As a Product Development Consultant Cormac has worked with numerous high profile growth startup clients in Silicon Valley including Postmates on the development of the Serve sidewalk delivery robot.

Cormac Eubanks was Vice President of Product Design at Skycatch - a drone company that uses flying robots to create data for customers in the construction industry. Previously, Cormac was the Product Development Director at frog where he worked for almost 10 years. frog is a global innovation firm that Creates and markets products, services and experiences for industries like consumer electronics and computers. Before that Cormac was a Mechanical Design Engineer at Rockwell Collins where he was responsible for mechanical design and analysis of Helmet Mounted Display System for F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and prototyping multiple external visor designs for flight-certified use.

Earlier Cormac was the Lead Mechanical Designer at CVI Laser Corporation from 1999 to 2002. He was responsible for designing precision optical mounts for catalog and custom OEM applications. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering with a Minor in Engineering Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Erik is an Industrial Design Manager at NewDealDesign. Hands-on and fully committed to the craft, Erik strives to push design excellence through all phases of the process. Erik has worked on everything from wearables to autonomous vehicles, building relationships with both small startups and Fortune 500 companies. Notable works include Fitbit (Alta, Blaze, Charge2, Flex2), Helm Personal Server, Postmates Serve Autonomous Delivery Robot, and Solo Gelato.

A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Erik moved to San Francisco in 2012 after spending several years in the medical industry at Keytech inc. When not at work, he can often be found on two wheels.

Greg McNamara is an award-winning designer and creative leader.

He is a founder of Mast, a collaborative product studio that crafts interwoven experiences. They create cohesive product experiences through physical objects and services, that aim to be transformative. At Mast, Greg focuses on working fusing technology and material innovation with his passion for brand storytelling. Recent work includes working on a new paradigm for a connected experience design for Lexus, a wearable platform and branding for Loopd, crafting a new design language for Pearl Izumi's running team, and designing headphones and interfaces for a VUI platform for OV.

Previously Greg was the global head of design & innovation at Sol Republic. Greg led the design team from day one, defining the brand with a small team and shaping product strategy through the growth phase to build a globally successful brand with a passionate following. Greg has been part of teams at Astro Studios, One & Co, Lunar, and Frog Design over the years. Before working in consumer electronics, he was nurturing his enduring love of sneakers as a footwear designer; at North Face in the advanced concepts group, and for New Balance.

Natasha specializes in human-centered design research and strategy. She is passionate about creating services, experiences, environments, and products that help people live better, healthier, and more fulfilled lives in a rapidly changing world.

In 2017, Natasha founded the design and innovation strategy consultancy Blumline, where she and her teams blend creative and scientific research methodologies to catalyze radical and compassionate innovation. Blumline's goal is to shift perspectives and behaviors around ambiguous landscapes like the future of health and wellness, the age of autonomy, and mindfulness in the digital age.

Natasha's service design experience rests at the intersection of mobility, wellness, health, hospitality, and retail for clients including Postmates, Volkswagen, Livongo, Singapore Airlines, Lincoln, and emerging brands in the boutique hotel industry.

Jordan Nollman is a Boston-born, award-winning designer who is inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of design. In his current capacity, Jordan is CEO/Principal of Sprout Studios, Chief Creative Officer at Pawscout, and Entrepreneurs Longevity Club, as well as Founder of the newSprout Foundation – a non-profit that creates mobile apps for charity.

Jordan has designed products and experiences for many of the world’s top brands and design consultancies, including Alienware, Altec Lansing, Altitude, Astro Studios, Burton Snowboards, Coors Light, CVS, Disney, Dell, Dwell Studio, Eleven, Fisher Price, Herman Miller, HP, Honda, IDEO, Jarden Consumer Products, Microsoft, Manta PD, New Balance, Nike, Pogoplug, Puma, P&G, Razorfish, Rebecca Minkoff, Samsung, Staples, Target, and Ziba Design.

Jordan holds a BFA in Industrial Design from Rochester Institute of Technology and his work can be found in numerous publications, ranging from Wall Street Journal to Popular Science.

