010 the Brand New Conference, a two-day event on corporate and brand identity with some of today’s most active and influential practitioners from around the world, was created. In 2018, they conceived First Round, a one-day showcase of original presentations made to clients showing initial design explorations for logo, identity, and branding projects.

When not hand-making materials for the Brand New Conference, organizing events, or working on client work Bryony can be found heading out of town where she loves to meet new people while conducting workshops, judging competitions, lecturing on all things design, or coaching others on all aspects of life and work.

Dian Holton is a senior deputy art director at AARP where she oversees creative for TheGirlfriend.com, Sistersletter.com, and The Ethel. She routinely contributes art direction and design to AARP The Magazine and specifically cover stories and entertainment related. Her background includes book design, branding, retail installation, styling, and footwear design. Her passions include education, philanthropy, fashion, and pop culture.

Founder of Sterling Design in 1996, Jennifer is a creative director, designer, animator typographer, illustrator, photographer, and educator. Her work is part the permanent collections of The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Library of Congress, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Museum Fur Kunst Und Gewerbe, Hamburg, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art hosted a three-month solo show entitled "Jennifer Sterling: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Architecture and Design". The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museums Triennial Exhibit showcased the creative work of 83 designers and companies including Jennifer Sterling, Apple, Nike, and Martha Stewart.
Her work has been featured in over 180 magazine and book articles, Graphis Magazine named her "One of the Top Ten Designers in the World." GD:USA Magazine named her one of the "Twelve Designers to Change Design into the Millennium". Clients and projects include creating an interactive online design to promote the worldwide distribution of aids awareness and medical distribution to third-world countries for Yahoo Inc. as well as creating the worldwide brand "Vital Voices" for Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright. In 2016 she created campaign collateral for Hillary Clinton's 2016 Presidential Campaign. Jennifer has served as an adjunct professor at CCA (the California College of the Arts / San Francisco), AAU (Academy of Art University / San Francisco), and SVA (School of Visual Arts / New York).

NickyChulo (Nicholas Fulcher) is an Art Director & Designer from Northern Virginia who currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Learning how to draw at an early age, Nicholas was drawn to graffiti, comic books, and video games. He continued to harness his combined love of art & design and attended numerous design classes in high school. Teachers quickly began to take notice and started to encourage his growth which helped cultivate his passion for visual communication. In 2010, Nicholas began freelancing in Washington D.C. and his primary focus was album art and apparel design. From 2013-2014 he attended Savannah College of Art & Design (Atlanta) studying toward his BFA in Graphic Design. After studying for a few years, and honing his craft, Nicholas made the move to New York City where he actualized his passion by becoming an Art Director at Atlantic records. He has carefully navigated his way through the industry and has grown into one of the most sought out visual artists.

Todd Palmer is a strategist, curator, and cultural leader of purpose-driven platforms at the intersection of design, public learning and spatial equity. As Director of the Diversity in Design Collaborative he steers a start-up driven by over 56 design-focused organizations that are aligned to confront systemic barriers faced by Black talent at critical moments in the design lifecycle.

Palmer orchestrated the second and third editions of the Chicago Architecture Biennial as its’ Executive Director, defining the platform’s identity as a global catalyst connecting design experimentation with civic urgencies. As Curator and Associate Director of Chicago’s National Public Housing Museum (2013-2016), Todd ensured exhibits and programs served grassroots efforts to rehabilitate a community site as a cultural framework for confronting poverty.

Palmer’s transdisciplinary efforts have been profiled in range of media outlets - most recently the DID Collaborative under Palmer’s leadership was recognized by a 2022 Fast Company Innovation By Design Award. As an independent creative Todd co-founded Program Collective, the design team behind immersive exhibitions tackling sustainability at the core of Spain’s World Expo 2008. He has also designed urban justice prototypes for Harlemworld at the Studio Museum (2004) and published critical essays in Columbia University’s The Avery Review (2015) and Illinois Institute of Technology’s 2022 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize catalogue. As an educator, Todd has created high school design curriculum for Miami’s Design and Architecture Senior High School, and taught professional certificate and advanced degree courses in design and curatorial practices at NYU and for RISD’s M.Arch program.

Adriana is a mother, design researcher, and educator based in NYC. She practices design research that focuses on elevating the voices and lived experiences of historically excluded and underrepresented peoples and communities. She works in the context of personal care, health, the built environment, digital products, and play. Previously, she supported the global design teams at Colgate-Palmolive to integrate co-design practices to make personal and oral care experiences more inclusive. She is a community advisor at 3x3, faculty and director of programs at SVA’s MFA in Interaction Design, and the homeschool teacher of her 9-year-old son, Rui, who is currently obsessed with dragons, kaiju, hobbits, and Buddhas.

Nootan Bharani is a fierce champion of the continuum of communities and a thoughtful leader of processes to shape places where people want to be. An architect with a deep background in environmental sustainability, Nootan has a propensity toward existing buildings and in-between spaces, and has spent most of her career in non-traditional practice, working directly with neighborhood partners on projects at a wide variety of scales. Nootan is currently the Associate Director of Design and University Partnerships at Arts + Public Life, and a lecturer in the Humanities Division, at the University of Chicago. Previously, Nootan was Lead Design Manager for Place Lab at the University of Chicago where she was thought and practice leader for building projects. Prior to coming to the University of Chicago, she was Managing Director for CB&I Sustainable Design Solutions of Illinois. Nootan is also a volunteer in Chicago Public Schools where her children attend, co-leading initiatives for caregivers of students with disabilities.

Shawn L. Rickenbacker is a trained architect, urbanist and urban data researcher. He is currently the Director of the J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures where he directs the Center’s sponsored and partnership research and is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the CCNY Spitzer School of Architecture. His research and work at the Bond Center confronts the complex urban intersection of spatial equity and the social and economic impacts of place-based policies, programs and design through the lens of urban data, forensic and design research. He’s served as Senior Research Fellow at the Phyllis M. Taylor Institute for Social Innovation, where he researched ‘Artificial Intelligence and The Future of Social Urbanism’, The Favrot Chair in Architecture at Tulane University, Gensler Distinguished Professor at Cornell University and Director of the Motorola Sponsored Future Interactions Lab at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Design. His work and research have been published in The New York Times, NY Daily News and Global Architecture, Wired and exhibited at Studio Museum of Harlem. Shawn holds a MArch with a Certificate in American Urbansim from the University of Virginia where he was the Dupont Scholar and a BArch from Syracuse University.

Stuart Harvey Lee is the Founder of Prime Studio, a Product + Brand design consultancy based in NYC. He started his career as a Mechanical Engineer working in a steelworks before discovering his passion for Industrial Design whilst earning his Masters Degree at the Royal College of Art.

He moved to New York in 1991 and cut his teeth working at both Smart Design and Able Design before founding Prime Studio in 1998. At Prime, Stuart is fortunate to work with a wide range of clients from global companies like Unilever and Bayer to startups like Harry’s and Welly. Most importantly he relishes designing products which make a meaningful difference to people’s lives.

When he’s not designing Stuart can either be found challenging himself to ride the hills of the Hudson Valley on his favorite bike or desperately trying to cultivate his asparagus bed.

Dan consults with companies worldwide on design and innovation. An early proponent of “design for all” (a.k.a. Inclusive Design), he also lectures internationally on research and the future of design. He is the recipient of numerous design awards and has appeared in several documentary films.
Dan holds degrees in product design, ergonomics and biomechanics. He recently established ThinkActHuman, a consultancy named to reflect his goal, design for a better world. He also co-founded 4B Collective, focused on design and gender, and co-founded the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
In other work, he co-authored / co-illustrated the Baseball Field Guide, a bestselling book using principles of information design to explain the complex rules of baseball. He’s host of the successful YouTube series “Well Equipped,” produced by Epicurious for Condé Nast, critiquing in a less-than-serious way the usability of various odd kitchen gadgets.

Helen Maria Nugent has been leading progressive innovation in art and design education for over 25 years. Currently, she is the Dean of Design at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco where she oversees 9 graduate and undergraduate design programs including an MBA in Design Strategy. She envisions the Design Division at CCA as a sanctuary for those with radical curiosity, where wonder and imagination are amplified through rigor and craft.
Previously she was a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she founded the Designed Objects programs that cultivate a reciprocal relationship between products and humanity. In the way-back machine, she was the co-director of the transformative and aptly named, Workshop for Art Research and Practice (WARP), a radical foundation program for artists and designers at the University of Florida.

Helen Maria is also the co-founder of Haelo Design, an interdisciplinary research-oriented design studio that is undertaking the transition from object design to strategic futuring.

Josh Taylor is the CEO of Product EVO, a surfer dude, and a secret weapon for overwhelmed founders and product managers. He believes passion without good strategy is wasted energy. So he's on a mission to make successful products predictable and repeatable. His approach is to align the product development process with first principles for demand generation.

Through Product EVO, Josh has helped develop hundreds of products and solved countless product development challenges along the way. He's created a curriculum for lean market research and product strategy for high-growth companies with limited time and resources.

Outside of Product EVO, Josh is a landlocked surfer. He moves abroad with his family in the summers to chase waves during the big wave season in Central America. He is always looking for ways to expand his thinking about what is possible for his life and take massive action to live that way.

Pepin Gelardi works at the intersection of purpose and possibility, exploring the role of entrepreneurship and technology in solving future-facing problems. He has cultivated a skill set deep in idea development, user insights, concept visualization, form development, hardware prototyping, mechanism design and manufacturing.
As a teenager, Pepin developed products for his family’s injection molding business. He holds a BSME from Columbia University, New York and a Post-Baccalaureate Diploma in Industrial Design from Scuola Politecnica di Design, Milan, Italy.

He Co-founded Tomorrow Lab® in 2010 and leads the Industrial Design and Mechanical Engineering teams to invent and develop new, impactful hardware products. Prior to Tomorrow Lab®, he developed new CPG ideas, products, and brands at Fahrenheit 212 and Procter & Gamble.

After hours, Pepin teaches workshops in design, creates costumes and toys with his twin children, and creates site-specific art with his wife Teresa.

Sabina Weiss is an innovation designer focusing on products that help to channel meaningful experiences.

Currently part of Special Projects, award winning innovation studio on a mission to enhance the unquantifiable aspects of life: empathy, wellbeing, delight, with meaningful design and invention.
Working with brave companies to bring clarity to complex problems, discover new opportunities and transform them into tomorrow’s most loved customer experiences and products.

Through her career, Sabina has contributed to several complex projects – strategically bringing to life brand values, physical and digital assets for companies: Google, Sony, Graphcore, Rolls-Royce, Hyundai Kia, Microsoft, Sabi and Fortnum and Mason.

Sabina holds Innovation Design Engineering MA Royal College of Art / MSc Imperial College London; where her major project was a hybrid craft-technology interface that has received several accolades and exhibition features including Victoria and Albert Museum, Barbican Centre, and Somerset House.

Nishita Gill is the founder of Treemouse, an award-winning strategic consultancy that applies design-led problem-solving techniques to uncharted areas. Over a decade, they’ve been fundamental in scaling design to areas like building systems that help people feel comfortable about seeking treatment for virulent diseases like tuberculosis and hepatitis C, building product feature sets that increase acceptance of digital applications, and enhancing ways to build more resilient and people-centric public systems that reach 1.3bn people in India.

Nishita is passionate about adapting niche concepts and novel approaches for mass adoption and frequently advises startups on building feature-sets that scale. She lives in London and is always searching for the next best flavor of tea.

I am an independent industrial design consultant committed to bringing coherent vision and expert delivery to the development of hardware in connected and analogue spaces.
Across different product scales, I’ve helped ambitious tech start-ups and some of the world's most prestigious brands, informing and elevating their business with robust strategic thinking and industrial craft.
Notable outputs include high-profile civic projects such as the London Olympic Torch and the Elizabeth Line Train interior. I’ve explored future autonomous vehicle experiences with Honda, luxury consumer products with Axor Hansgrohe, and the world’s first fully integrated quantum computing system for scientific and commercial use - IBM Quantum System One.
Most recently with Sky, I led the development of their core hardware proposition, culminating in the delivery of the Sky Glass streaming TV platform in 2021.

Christine Gaspar is a designer and planner with over fifteen years of experience in community-engaged design practice. She was the Executive Director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) from 2009 to 2022. CUP is a New York-based nonprofit whose mission is to use the power of design and art to increase meaningful civic engagement in partnership with historically marginalized communities. Prior to that, she was Assistant Director of the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio in Biloxi, Mississippi, where she provided architectural design and community planning services to low-income communities of color recovering from Hurricane Katrina. She is a founding member of the Design Futures Student Leadership Forum Advisory Board, and holds Masters in Architecture and in Urban Planning from MIT, and Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from Brown University. Her work is driven by a belief that design can be a powerful tool, particularly when it’s used to support community-led visions for change.

George co-founded Greater Good Studio to use design to heal, to be just, to be restorative, Previously, he spent seven years at a global innovation firm before being hired as the first human-centered designer at the Chicago Transit Authority. Since founding Greater Good he guides clients and teams through complex projects that honor reality, create ownership, and build power. He speaks frequently across the US and internationally. George holds the position of Full Professor (Adj) at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

A self-described “technology junkie”, Dan Lion works with major Brands to chart their transition into an immersive 3D future.

Dan has held leadership roles with companies including Kodak, Autodesk, TurboSquid and Technicolor. He co-founded Creative Bridge, a digital location based post-production services business for feature film and television production. He currently serves on the management team for Shutterstock 3D.

Beau is a 30+ year 3D animation industry veteran and respected management professional with a long track record of delivering high-quality tools, services, and support on his partners' behalf. He's developed and maintained deep relationships with all of the major players in the 3D arena including NVIDIA, Amazon, Autodesk, Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, Maxon, Epic Games, and Unity just to name a few, and has been deeply involved in helping bring standards to 3D over the past 20 years as part of TurboSquid, which was acquired by Shutterstock in 2021. He was instrumental in the development of both the CheckMate 3D modeling standard and StemCell initiatives to help train artists on how to create visual content in a more consistent and professional manner so it could be utilized in multiple projects easily. In his role at NVIDIA, he is building a new 3D content creation standard called SimReady to help ensure that 3D art assets can be utilized across a wide range of machine learning, AI and simulation platforms in a consistent and predictable manner.

Brian Gaffney is a seasoned workflow specialist working alongside media and entertainment companies over the last 25 years, including Technicolor, PIX System, CODEX, Turbo Squid, and Autodesk in support of Visual Effects, Games Development, Content Management and real-time 3D virtual production. Brian is a creative technologist who assists artists and engineers in realizing their creative visions and currently works at Unity 3D with the Professional Artistry team.

Jeff has over 35 years of experience in editorial, color correction, VFX, virtual, and augmented reality. He has worked on over 100 films and numerous award-winning productions including: Titanic, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Fifth Element, Avengers, Spiderman, Harry Potter, and Armageddon.

Jeff has worked as part of the creative, production, and post-production teams for numerous companies including Disney, Dreamworks Animation, Marvel, Sony, Warner Bros., Digital Domain, Universal, and New Line. Jeff has also worked on virtual reality projects for the NFL, NBA, and MLB. He is an expert at creating workflows for media projects.