Bill has devoted four decades to the design and development of new products and packaging for Fortune 50 and 500 CPG brands. His singular focus has been to harness cultural imagination for progressive clients who long for authenticity in an era of high-volume sameness. Using an innovative studio model that blends creative awareness with process milestones, Bill has a long history of delivering client success across a wide range of consumer categories.

As the industrial design lead at X, Matt works with project teams to translate moonshot ideas into hardware solutions. Working at the intersection of prototypes and products, Matt has helped bring some of X’s best known moonshots into the world — from smart contact lenses, to drone delivery packages, to high speed connectivity solutions. Prior to joining X, Matt’s career had taken him to a variety of dynamic design environments including the pop culture deluged gaming hanger of Astro Studios, the strategic lead and high-design focused studio of Fuseproject, and overseas to the culturally rich and fast-paced settings of HaA Design in Seoul, South Korea. Clients included: Alessi, Alienware, Boxee, Burton, British Telecom, Hewlett Packard, HTC, iRiver, Korea Telecom, Litl, Microsoft, Migo, Nike, Ooma, Pogoplug, Purple, Samsung, Targus, among others.

Michel is the Global Design Manager at Drinkfinity and has worked as a designer since 2003. He has worked at various agencies and companies all over the country, from Cleveland to Boston, from San Francisco to Miami.

Monique Chatterjee is a Principal Industrial Designer at Xbox, focusing on limited edition consoles and controllers. Close collaboration with a variety of game studios has allowed her to bring a broad portfolio of expressions and stories to the Xbox product line. She finds never ending inspiration from the microcultures that exist within the gaming universe, and was able to bring true personalization to Xbox fans through the launch of Xbox Design Labs online customization system in 2016. As a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology in 1997, Monique began her Industrial Design career with 7 years in consulting. She worked with a range of clients including HP, Dell, Microsoft, Unilever, Motorola, Symbol Technologies, Black and Decker, and Fisher-Price. In 2002, Monique joined Microsoft’s PC Hardware group to focus on mice and keyboards with emphasis on ergonomics and performance. She eventually led the PC input product line, and grew it to include lifestyle inspired products like the Arc and Arc Touch mouse and the Arc keyboard. When not working, Monique can be found in the woods, on the beach, or in the ocean with her 2 little boys.

Oscar Lhermitte is a French product designer, entrepreneur and public speaker. Having graduated from Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, he now runs his own studio in London. His process questions the role of products in everyday life and results in multidisciplinary outcomes such as product design, consulting, photography, video, exhibition curation, set design and art direction. His work has been exhibited and sold in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Design Museum London, the Conran Shop and the Cité du Design Saint-Etienne.
Since 2012, he is the co-founder and director of Sidekick Creatives LTD, a London-Berlin-Paris based creative agency providing the tools and expertise required to launch Kickstarter campaigns. Sidekick has been nominated Design Of The Year 2014 by the Design Museum London. In 2017, Oscar was appointed Kickstarter Thought Leader amongst 6 other creatives.

He is a visiting tutor at the HEAD Geneva in MA Space and Communication and has previously taught at the Royal College of Art in MA Product Design.

Internet of things author, consultant, public speaker and entrepreneur with a background in industrial and interaction design.

Doing this and that, here and there.

Jenny Rodenhouse is an artist, designer, and researcher in Los Angeles. She is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Immersion Lab at ArtCenter College of Design, teaching for the Interaction Design Department and Media Design Practices MFA program. Her work explores our increasingly immersive, screen-based lifestyles.

Ramon Tejada is an independent Dominican/American designer and teacher based in Providence. He works in a hybrid design/teaching practice that focuses on collaborative design practices. His recent design research interest lies in the areas of disruption of the Design Canon, inclusivity, diversity, collaboration and the expansion and openings of design narratives and languages beyond the “traditional” Westernized paradigm of design. He received an MFA in Graphic Design from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and an MFA in Performance Arts from Bennington College.

Associate Provost: executive leader, strategist, educator
A natural educator, leader, creative problem solver, and business developer with 25+ years of experience implementing story and new media meaningfully in teaching and learning.

Yasaman Sheri is a Designer and Director working with interfaces for sensing. Sheri’s research focuses on interaction of humans, machines and living things, exploring sensing beyond vision, machine perception, networked systems and augmentation of body, objects and ecologies. She has the led Core Interaction Design for the first consumer level Augmented Reality Operating System Head-Mounted Display: Microsoft Hololens and Hololens2 Windows Holographic focusing on intuitive gestural interfaces. She works closely with various companies and organizations including Toyota, Google(X), Ginkgo Bioworks, NASA Ames Research Center and others as facilitator to explore sensing and perception in Design. She is also an educator, teaching Graduate Industrial Design at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Biodesign and Sensory Design at Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design (CIID) and is frequent critic at Columbia GSAPP, Art Center College, NYU, Cooper Union, ZHdK, and Stanford University.

Bryan is an Architect, artist, designer, educator, and Design Justice Advocate. He is the founder/Design Director Colloqate Design in New Orleans LA, a nonprofit multidisciplinary design practice dedicated to expanding community access to design and creating spaces of racial, social and cultural equity.

Paola Aguirre Serrano is founder of BORDERLESS — Chicago-based urban design and research practice focused on cultivating collaborative design agency through interdisciplinary projects. With emphasis on exchange and communication across disciplines, Borderless explores creative civic design and engagement interventions that address the complexity of urban systems and social equity by looking at intersections between architecture, urban design, infrastructure, landscape, planning and community participatory processes. Paola is an active educator, and currently teaches architecture The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Pascale Sablan, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP, With over eleven years of experience, she has been on the design team for a variety of mixed-use, commercial, cultural & residential projects in the U.S., Saudi Arabia, India, Azerbaijan, Japan, & UAE. Pascale is the 315th living African American female architect in the United States to attain her architectural license.

She is the Founder and Executive Director of Beyond the Built Environment, LLC, positioned to uniquely address the inequitable disparities in architecture by providing a holistic platform aimed to support numerous stages of the architecture pipeline. Beyond the Built Environment, elevates the identities and contributions of minority architects and designers through exhibitions, curated lectures, and documentaries that testify to the provided value of their built work and its spatial impact. Pascale was recently appointed to American Institute of Architects New York Board of Director and American Institute of Architects National Strategic Planning Committee Member to set a 2020-2024 strategic plan for the organization.

She has been recognized for her contributions to the industry with several awards, including the 2018 Pratt Alumni Achievement Award, Emerging New York Architect Merit Award and the NOMA Prize for Excellence in Design. Pascale was selected as one of 2018 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Young Architects Award Recipient and was featured in the Council of Tall Building & Urban Habitat Research Paper, in the same company as Jeanne Gang and Zaha Hadid. She was named Building Design + Construction 40 Under 40 and was featured on the Cover of the September 2017 issue of their magazine.

Gabriel Tan is the principal and founder of Gabriel Tan Studio, a design practice working across the borders of craft, culture and technology. The studio is interested in new ways to interpret luxury and break archetypes and clients include Blå Station, Design Within Reach, The Conran Shop, Ishinomaki Lab, Takata Lemnos, Abstracta and Authentics. Gabriel is also the creative director of Japanese furniture brand Ariake and Singapore based Turn Handles.

The works of Gabriel Tan have been exhibited in Milan, New York, Stockholm, London, Paris, Tokyo, Barcelona, Singapore and he has guest lectured at Lasalle College of the Arts, National University of Singapore, University of Oregon, Pratt Institute and also served as a jury member at the Inde Awards and Cannes Lions Festival.

Kilian Schindler studied product design in Germany and France. Werner Aisslinger, James Irvine, and Stefan Diez amongst others have overseen his projects. Since setting up his multi-disciplinary design bureau he has realized commissioned projects for internationally renowned companies in different fields: from product design to furniture as well as exhibition design.

Since 2014 Kilian Schindler is doing the creative direction for TOLIX, France. His works have been recognized with coveted design awards, including German Design Award (gold), IF Product Design Award (gold) as well as the Red Dot Design Award. His designs were exhibited and published worldwide.