Jeff also worked for Autodesk and was part of Flame, Smoke, and Lustre product launches. He has lectured for universities all over the world speaking about post-production and virtual reality.

An early adopter of digital content creation, John was at the forefront of technology in the late 1980s and 1990s. Utilizing platforms such as Quantel Paintbox and Kodak Cineon for high-end image manipulation, and soon embraced Discreet Logic’s (now Autodesk) Flame and Inferno systems.
John found a home at the CGI pioneer Blue Sky Studios. Starting there with just a small handful of wildly creative thinkers and stayed on for twenty-six years until the studio’s closure in April of 2021.
With close to 40 credits over the years, mostly in animated feature films, John has contributed to many of the family favorites that have entertained millions. He currently continues this path as a lighting and compositing artist at Skydance Animation.
Always with an eye toward the future, he feels it’s essential to remain informed about emerging technologies and how they’ll affect and influence what we’re exposed to, and how we chose to access them.

Born and raised in Long Beach, California, Jaye studied Sustainable Engineering at Stanford and currently works at Emeco in Product Development and Sustainability, where she chairs out of recycled materials. She lives and surfs in Venice Beach, California.

As Product Development Design Director for Gensler, Daniel applies his insights and industry experience to inspire design teams to translate Gensler’s voice and vision into tangible products for workplace and lifestyle environments. Partnering with manufacturers, his team creates touchpoints that expand the experience for which clients rely upon Gensler. He previously led design teams on projects with Arper, Andreu World, Devon&Devon, Elizabeth Arden, Emser, Estel, Fantoni, Gandia Blasco, Knoll, Muraflex, OXO, Targetti, Zumtobel, and many others.

Daniel’s career began with digital imaging pioneer April Greiman, focusing on brand-based design and conceptual work. From there, he worked with legendary product designers Richard Holbrook and Don Chadwick until eventually striking out on his own. Daniel joined Gensler in 2014.

Iñigo Ysasi is a co-founder at Casa Ysasi; a Los Angeles-based creative studio with an emphasis on light.
Iñigo self-taught designer constantly experimenting with new mediums from wood to neon all the way to concrete. He is driven by curiosity and the combination of nontraditional materials in new formats. He moved to LA back in 2016 to join a large technology company while simultaneously pursuing a creative profession in his free time. He worked for a furniture company before co-founding Casa Ysasi with his brother Patricio Ysasi in 2020.

Patricio “Pato” Ysasi is a co-founder at Casa Ysasi; a Los Angeles-based creative studio with an emphasis on light. Patricio is a Los Angeles-based art director and filmmaker whose work explores the intersection of photography, film, and text. Since graduating from Cornell University, Patricio has worked in collaboration with Farm League, MACRO, and Tortoise.

With over 12 years of experience in industrial design, Vincent is focused on bringing to life products that sit at the nexus of engineering and art, combining both elegant form and supreme functionality. He now leads all design at Secretlab, heading the development of the award-winning Secretlab TITAN Evo, MAGNUS desks, monitor arms, and more.

Looking to the future for inspiration, he believes in constantly pushing the boundaries of design and engineering for Secretlab’s next generation of products. Today, Secretlab is at the vanguard of fast and evolving design trends in the gaming industry, leading the way with a relentless focus on improving performance through thoughtful design."

An Industrial Designer based in Singapore, Alvin has over 18 years of experience crafting designs with small to multinational companies. His adaptability over the years has enabled his design experience to span across different and diverse design disciplines from industrial, packaging, and brand to CMF, producing multi-award-winning designs.

When he was a brand consultant, he successfully helped rebrand, strategize, and improve brand equity for various companies in different industries. Prior to joining Bang & Olufsen, Alvin worked with other companies such as Philips and has collaborated with various automotive and lifestyle brands such as Aston Martin, Sony, and Balenciaga.

He continuously strives to stimulate creative thinking, with unique and strategic ideas and solutions, applying them to his work to create inspiring and human-centric designs, focusing on emotive and experiential touch points.

A veteran industrial designer, Li Qing has over 15 years of experience in product development, spanning design research to concept development and production. She has honed her expertise in varied industries, from consumer electronics to medical equipment.

She spent the past 8 years working at ASUS Design Center in Singapore, probing the future and exploring next-generation computing and gaming experiences. Li Qing’s work centers around the ROG Gaming series, where she is focused on bringing innovative ideas and unexpected design solutions to the table to develop new creative visions that chart the path forward for her team.

Nik has a wealth of experience across corporate design teams at Philips Design, Microsoft, and HP, as well as growing several design-focused startups.
Notably, he was part of the founding team at Razer, leading the design group to develop the design language and product portfolio. As well as growing the Razer brand, his design work has heavily influenced the gaming industry as a whole.
Nik now specializes in computational design for 3D printing. He will be especially interested to see similar, new technology and innovation in the applicants this year.

Creative professional with international experience in product innovation, strategic product design and development.

Morgan Hutchinson, MD is the Assistant Medical Director of the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital Emergency Department, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of Education for the Jefferson Health Design Lab where she directs the first curricular design thinking program in a US medical school. She is a creator, educator, international speaker, clinical leader and advisor working at the intersection of human-centered design, medical education and clinical quality improvement. Her work has been highlighted by the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Business Journal, Pennsylvania Medical Society and others.
Morgan is passionate about applying human-centered design to reimagining healthcare. Morgan’s created Jefferson’s COVID-19 Mobile Unit to increase access to testing and vaccines in Philadelphia’s vulnerable communities, and has advised on multiple mobile health programs focusing on primary care, women's health and cancer prevention. She has led multiple initiatives to expand clinical spaces to boost surge capacity; leverage 3D-print technology to meet supply chain shortages, and reimagine healthcare services. She has advised and partnered with diverse teams across industries to find creative, collaborative solutions to challenges in service design, health equity and medical education.

Robert S. Pugliese is Director of Innovation Design at Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health where he co-founded the Health Design Lab, a creative space built to merge design-studio ethos with science-oriented discipline to foster innovation in healthcare. As somebody who enjoys empowering people to be change-makers in healthcare, Rob leads programs that train learners to be health design thinkers and innovators. A Doctor of Pharmacy, Rob spent over ten years practicing and teaching Emergency Medicine. He believes that including both the patient and provider voice is vital to healthcare design. He brings these perspectives to his work through his experiences as a clinician and as a person/cyborg who relies on technology to manage his insulin-dependent diabetes. Rob has presented on the intersection of healthcare and design at national venues such as SXSW and Stanford MedX. During the pandemic, Rob has used his unique experience to lead public health response efforts in response to community needs for testing and vaccination. In his spare time, Rob produces a weekly podcast and enjoys spending time with his wife and three daughters.

Jen Horonjeff, Ph.D., is a patient advocate and the Founder & CEO of Savvy Cooperative. She was named one of the 50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs by Entrepreneur Magazine, alongside Elon Musk and Reese Witherspoon, for her work at Savvy, which helps companies equitably gather input and insights from diverse patients. Jen is passionate about patient co-design as she grew up with juvenile idiopathic arthritis and survived a brain tumor as an adult. She also holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Medicine and previously worked as a health outcomes researcher, human factors engineer, and user-centered designer, and an advisor to the FDA. Jen serves on the Board of Directors for The Sequoia Project, a non-profit focused on health data exchange, the Advisory Board of Trialbee, a clinical trial recruitment company, and numerous other committees to ensure the patient voice is included.

Lesley-Ann Noel was trained as an Industrial Designer at the Universidade Federal do Paraná. She holds a PhD in Design from North Carolina State University and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of the West Indies. She is an Assistant Professor at the College of Design at North Carolina State University. She is co-Chair of the Pluriversal Design Special Interest Group of the Design Research Society. She is one of the co-editors of The Black Experience in Design for Allworth (2022) and has created several design tools for critical reflection such as The Designer’s Critical Alphabet and the Positionality Wheel.

Rachel Smith is a Latinx Designer & Founder of Design to Combat COVID-19, a virtual community of creatives over 2,000 strong—who during the pandemic volunteered their skills and time to support underrepresented communities. By day, Rachel Smith is a Product Designer at Facebook, was formerly a Lead Mentor with The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and previously has worked with companies such as Nordstrom and The Home Depot. The rest of the time, the LA native works on a range of creative projects, both within her local and global communities.

Rotimi Solola is an award-winning industrial designer and the founding partner of SO Dsgn, a Chicago-based creative agency focused on story-driven brand and industrial design. In addition, Solola is an educator, having taught at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago, he values mentorship, community, and design education. Prior to his current roles, Solola worked as a member of Motorola’s Consumer Experience Design team where he acquired much of his knowledge of bringing products to market. Solola stays involved with the design community by giving public lectures, judging design competitions, and mentoring students, and young professionals.

Felicia Ferrone is an architect, designer, academic, and entrepreneur. Her international namesake design brand f f e r r o n e- based in Chicago and Milan- is known for delivering the unexpected through a seemingly simple gesture. Born in Chicago, Felicia graduated with a degree in architecture from Miami University, Ohio after which she moved to Italy. Ferrone’s expansive reach is informed by her early experience as an architect in Milan, where she was first taught to “blur boundaries” in design.

Ferrone's award-winning designs have been widely exhibited, published internationally, and featured in numerous films and TV series. Several of her works are included in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Permanent Collection. In 2022 she was named Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago’s Creator of the Year for her contribution to the field through her design and utility patents. Felicia was also included in Woman Made: Great Women Designs, published by Phaidon, recognized as 1 of 200 women who have shaped the history of design.

In addition to producing and distributing her own designs under her brand, Felicia is the director of Undergraduate Studies in Industrial Design and a Clinical Associate Professor atthe University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Previously she was the Director of Graduate Studies from 2015-2022 and a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) for many years at the beginning of her academic career.

Ishmael strives to create products and experiences that are empathic and fueled by observation, intuition, and collaboration. He has been a pivotal part of the entire process, from research, concept development, production, and manufacturing liaison. Ishmael has accumulated many skills and experience over his extensive career. He has worked with some of the most renowned companies and various industries, from sporting goods to consumer tech, and collaborated with inspiring and dynamic startups. Ishmael focuses on bringing new and unexpected solutions to products and experiences and is passionate about creating holistic design solutions for all. Since joining Microsoft Windows and Devices team, over a year ago, Ishmael has led projects across a variety of categories and new horizons. Prior to joining Microsoft, Ishmael was design lead at MNML based in Chicago, where he led projects for Bang & Olufsen, Logitech, Adidas, Samsung, and many more startups.

Rebecca is the Director of Design for Goesling Group. She works at the intersection of forecasting, branding, and color material finish design to create visions for independent startups to Fortune 500 companies. Her experience spans from home appliances to activewear and decor to consumer electronics. In addition to her applied practice, she produces illustrations for culinary, fashion, and furnishing clients. She holds a BFA in Industrial Design from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign where she cultivated skills in research, artistic development, and technical application.

Zeeshan Hakkim is an Industrial designer born and raised in India based in Chicago, Illinois at MNML. He completed his master’s degree in Product Design Management at ISD Rubika. His passion for design stems from an obsession towards creative problem solving by using, learning and adapting new tools into an ever-evolving design process. He believes that good design resides at the intersection of empathy and craft. Over the last 6 years he has had the opportunity to collaborate with small startups as well as fortune 500 companies to bring to life products from lifestyle brands, medical products, consumer electronics and furniture to name a few. Zeeshan’s skill sets span across multiple disciplines that include industrial design, product development, mechanical engineering, graphic design, packaging design, and branding.

Margaret Lee is a Leadership Coach helping Design and Product executives and practitioners to lead with authenticity and confidence. Prior to coaching with Design Dept., Margaret was a User Experience leader at Google, where she built and led teams in Chrome, Search, and Maps. She led Google Maps UX from its early days as a groundbreaking desktop experience, to an indispensable tool for navigation and local exploration. Margaret also served as Director of UX Community + Culture at Google, a program she founded to serve and empower the company’s global User Experience organization. Decades in the tech industry has shaped her current commitment: to create conditions for teams to flourish and individuals can uncover their unique potential and leadership style. Margaret speaks and writes about her personal journey as a leader, the importance of a healthy culture in the workplace, and our collective responsibility to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Born in Zimbabwe, Farai was going to be a doctor but didn’t get the grades. Now he’s a designer. Make of that what you will.
Using words, scribbles, and pixels he’s spent the last 14 years helping design and build products and teams in the UK, South Africa, and Canada.
Today, he makes a living designing interactions and leading a team as a UX Manager at Shopify in Ottawa.
In South Africa, Farai designed banking apps used by many across the continent. He grappled with unique design challenges because most internet users have never used a laptop or desktop. And some buy data by the megabyte.
Farai enjoys speaking about bridging knowledge gaps between designers. He’s appeared at events worldwide, including IXDA Interaction and IASummit.
He organizes Pixel Up!, a series of UX and design conferences and meetups in South Africa. These events connect designers and developers in Africa with their peers around the world.
Also, he adores verbiage, in all languages, township jazz, nerdy hip-hop, and the number 127.

Kim is a seasoned design leader and has worked at companies like The New York Times, Etsy, and Dropbox. She brings a unique blend of passion and strategic thinking to create industry-defining experiences. As part of the XD leadership team at Netflix, she collaborates with a stunning team of designers to entertain the world.

Scott is someone who throws around words like design, product, and strategy, but ultimately just likes working with interesting colleagues on exciting software products for people who need them. In recent years, he has led design at Capitol AI, a startup aiming to modernize and simplify data storytelling, and Azavea, a geospatial software shop committed to civic, social, and environmental good. Some time ago, he designed & stewarded the local search experience on Google Maps for about 4 years. And threaded throughout his career are sundry adventures in design & strategy for startups known & unknown. He lives in Philadelphia and is desperate to tell fewer dad jokes.

Ye-Jeong Kim is a Korean-born, US-based principal designer and UX leader who has continuously navigated IC and management paths across her career. Currently, Ye is leading Gmail UX at Google. In her time at Google, Ye led teams and efforts building products in the areas of Search, Assistant, Android, Geo, Payments, Social, and Ads. As a founding member of Google Now, Google Assistant, and Search’s innovation and strategy UX team, Ye has extensive experience building assistive experiences and molding innovative technologies to help people in their everyday lives. Prior to Google, her focus was on information visualization and building tools for people to collaborate and make sense of data through shared visualization of information and understanding. Ye appreciates her name to be pronounced Yay!, pronounced with a ghost of joy!

Inna is a design leader focused on designing thoughtful products and experiences. She is currently a Design Director at frog, and leads the North American Industrial Design and Product Design team, as well as the New York Ventures Practice (interim). Her work is cross-disciplinary, with clients ranging from pre-seed to Fortune 50 companies, and spans a broad range of industry verticals and product types, including consumer electronics, healthcare and transportation. In addition to working with clients, she teaches entrepreneurship and human-centered design at NYU. Before joining frog, Inna architected next-generation technologies and brought many products to market as a senior member of Apple’s Product Design team. She is an inventor on multiple patents and a graduate of the MIT Media Lab. She is the winner of the 2022 Women in Innovation Rising Star Award.