Kilian Schindler has been teaching as visiting professor in the Product Design department at -Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung- (University of Arts and Design) in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Kim – has taken a different route to the design business than most. From the Danish Army to many years in the Norwegian Mountains working with tourism – a back injury forced Kim to change profession – and he joined Stokke Tripp Trapp as regional sales manager. Finally in 1998, he came back home to LE KLINT as export manager – and since 2001, he has been CEO.

Signe Hytte is a Copenhagen-based furniture and product designer. The essence of her work is simplicity, aiming to create honest and functional objects that improve everyday life. Her goal is the most challenging and rewarding aspect of designing: reducing a piece to its core.

Apart from working with brands like New Works and Menu, she is Head of Design at the Danish furniture and lighting company & tradition. Her work is a regular fixture at the Stockholm, Milan and Cologne furniture fairs, and she has been featured in design and art exhibitions globally.

She has studied Aesthetics and Culture at the University of Aarhus, and she graduated from the Design + Business school TEKO in 2012.

Svenja Diekmann is the Head of Design for Stockholm-based design brand, Hem where she oversees the brand’s daily design operations, from Hem’s various design departments, to material and color research, to R&D work with their European factory network. She has overseen some of Hem’s most iconic products, such as the Palo sofa, Alphabeta lamps and the Arthur Arbesser blankets and rugs, to name a few. Prior to her work with Hem, she worked with many some of Europe’s leading design firms, such as Patricia Urqiola.

Linda is based in Mountain View, California, where she is an Industrial design lead within Google’s fast-growing hardware design team. She is currently focused on designing Google’s next generation of Pixel and Chrome products.

With a background in consumer electronics, Linda has a passion for designing a future based on innovation and compelling experiences. Prior to joining Google, Linda served as the Head of Industrial Design at Essential Products, a Palo Alto-based startup that launched its first PH-1 smartphone in 2017. Before moving to Silicon Valley, Linda was a Senior Designer with Motorola’s Consumer Experience Design team in Chicago, Illinois.

Linda was born in Chengdu, China but grew up in countries across the globe, including Belgium, Spain, and eventually the United States. She received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Product Design from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. Go Peacocks!

I am the Founder + Design Director of Knack, the illustration studio that helps corporate innovators visualize their product ideas.

Over my 12+ year career, I have seen and worked behind the curtains of dozens of big brand product innovation teams, concepting (literally) thousands of product innovations.

I use that experience to lead Knack's team and help our clients determine what products their companies should design next.

It kills me to see companies waste resources developing bad ideas!

If you're interested in collaborating on product innovation, feel free to get in touch.
Over her 10+ year career, she has seen and worked behind the curtains of dozens of big brand product innovation teams. She and her Knack team bolster these teams by helping them conceptualize and visually communicate product ideas.

While her expertise is ultra-focused, her experiences are incredibly diverse. She's designed a wide variety of products; from one-off yachts for individuals to medical devices for a Fortune 500 company to consumer electronics and housewares, and everything in between. This variety has afforded her a large and deep pool of understanding to cross-reference and pull into new projects.

When she’s not in the studio, she can be found on a mountain bike trail, trying to keep up with her husband on her dirt bike, or exploring the Tennessee river on their vintage stand-up jet skis.

Mike currently serves as Director of Product Design at Playground Global, which is a venture investment firm with an added studio of product development and technical experts. Here he blends his consulting, product design, and entrepreneurship experience to help aspiring hardware startup companies create great products and strong businesses. Prior to joining Playground, Mike worked for Google where he built a team and managed the product design and mechanical engineering efforts first with Android and the Nexus line of products and then adding projects with Chrome and Chromecast. Before that, Mike led product design efforts for startups, created new products and businesses at Lunar Design, and ran his own consulting practice. Through these experiences, he has helped develop products across industries and for many clients such as Apple, Danger, HP, Motorola, and SanDisk.