Jessica Covi is an Austrian-born industrial designer who specializes in experiential and holistic product design. After her master's studies at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and working in Zurich, Switzerland, Jess moved to New York City to work as an industrial designer at the design firm, frog design. Before joining BMW Group she worked as a design consultant and creative director, with clients such as Google, Hyundai, Unilever, and Anheuser Bush inBev across industries including hospitality, architecture, consumer goods and retail.

Before joining BMW Group she worked as a design consultant and creative director, with clients such as Google, Hyundai, Unilever and Anheuser Bush inBev across industries including hospitality, architecture, consumer goods and retail. She provides creative vision and leadership for multidisciplinary teams creating innovative products and experiences at the junction of design, culture, and product realization.

Jonas Damon is an industrial designer and creative director, collaborating with startups and established companies through his New York City-based consultancy Office for Design. Jonas engages with a wide range of industries, including technology, personal care, furniture & lighting, architecture & construction, food & beverage, and retail & hospitality, interested in outcomes that explore aspects of discovery, engagement, and play.

Prior to Office for Design, Jonas held leadership positions at Starbucks, where he founded the company's first internal industrial design team, frog design, where he led the firm's North American industrial design and mechanical engineering teams, and an earlier iteration of Office for Design.

Kaitlyn started her career at KitchenAid small appliances where she focused on building out the ecosystem around the Stand Mixer including attachments and specialty bowls. From there, she headed to Smart Design, taking a user-centered approach to work for clients like OXO, Gatorade, Leesa, Merck, Shark, Ziploc, Frabill, Tropicana, and Caboodles. Most recently, she led the ID team at Rivian Automotive where she and her team expanded the vehicle’s ecosystem through a suite of Adventure Products, Chargers, and vehicle accessories.

When she’s not designing, you can find her exploring art museums and local running trails, seeking out the perfect cup of coffee, or whipping up a new piece of clothing for her next adventure.

Kaitlyn holds a BFA in Industrial Design from the University of Notre Dame. She is currently taking time off to travel.

Marcelo Coelho is Head of Design at Formlabs and Faculty at the MIT Department of Architecture. Spanning a wide range of media, processes, and scales, his work explores the boundaries between matter and information, fostering new forms of collaboration between human and artificial intelligence.

Marcelo’s work has been exhibited internationally, including places such as the Rio 2016 Paralympic Ceremonies, Times Square, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and Ars Electronica, and can be found in museums, private collections, and millions of products sold all over the world. Recognition for this work includes two Prix Ars Electronica awards, Design Miami/ Designer of the Future Award, Red Dot Design Award, and Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Award. He holds a doctorate degree from the MIT Media Lab.

A design entrepreneur, Beau Oyler is the Founder of Enlisted Design where he works at the intersection of business, data, and design to create product experiences for the world’s most sought-after brands. Such as Allbirds, Samsung, Bose, MrBeast, and Amazon. His work has won every major international design award and can be found at the Museum of Modern Art, Apple Store, and Whole Foods, to name a few. Beau graduated with a degree in Industrial Design from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He also serves as Chief Design Officer at Pattern, where he uses an industry-first approach that harnesses the soul of design and the science of data analytics to create craveable brands that consumers love.

Wonderkind is a marketing, design and photography studio built specifically for consumer brands!

We are a team of 25 gals down in Austin, TX obsessed with brands and the experiences they give their consumers. We specialize in social strategy, content marketing, and design.

We've worked with brands like Hippeas, Bulletproof, Torchy's, MOSH, Sunlife, Yasso, Minimalist Baker, Culina, and 200 more!

James is an end-to-end problem solver, ultimately bringing products and experiences to market that connect emotionally with people and have real, lasting meaning. He focuses on gaining empathy for the end-user and is happiest when developing products with beautiful aesthetics that are just right for their place in the world. James has more than 15 years of experience designing in the consumer and enterprise electronics, CPG and healthcare industries. Currently, James is helping make the revolutionary real at Aruliden. Prior to Aruliden, James was disrupting the world of oral care as the director of Industrial Design and packaging at quip. These days, his passion is leading and empowering teams of designers to do the best work of their lives.

Responsible for some of today’s most ever-present identities-like those for Instagram, Oculus, and Affirm - Mackey has spent his career helping brands of all sizes become iconic through idea-driven strategy, elegantly simple design, and a relentless pursuit of enduring visual principles. After nearly a decade running his own studios in San Francisco and Denver, he became a Principal at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv—the design firm responsible for classic logos including NBC, National Geographic, and Chase Bank. He now runs his namesake studio based in Brooklyn, focused on creating impactful visual identities across an array of industries both locally and internationally.

As Director of Packaging Experience & Visual Design, Michelle is responsible for leading a world-class team of industrial and visual designers that crafts premium, sustainable packaging experiences. Michelle is a mom of three and often thinks about the world she will leave behind. She is passionate about making sustainability progress for Sonos’ packaging.

Michelle led and directed efforts for our latest packaging design system updates, which launched with Sonos Roam. Prior to Sonos, she designed visual identity systems for packaging on the VIBE team at Dell in Austin, Texas. Michelle embraced everything she could learn at Dell and was inspired by the design team she was a part of. Prior to Dell, Michelle built & led an in-house design team for a sunglasses company, which is now part of Foster Grant.

Michelle graduated from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo with a Bachelor of Science in Applied Art & Design and is currently a Packaging Advisory Board member, Industrial Technology & Packaging at Cal Poly.

As VP of Branding & Visual Design at Enlisted, Miri leads a team of visual designers to solve business challenges with design excellence. Originally hailing from Hong Kong, she's our constant source of all things cool. Her insights into consumer audience behaviors and brand strategy keep her team focused and challenged every day. She has led and designed branding and packaging projects for Fortune 500s and emerging startups alike—including Jabra, Diamond Crystal Salt, Linksys, Jaybird, Nestle, and PAX.

Stuart Harvey Lee is the Founder of Prime Studio, a Product + Brand design consultancy based in NYC. He started his career as a Mechanical Engineer working in a steelworks before discovering his passion for Industrial Design whilst earning his Master's Degree at the Royal College of Art.

He moved to New York in 1991 and cut his teeth working at both Smart Design and Able Design before founding Prime Studio in 1998. At Prime, Stuart is fortunate to work with a wide range of clients from global companies like Unilever and Bayer to startups like Harry’s and Welly. Most importantly he relishes designing products that make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.

When he’s not designing Stuart can either be found challenging himself to ride the hills of the Hudson Valley on his favorite bike or desperately trying to cultivate his asparagus bed.

Helen Maria Nugent has been leading progressive innovation in art and design education for over 25 years. Currently, she is the Dean of Design at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco where she oversees 9 graduate and undergraduate design programs including an MBA in Design Strategy. She envisions the Design Division at CCA as a sanctuary for those with radical curiosity, where wonder and imagination are amplified through rigor and craft.
Previously she was a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she founded the Designed Objects programs that cultivate a reciprocal relationship between products and humanity. In the way-back machine, she was the co-director of the transformative and aptly named, Workshop for Art Research and Practice (WARP), a radical foundation program for artists and designers at the University of Florida.

Helen Maria is also the co-founder of Haelo Design, an interdisciplinary research-oriented design studio that is undertaking the transition from object design to strategic futuring.

Josh Taylor is the CEO of Product EVO, a surfer dude, and a secret weapon for overwhelmed founders and product managers. He believes passion without good strategy is wasted energy. So he's on a mission to make successful products predictable and repeatable. His approach is to align the product development process with first principles for demand generation.

Through Product EVO, Josh has helped develop hundreds of products and solved countless product development challenges along the way. He's created a curriculum for lean market research and product strategy for high-growth companies with limited time and resources.

Outside of Product EVO, Josh is a landlocked surfer. He moves abroad with his family in the summers to chase waves during the big wave season in Central America. He is always looking for ways to expand his thinking about what is possible for his life and take massive action to live that way.

Pepin Gelardi works at the intersection of purpose and possibility, exploring the role of entrepreneurship and technology in solving future-facing problems. He has cultivated a skill set deep in idea development, user insights, concept visualization, form development, hardware prototyping, mechanism design and manufacturing.
As a teenager, Pepin developed products for his family’s injection molding business. He holds a BSME from Columbia University, New York, and a Post-Baccalaureate Diploma in Industrial Design from Scuola Politecnica di Design, Milan, Italy.

He Co-founded Tomorrow Lab® in 2010 and leads the Industrial Design and Mechanical Engineering teams to invent and develop new, impactful hardware products. Prior to Tomorrow Lab®, he developed new CPG ideas, products, and brands at Fahrenheit 212 and Procter & Gamble.

After hours, Pepin teaches workshops in design, creates costumes and toys with his twin children, and creates site-specific art with his wife Teresa.

Bas van de Poel is co-founder at Modem, an office for design and innovation committed to creating experiences for a new world. Whether through research papers with institutions like MIT, Harvard GSD or UC Berkeley or its work with clients such as Nike, Google, Teenage Engineering, and OpenAI. Prior to Modem, Bas served as Creative Director at IKEA’s research and design lab SPACE10 where he led large-scale digital transformation and sustainability programs.

Experienced innovation leader with a passion for fostering creativity, building strong team cultures, and leveraging technology for good. As Global Director of Technology Innovation at Nike, Délia brings digital and physical innovation concepts to life by building high-performing teams, shaping digital strategy, and developing streamlined innovation processes. Her 15+ years of experience include time at Netflix, DentsuACHTUNG!, PVH, and Google.

Over the past 12-years, Georgina has worked on an eclectic mix of projects from exhibition design, research reports, digital and print collateral, graphic identities, and book design. Since June 2018, Georgina was the Lead Design Producer at SPACE10, a non-profit research and design lab fully-funded and dedicated to IKEA. For the past three years Georgina was leading Everyday Experiments; a series of digital experiments exploring how advanced technologies can better our everyday lives at home. Georgina is currently working with Creative & Partnerships on the Playful Research team at SPACE10 investigating the potential opportunities that lay between generative AI and design and architecture. Before moving to Denmark, Georgina worked with Natasha Jen at Pentagram Design. She has called Copenhagen home for nearly five years. She is originally from Australia.

Timi Oyedeji is a Interaction Designer & Prototyper working in a unique space where emerging technology meets design interaction.

Natalie Candrian is a Swiss designer, living in Zurich, Switzerland and is currently creative design director at fitness brand OMORPHO and footwear brand SAYSH. Her career has been focused on the world of sport, creating footwear, apparel and accessories for the world’s largest brands and iconic athletes.

Candrian worked with icon Allyson Felix to design and develop the SayshOne, followed closely by SayshSpike, a bespoke track spike for Felix, worn during Tokyo 2021 Olympics where she earned two medals becoming the most decorated female track & field athlete in history. Candrian began her career at Adidas where she designed the signature TMAC 1, 2 and 3 basketball sneaker for icon Tracy McGrady. His signature TMAC 1, 2 and 3 are still being reproduced today having sold with more 1.5 million units.

At Nike she joined the exclusive Explore design group reporting directly to the President, designing innovative concepts relating to consumer and product experiences. Working closely with athletes she changed the game of tennis with the release of Maria Sharapova’s “little black dress”. Sharapova won the US Open title that year.

Natalie is named FastCompany’s 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2022.

For nearly three decades Charles has worked within the context of sports, fashion, and active lifestyle products for leading global brands such as Adidas, Puma, Converse, and Ralph Lauren. With a design degree from Carnegie Mellon, his professional starting point as a product designer has transformed to executive-level leadership shaping vision, teams, product experiences, and global strategies. Charles’ ambition to combine a humanistic design approach with digital technology informs his work.

His consulting business, Driven By Charles, services a range of industries helping startups navigate their vision, corporate product engines shape new experiences, and venture capitalists and incubators in need of expert insight to help guide their investment decision.

Scott Wilson is a design entrepreneur and founder of the brand acceleration and product innovation studio, MINIMAL (MNML), in Chicago. With a diverse background in industries spanning lifestyle, sports, furniture, medical, consumer products, agriculture, and technology, Wilson has a passion for solving problems through beautifully simple solutions that connect emotionally and rationally with users. His studio has received numerous awards and recognition for its 15-year track record of commercial design successes creating billions of dollars in revenue for its clients and partners.

In 2010, Wilson's Apple Nano LUNATIK Watch campaign sparked both the crowdfunding and wearable era and became the first $1 million Kickstarter fundraiser in history, changing the face of entrepreneurialism forever. He has been recognized as one of TIME Magazine's and Fast Company's Most Influential Designers and is a recipient of the prestigious Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award, which is bestowed upon the top designer in the nation each year by the White House.

Tiffany is a driven and curious innovator who brings game-changing products, experiences, systems, and strategies to life on behalf of the brands. Tiffany manages a large team of multidisciplinary engineering and Innovation professionals.

Tiffany has 21 years of experience in the product & process innovation space including consumer goods (Nike, Saysh, Rubbermaid), Automotive (Tesla, amateur motorsports racing), and consumer electronics (Logitech G, Astro Gaming). She has been granted over 35 US patents and has worked alongside some of the top footwear designers, athletes, and entertainers in the world. She also successfully made the transition from the plastics industry to the footwear industry and is currently in the consumer electronics and gaming industries.

Tiffany has spent over 15 years in the footwear space with Nike, Saysh, and her own Youtube Channel reviewing sneakers. She served as the lead Innovator on the Nike Hyperadapt, 2016 Nike Mag (auto-lacing), Air Jordan 29, Tom Sachs Collection 1, Air Yeezy 1, Air Raid Paranorman, Coraline Dunk, and many more Nike Products. For Saysh, she helped in starting the brand by bringing in designers, factories, and various partners to build the product, she also developed their first two products, The Saysh One and the Olympic track & field spike competed in by Allyson Felix in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, where she won both a gold & a bronze medal.

Tiffany is experienced in product development from concept thru mass production of consumer goods. Tiffany has been featured in Wired Magazine (Oct ‘16), Netflix-Abstract the Art of Design, The Today Show, The New York Times, and the book “Sneakers” for her innovative work on Nike’s Electro Adaptive Reactive Lacing (EARL) Technology.

Tiffany grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania and studied at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College for her Bachelor of Science in Plastics Engineering Technology.

Allison Dring is CEO and Co-Founder of Made of Air, a company that produces carbon negative materials to actively reverse climate change. Made of Air was named the Falling Walls 2020 Science Start Up Breakthrough of the Year and listed in Norrskens’s top 100 impact companies, 2022. Allison is an experienced entrepreneur, initiating climate positive technologies and applying them to real world building applications. She is the 2022 recipient of AmCham Germany’s Female Founder Award. 

Previously, as Founder of Elegant Embellishments, she co-invented and manufactured proslve370e, an award winning building product that reduces urban air pollution using only sunlight.

She is a veteran speaker on topics involving technology and the environment, including a foundational TEDx Berlin talk entitled "Ornament & Climate", which launched the idea of storing atmospheric carbon in buildings. She is a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader, and serves as Advisory Board Member for the Falling Walls Foundation, Creating Urban Tech Berlin and the The Lifeboat Foundation.