Mike first realized his passion for designing and inventing products while earning his degree in the Product Design program at Stanford. He later went on to fuel his interest in business and entrepreneurship by obtaining an MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Mike grew up in Montana, and he loves to return to his home state for skiing, fishing, and simply taking in the Big Sky.

Jordan Nollman is a Boston-born, award-winning designer who is inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of design. In his current capacity, Jordan is CEO/Principal of Sprout Studios, Chief Creative Officer at Pawscout, and Entrepreneurs Longevity Club, as well as Founder of the newSprout Foundation – a non-profit that creates mobile apps for charity.

Jordan has designed products and experiences for many of the world’s top brands and design consultancies, including Alienware, Altec Lansing, Altitude, Astro Studios, Burton Snowboards, Coors Light, CVS, Disney, Dell, Dwell Studio, Eleven, Fisher Price, Herman Miller, HP, Honda, IDEO, Jarden Consumer Products, Microsoft, Manta PD, New Balance, Nike, Pogoplug, Puma, P&G, Razorfish, Rebecca Minkoff, Samsung, Staples, Target, and Ziba Design.

Jordan holds a BFA in Industrial Design from Rochester Institute of Technology and his work can be found in numerous publications, ranging from Wall Street Journal to Popular Science.

Bill has devoted four decades to the design and development of new products and packaging for Fortune 50 and 500 CPG brands. His singular focus has been to harness cultural imagination for progressive clients who long for authenticity in an era of high-volume sameness. Using an innovative studio model that blends creative awareness with process milestones, Bill has a long history of delivering client success across a wide range of consumer categories.

As the industrial design lead at X, Matt works with project teams to translate moonshot ideas into hardware solutions. Working at the intersection of prototypes and products, Matt has helped bring some of X’s best known moonshots into the world — from smart contact lenses, to drone delivery packages, to high speed connectivity solutions. Prior to joining X, Matt’s career had taken him to a variety of dynamic design environments including the pop culture deluged gaming hanger of Astro Studios, the strategic lead and high-design focused studio of Fuseproject, and overseas to the culturally rich and fast-paced settings of HaA Design in Seoul, South Korea. Clients included: Alessi, Alienware, Boxee, Burton, British Telecom, Hewlett Packard, HTC, iRiver, Korea Telecom, Litl, Microsoft, Migo, Nike, Ooma, Pogoplug, Purple, Samsung, Targus, among others.

Michel is the Global Design Manager at Drinkfinity and has worked as a designer since 2003. He has worked at various agencies and companies all over the country, from Cleveland to Boston, from San Francisco to Miami.

Monique Chatterjee is a Principal Industrial Designer at Xbox, focusing on limited edition consoles and controllers. Close collaboration with a variety of game studios has allowed her to bring a broad portfolio of expressions and stories to the Xbox product line. She finds never ending inspiration from the microcultures that exist within the gaming universe, and was able to bring true personalization to Xbox fans through the launch of Xbox Design Labs online customization system in 2016. As a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology in 1997, Monique began her Industrial Design career with 7 years in consulting. She worked with a range of clients including HP, Dell, Microsoft, Unilever, Motorola, Symbol Technologies, Black and Decker, and Fisher-Price. In 2002, Monique joined Microsoft’s PC Hardware group to focus on mice and keyboards with emphasis on ergonomics and performance. She eventually led the PC input product line, and grew it to include lifestyle inspired products like the Arc and Arc Touch mouse and the Arc keyboard. When not working, Monique can be found in the woods, on the beach, or in the ocean with her 2 little boys.

Daniele Codega is a Design Director at Work & Co, a nearly 300-person technology and design company with offices in the US, Brazil and Europe. The company partners with Apple, Lyft, Epic Games, Equinox, Mailchimp and others to define and launch digital experiences people love using every day.

Daniele’s known for working with clients on the strategic and systematic design of large-scale digital products. He has extensive experience working at the intersection of physical and digital, media, and luxury for companies such as Apple, Gucci, Samsung.

Prior to Work & Co he was a Product Design Director at Elephant, leading design for various Apple projects. Earlier, he led digital product design for Gucci, Samsung, Reuters, and Huffington Post.