Avra is a climate tech executive passionate about supporting innovative climate tech startups as they scale. She is an experienced advisor, organization builder, and board leader, including as Director of Made of Air. As the former COO & GC at micro-mobility company JUMP, she led the company from its early inception to its strategic sale to Uber. She is currently COO of Elemental Excelerator, a global, non-profit climate investor and impact organization with over a decade of experience investing in place-based climate technologies.

Cilia Indahl joined the global investment organization EQT during the pandemic to set up the EQT Foundation, an impact first investor and incubator. The foundation provides catalytic capital to entrepreneurs, who are building solutions within climate, health or inclusion and supports research accelerating impact investing. Indahl has a double degree in sustainable innovation and international business from HEC Paris and the NHH and started her career as trainee for the Norwegian Mission to the UN, assisting on the negotiations of the UN SDGs. Prior to joining EQT, Indahl was CEO of the impact investing organization Katapult and Sustainability Director at Aker Biomarine, where she also holds a board position.

Dee Halligan is an accomplished creative strategist with expertise in new models for creative engagement and learning. As the co-founder and Managing Director of Forth, a London-based Community Interest Company, Halligan leads a team that researches and prototypes new ways to promote social and environmental sustainability through creative engagement. Her creative consultancy From Now On, founded in 2009, built a portfolio of forward-thinking community engagement projects with clients such as the National Trust, Marks & Spencer, and Google. In 2016 she co-founded FixEd, a non-profit think-and-do-tank concerned with reimagining creative education for a new generation, winning multiple awards and European Commission research funding. In 2021 a merger produced Forth as a vehicle for an increasingly urgent agenda around engagement, learning, and skills for climate response. Her dedication to sustainability, innovation, and creativity has earned her recognition from the design and education communities, including most recently the Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education.

Ethan Imboden is a sustainability-focused designer, founder, and investor, working closely with the entrepreneurs and leaders building our next economy.
Until earlier this year, Ethan served as VP Design & Global Head of Ventures at frog. He joined in 2013 to found the firm’s Venture Design practice, and its investment arm, frogVentures. Frog’s venture practice drives both strategic growth initiatives with VC-backed startup founders, as well as ground-up corporate venture building for some of the world’s largest multinationals. In 2017, Ethan also took on executive leadership of frog’s Sustainability practice, often pursuing strong synergies with the venture toolset. Prior to frog, Ethan founded, scaled, and exited a VC-backed global D2C product company in San Francisco, across the bay from his hometown of Berkeley. Today, he lives in the French Alps outside Geneva with his wife and two children, with whom he speaks fluent franglais.

Inna is a design leader focused on designing thoughtful products and experiences. She is currently a Design Director at frog, and leads the North American Industrial Design and Product Design team, as well as the New York Ventures Practice (interim). Her work is cross-disciplinary, with clients ranging from pre-seed to Fortune 50 companies, and spans a broad range of industry verticals and product types, including consumer electronics, healthcare, and transportation. In addition to working with clients, she teaches entrepreneurship and human-centered design at NYU. Before joining frog, Inna architected next-generation technologies and brought many products to market as a senior member of Apple’s Product Design team. She is an inventor with multiple patents and a graduate of the MIT Media Lab. She is the winner of the 2022 Women in Innovation Rising Star Award.

Jessica Covi is an Austrian-born industrial designer who specializes in experiential and holistic product design. After her master's studies at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and working in Zurich, Switzerland, Jess moved to New York City to work as an industrial designer at the design firm, frog design. Before joining BMW Group she worked as a design consultant and creative director, with clients such as Google, Hyundai, Unilever, and Anheuser Bush inBev across industries including hospitality, architecture, consumer goods and retail.

Jonas Damon is an industrial designer and creative director, collaborating with startups and established companies through his New York City-based consultancy Office for Design. Jonas engages with a wide range of industries, including technology, personal care, furniture & lighting, architecture & construction, food & beverage, and retail & hospitality, interested in outcomes that explore aspects of discovery, engagement, and play.

Prior to Office for Design, Jonas held leadership positions at Starbucks, where he founded the company's first internal industrial design team, frog design, where he led the firm's North American industrial design and mechanical engineering teams, and an earlier iteration of Office for Design.

Kaitlyn started her career at KitchenAid small appliances where she focused on building out the ecosystem around the Stand Mixer including attachments and specialty bowls. From there, she headed to Smart Design, taking a user-centered approach to work for clients like OXO, Gatorade, Leesa, Merck, Shark, Ziploc, Frabill, Tropicana and Caboodles. Most recently, she led the ID team at Rivian Automotive where she and her team expanded the vehicle’s ecosystem through a suite of Adventure Products, Chargers and vehicle accessories.

When she’s not designing, you can find her exploring art museums and local running trails, seeking out the perfect cup of coffee or whipping up a new piece of clothing for her next adventure.

Kaitlyn holds a BFA in Industrial Design from the University of Notre Dame. She is currently taking time off to travel.

Marcelo Coelho is Head of Design at Formlabs and Faculty at the MIT Department of Architecture. Spanning a wide range of media, processes, and scales, his work explores the boundaries between matter and information, fostering new forms of collaboration between human and artificial intelligence.

Marcelo’s work has been exhibited internationally, including places such as the Rio 2016 Paralympic Ceremonies, Times Square, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and Ars Electronica, and can be found in museums, private collections, and millions of products sold all over the world. Recognition for this work includes two Prix Ars Electronica awards, Design Miami/ Designer of the Future Award, Red Dot Design Award, and Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Award. He holds a doctorate degree from the MIT Media Lab.

Krystina Castella has practiced as an industrial designer, consultant, and is a Professor at Art Center College of Design. Her work centers around designing for play, the intersection between design and ethical business, sustainable materials and manufacturing and entrepreneurship. She is founder of the Design Entrepreneur Network (DEN) a consulting group specializing in design strategy where she has assisted over 500+ start-ups, social enterprises, and organizations since 2004.

She is also author of 12 books including award-winning cookbooks, children’s books, and a textbook Designing for Kids: Creating for playing, learning, and growing. She is a contributor to National Public Radio.

Krystina worked in-house as a designer for Walt Disney Imagineering, FOX Children’s Network, Generra Sportwear, RTKL, and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. She founded several licensing and manufacturing companies that internationally distributed products she designed, including furniture, toys, clothing, stationery, housewares, and soft goods. The Museum of Modern Art, Fortune Magazine and Oprah Winfrey have all praised Krystina’s creative achievements.

Brendan Boyle is a Partner at IDEO, a global design and innovation firm. He’s also an adjunct professor at Stanford. He is the founder of the IDEO Play Lab, a board member of the National Institute of Play, an award-winning author of the Klutz Book of Inventions, and an acclaimed speaker on the joy of innovation. Brendan believes that play is the key to innovation and frequently speaks to creative leaders, entrepreneurs, and students about the importance of playful exploration and risk-taking. Under his leadership, the Play Lab has invented and licensed over 225 consumer products including the best-selling Jumperoo, Elmo Calls, and Pictionary Air.

For two decades Cas Holman has been designing playthings and playspaces that encourage exploration, imagination, and collaboration. Through her company Heroes Will Rise, Cas creates intuitive toys that inspire creative, open-ended play, including the award-winning Rigamajig, a line of playful building kits used in schools and public spaces worldwide. An educator of 12 years and former Associate Professor of Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Cas travels the globe to collaborate with thought and industry leaders in early education, curriculum design, public space, and childhood advocacy who share her passion for creating opportunities for child-directed free play. Her philosophy and approach to designing for play was recently featured in the award-winning documentary series “Abstract: The Art of Design” on Netflix.

Karen Feder is the head of the world’s first international Design for Play Master’s Program at Design School Kolding, educating the next generation of play designers. The program recognizes the understanding of play as a prerequisite for designing high quality toy design. The curriculum is based on research within play and toy design qualified through dialogue with institutions around the world and in collaboration with experienced toy design companies.