Heather Luipold, is a Creative Lead in New York working at the Google Creative Lab -- a small group of designers, engineers, writers, filmmakers and thinkers who experiment on non-traditional product concepts and ways to help connect people with our products. Heather co-leads a team inside the Lab that focuses on product visioning and experimentation. She's also worked as an adjunct professor in the design department at the School of Visual Arts and the Masters Program at Cornell Tech. Prior to Google, Heather worked in a slew of agencies leading product work for clients like Gucci, American Express and Lexus.

Kristen Dudish is an Executive Director of Product Design at The New York Times, where she leads teams in creating smart and meaningful digital experiences for both readers and newsroom creators. Previously, she was part of the product design teams at New York Magazine and The Knot. She got her start designing and illustrating greeting cards for Hallmark.

Born in Monterrey, Danie is in charge of managing and following up on every single one of Anagrama’s current projects. She is also Creative Director and is in charge of organising Anagrama’s growing design team.

Anagrama is an international branding, architecture and software development firm with offices in Monterrey and Mexico City. Their clients include companies from varied industries in countries all around the world. Anagrama creates the perfect balance between a design boutique and a business consultancy, from focusing on the development of creative pieces with the upmost attention to details, to providing perfect solutions based on the analysis of tangible data. Services reach all of the branding spectrum, from strategic brand consulting, to logotype, naming, peripherals and captivating illustration design, through architecture & interior design projects, and business based solutions around custom developed software. Anagrama breaks from the traditional creative agency scheme, integrating multidisciplinary teams of creative and business experts.

Alex Center is a Brooklyn-based designer and founder of the branding company CENTER. Prior to launching his own studio, he spent 11 years working for the global beverage leader Coca-Cola where he led the strategy and design vision for the brands vitaminwater, smartwater & Powerade. Over his career, Alex has designed packaging that has been in the hands of millions, created award winning identity systems, given talks around the world and once met rapper 50 Cent who told him “You must think you're pretty special.” He got nervous and instantly started sweating. In his personal time he enjoys rooting for New York sports teams that wear orange & blue, eating and instagramming delicious meals and spending time with his wife Jacquelyn De Jesu and their zero kids and zero pets.

Cristie Stevens is a Los Angeles based designer, art director and editor of Studio A/C; a curated online platform showcasing the world's most beautiful branding, print, and packaging design. Cristie also heads up Alternating Current; a design studio specializing in creating and elevating brands through strategically-led visual identity, packaging, and digital design.

Daniel started working in Futura as a designer in 2013 at the same time he concluded his studies in Monterrey, Mexico. 5 years later, now in Mexico City, Daniel is in charge of art direction and coordinating the team.

José Bernabé is a Designer & Illustrator based in the city of Amsterdam focus on custom typography, lettering and illustration.

He uses a mix of typography, lettering and illustration, into digital and traditional techniques, achieving vibrant visual solutions and flexible in styles depending of the communication to deliver.

Since he moved to Amsterdam He has worked for some remarkable agencies like JWT Amsterdam and Havas Worldwide making artwork for main brands like ING, BMW, Unilever...

Now running his own studio, José has made work for brands like Nike, Adobe, Nickelodeon, Amazon, FWA, Old Spice, Adidas, KLM, XXL, SteelSeries, Gategroup, Hither & Yon, Citroën, Nutricia, Dalí Speakers, MediaMonks among others.

Linda is based in Mountain View, California, where she is an Industrial design lead within Google’s fast-growing hardware design team. She is currently focused on designing Google’s next generation of Pixel and Chrome products.

With a background in consumer electronics, Linda has a passion for designing a future based on innovation and compelling experiences. Prior to joining Google, Linda served as the Head of Industrial Design at Essential Products, a Palo Alto-based startup that launched its first PH-1 smartphone in 2017. Before moving to Silicon Valley, Linda was a Senior Designer with Motorola’s Consumer Experience Design team in Chicago, Illinois.

Linda was born in Chengdu, China but grew up in countries across the globe, including Belgium, Spain, and eventually the United States. She received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Product Design from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. Go Peacocks!

Kelly Custer is the Founder and Creative Director of Knack, a product design studio with passion for products that move. Whether for a startup, a major corporation or anything in between, Kelly leads her team in designing user-centric products that build desire.

Driven by the belief that design powerfully impacts people and business, Kelly’s mission is not only to prove the value of good design to the world, but to shake up the way designers work
while she’s at it. Her approach brings new energy, empowerment and mentoring to her teams.

Kelly earned a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Transportation Design from the College for Creative Studies in the “Motor City”, Detroit, MI. That motor oil runs through her veins!

Mike currently serves as Director of Product Design at Playground Global, which is a venture investment firm with an added studio of product development and technical experts. Here he blends his consulting, product design, and entrepreneurship experience to help aspiring hardware startup companies create great products and strong businesses. Prior to joining Playground, Mike worked for Google where he built a team and managed the product design and mechanical engineering efforts first with Android and the Nexus line of products and then adding projects with Chrome and Chromecast. Before that, Mike led product design efforts for startups, created new products and businesses at Lunar Design, and ran his own consulting practice. Through these experiences, he has helped develop products across industries and for many clients such as Apple, Danger, HP, Motorola, and SanDisk.

Mike first realized his passion for designing and inventing products while earning his degree in the Product Design program at Stanford. He later went on to fuel his interest in business and entrepreneurship by obtaining an MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Mike grew up in Montana, and he loves to return to his home state for skiing, fishing, and simply taking in the Big Sky.

Bo is a product leader, writer, and angel investor. She is currently director of product at Bravely, building a human-centric and behavioral-driven platform that helps people find meaning in their professional lives. At Tumblr she redesigned the core creative tools, and at Facebook launched Facebook Notes and Instagram monetization tools. She has helped organizations scale from series A to IPO at Sunrun and Opower. She writes and speaks about product management, liberal arts thinking, and diversity and inclusion. Her work has been published in the Atlantic, New York Times, and Fast Company. She is passionate about leveraging her product background to help founders as an investor and product advisor. She tweets at @bosefina and writes on Medium.

Chiara has been working as a product manager for the past 5 years but she’s a service designer by training. She currently leads two teams at Workplace by Facebook (Facebook’s internal communication platform for companies). Like most PMs she has quite a diverse background: before Facebook she was a service design consultant, a pricing marketeer and a tutor at the University of Bologna (Engineering). She also designs and produces her own clothes in her spare time.

Chiara holds a BA in Communication Design and a MSc in Product Service System Design both from Politecnico di Milano. She’s fluent in Italian, English and Spanish.

Dan Wu is a privacy lawyer with a JD and PhD from Harvard. TechCrunch, The Multifamily Executive, Hackernoon, Columbia Public Policy Review, and Shareable have featured his research on how technology and law can advance affordable housing and transit. He works on data ethics and product at a leading data governance startup.

Stacy was previously the Director of Design at Clover Health, where she led the design team's vision, strategy, and direction. As an early employee, she helped scale the company from 4 employees to 500+ in 4 years. Prior to Clover, she was a Design Lead at Yammer (acquired by Microsoft) and has designed for Fortune 500 companies including Facebook, Google, and Intuit.
She is currently consulting at Resolve to Save Lives, a global health initiative based in New York.

Yosuke is a creative technologist based in London and Director at Takram, a design innovation firm based in Tokyo and London. His primary interests are centred around emerging technologies. He probes future visions that they promise, reveals the cultural and political mechanisms behind them, and illustrates insights through making various prototypes. By doing so, he aims to facilitate in-depth understanding of the implication of emerging technologies, and encourage better-informed decision-making on our future.

Phil has been a practicing visual & interaction designer since 2001 and has experience designing across a variety of devices and platforms within non-profit, retail, advertising, and enterprise software organizations. He is currently an Experience Design Director at McKinsey & Company working with a variety of industries to transform and enhance their digital businesses and strategies. He is also the founder and organizer of the Design Futures Initiative which organizes the international Speculative Futures meetups and the PRIMER conference in the US and Europe. An educator and futurist, his events bring together designers and futurists from all over the world to teach and share strategies for designing for the future and the ethical challenges around emerging technologies.