Karen is an assistant professor, in the LAB for Play & Design, where she does research in child-centered design for play and how to teach designers to design opportunities for play from a child-centered perspective. Her current research focusses on how taking the starting point in the children and their everyday lives, can lead to more relevant and meaningful design for children.

Marie is a playful chartered engineer, design lecturer, TedX speaker, and CEO of Dream Networks. She founded Dream Networks in 2016 and has collaborated with businesses, schools, and communities to co-design and build engaging play spaces in economically deprived communities around the world. To date, Dream Networks has adopted sustainable design practices to create inclusive play spaces for over 60,000 children in the UK and Africa.

She is an advocate for children's right to change the spaces they inhabit through play and design practices that prioritizes the needs of the community and the environment. In her recent TEDx, she suggests deconstructing the playground and demonstrates how we can collectively make play possible for all by adopting a child-centered approach that focuses on inclusive spaces, playful materials, and local connections. Through her Ph.D. at the UCL Institute of Global Prosperity within the Bartlett school of architecture, she has developed a critical blueprint for cultivating sustainable outdoor play spaces in urban refugee communities that relies on culturally specific co-design, materiality, and ethnography. She is a lecturer on design and innovation at Universities in the UK, Kenya, and the USA. Marie is a Christian, mother, and spontaneous baker.

Yesim Kunter is a recognized play expert and a creative strategist who understands the behavior of people to create new experiences and define new opportunities.

As a consultant; develops “playful” experiences for Fortune 500 Companies, Universities, and Communities by applying ‘Play Philosophy’ to products, environments, communities, and culture creation as well as market research with future scoping; She has facilitated numerous successful ‘PlaytoInnovate® Workshops’ in training organizations with diverse backgrounds from kids to professionals for leveraging Creative Thinking and held talks at prestigious conferences.

Previous to her consultancy she had worked for Toys R Us, Lego, and Hasbro as a play futurist.

As a designer and design leader at Harley-Davidson, Ben has been at the forefront of electric motorcycle design while also having the opportunity to make an impact on new and existing internal combustion spaces through a mixture of evolution and reinvention.

Now, as director of design for LiveWire, Ben and his team focus entirely on the challenge of reinventing motorcycling for the electric future – transforming everyday experiences into urban adventure and beyond by creating soulful products and product experiences that build the new brand and enrich the lives of riders.

In his free time, Ben spends his time reading about sustainable architecture, out in nature, or with his collection of (mostly not running) vintage motorcycles.

Cara Kim is a multidisciplinary creative based in New York City with 11 years of experience coming from the automotive industry. Born in South Korea and raised in Detroit, she studied automotive design at College for Creative Studies. Her experience includes working with companies like Audi, GM, Faraday Future, and Autodesk. Having pivoted to automotive interior design from exterior design early in her career, she values a holistic approach in mobility product design. She is excited to partake in the competition as a jury member to see the fresh perspectives of next generation designers and discuss design with the jury team. Despite her career background as a car designer, she does not own a car but relies on subway trains and her motorcycle at the moment.

Craig Metros is an accomplished automotive designer with more than 35 years of experience. He began his career at Ford Motor Company in 1985 and throughout his tenure, he led the design and development of multiple car and truck programs in countries around the globe. In 2014, Metros was appointed Design Director of North America where he oversaw the design and styling of all North American vehicles including the Mustang, F-Series trucks, the Ford GT race car, and the rebirth of the Bronco.

Since retiring from Ford Design in 2020, Metros has taught Transportation Design at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan, and sits on CCS’ Alumni Board. He frequently serves as a design patent consultant and design expert witness and creates mixed-medium art influenced by motorsports, hot rods, and NASA.

Dylan Buffington is an experienced creative professional in design and marketing with over a decade of industry experience. He started his career as a freelance designer, working with clients from various industries to develop branding, marketing collateral, and industrial design. Later, he moved to a full-time role as a Lead Creative at Specialized Bicycles, where he honed his skills in visual communication and brand strategy. Dylan has been serving as Creative Director for various companies, focusing on creative leadership and management, developing high-performing projects from concept to completion, and creating innovative marketing campaigns that drive business growth.

Currently, Dylan is the US Marketing Manager at Pas Normal Studios, a leading Danish cycling apparel brand. He is responsible for developing brand, retail, and activation strategies. Dylan's expertise in design and marketing, combined with his passion for the industry, has allowed him to drive business success and push the boundaries of what is possible. He is a skilled communicator and collaborator with a deep understanding of the power of design to connect with audiences and drive business growth.

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.

Born and raised in Mexico City, Bryony Gomez-Palacio is co-founder of UnderConsideration, a graphic design firm generating its own projects, initiatives, and content while taking on limited client work. Over the last two decades Bryony has managed the behind-the-scenes of various blogs and design sites co-created with her husband and partner Armin Vit, including Brand New which is devoted to opinions on corporate and brand identity work.

In 2010 the Brand New Conference, a two-day event on corporate and brand identity with some of today’s most active and influential practitioners from around the world, was created. In 2018, they conceived First Round, a one-day showcase of original presentations made to clients showing initial design explorations for logo, identity, and branding projects.

When not hand-making materials for the Brand New Conference, organizing events, or working on client work Bryony can be found heading out of town where she loves to meet new people while conducting workshops, judging competitions, lecturing on all things design, or coaching others on all aspects of life and work.

Dian Holton is a senior deputy art director at AARP where she oversees creative for TheGirlfriend.com, Sistersletter.com and The Ethel. She routinely contributes art direction and design to AARP The Magazine and specifically cover stories and entertainment related. Her background includes book design, branding, retail installation, styling and footwear design. Her passions include education, philanthropy, fashion and pop culture.

Founder of Sterling Design in 1996, Jennifer is a creative director, designer, animator typographer, illustrator, photographer, and educator. Her work is part the permanent collections of The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Library of Congress, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Museum Fur Kunst Und Gewerbe, Hamburg and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art hosted a three-month solo show entitled "Jennifer Sterling: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Architecture and Design". The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museums Triennial Exhibit showcased the creative work of 83 designers and companies including Jennifer Sterling, Apple, Nike, and Martha Stewart.
Her work has been featured in over 180 magazine and book articles, Graphis Magazine named her "One of the Top Ten Designers in the World." GD:USA Magazine named her one of the "Twelve Designers to Change Design into the Millennium". Clients and projects include creating an interactive online design to promote the worldwide distribution of aids awareness and medical distribution to third world countries for Yahoo Inc. as well as creating the worldwide brand "Vital Voices" for Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright. In 2016 she created campaign collateral for Hillary Clinton's 2016 Presidential Campaign. Jennifer has served as an adjunct professor at CCA (the California College of the Arts / San Francisco), AAU (Academy of Art University / San Francisco) and SVA (School of Visual Arts / New York).

NickyChulo (Nicholas Fulcher) is an Art Director & Designer from Northern Virginia who currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Learning how to draw at an early age, Nicholas was drawn to graffiti, comic books, and video games. He continued to harness his combined love of art & design and attended numerous design classes in high school. Teachers quickly began to take notice and started to encourage his growth which helped cultivate his passion for visual communication. In 2010, Nicholas began freelancing in Washington D.C. and his primary focus was album art and apparel design. From 2013-2014 he attended Savannah College of Art & Design (Atlanta) studying towards his BFA in Graphic Design. After studying a few years, honing his craft, Nicholas made the move to New York City where he actualized his passion by becoming an Art Director at Atlantic records. He has carefully navigated his way through the industry and has grown into one of the most sought out visual artists.