Sarah is a leading expert in emerging issues and trends in privacy, security and technology. She has a growing, well founded reputation for her honest commitment to changing the way personal data is managed. Sarah recently spoke to a Parliamentary Select Committee, challenging ideas about data sharing and accountability within machine learning.

Jordan Nollman is a Boston-born, award-winning designer who is inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of design. In his current capacity, Jordan is CEO/Principal of Sprout Studios, Chief Creative Officer at Pawscout, and Entrepreneurs Longevity Club, as well as Founder of the newSprout Foundation – a non-profit that creates mobile apps for charity.

Jordan has designed products and experiences for many of the world’s top brands and design consultancies, including Alienware, Altec Lansing, Altitude, Astro Studios, Burton Snowboards, Coors Light, CVS, Disney, Dell, Dwell Studio, Eleven, Fisher Price, Herman Miller, HP, Honda, IDEO, Jarden Consumer Products, Microsoft, Manta PD, New Balance, Nike, Pogoplug, Puma, P&G, Razorfish, Rebecca Minkoff, Samsung, Staples, Target, and Ziba Design.

Jordan holds a BFA in Industrial Design from Rochester Institute of Technology and his work can be found in numerous publications, ranging from Wall Street Journal to Popular Science.

Bill has devoted four decades to the design and development of new products and packaging for Fortune 50 and 500 CPG brands. His singular focus has been to harness cultural imagination for progressive clients who long for authenticity in an era of high-volume sameness. Using an innovative studio model that blends creative awareness with process milestones, Bill has a long history of delivering client success across a wide range of consumer categories.

As the industrial design lead at X, Matt works with project teams to translate moonshot ideas into hardware solutions. Working at the intersection of prototypes and products, Matt has helped bring some of X’s best known moonshots into the world — from smart contact lenses, to drone delivery packages, to high speed connectivity solutions. Prior to joining X, Matt’s career had taken him to a variety of dynamic design environments including the pop culture deluged gaming hanger of Astro Studios, the strategic lead and high-design focused studio of Fuseproject, and overseas to the culturally rich and fast-paced settings of HaA Design in Seoul, South Korea. Clients included: Alessi, Alienware, Boxee, Burton, British Telecom, Hewlett Packard, HTC, iRiver, Korea Telecom, Litl, Microsoft, Migo, Nike, Ooma, Pogoplug, Purple, Samsung, Targus, among others.

Michel is the Global Design Manager at Drinkfinity and has worked as a designer since 2003. He has worked at various agencies and companies all over the country, from Cleveland to Boston, from San Francisco to Miami.

Monique Chatterjee is a Principal Industrial Designer at Xbox, focusing on limited edition consoles and controllers. Close collaboration with a variety of game studios has allowed her to bring a broad portfolio of expressions and stories to the Xbox product line. She finds never ending inspiration from the microcultures that exist within the gaming universe, and was able to bring true personalization to Xbox fans through the launch of Xbox Design Labs online customization system in 2016. As a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology in 1997, Monique began her Industrial Design career with 7 years in consulting. She worked with a range of clients including HP, Dell, Microsoft, Unilever, Motorola, Symbol Technologies, Black and Decker, and Fisher-Price. In 2002, Monique joined Microsoft’s PC Hardware group to focus on mice and keyboards with emphasis on ergonomics and performance. She eventually led the PC input product line, and grew it to include lifestyle inspired products like the Arc and Arc Touch mouse and the Arc keyboard. When not working, Monique can be found in the woods, on the beach, or in the ocean with her 2 little boys.

Gabe is a Cuban Product Designer based in New York, currently exploring how technology could make people safer at Jigsaw. Prior to that, he explored social VR and content creation at Facebook, as well as smart driving at Automatic. He’s passionate about design mentorship, empowering diverse perspectives, and creating transformative experiences through the power of storytelling.

Barton is a Product Designer based in New York, many miles from his hometown in Australia. He's currently at Spotify designing creative tools for artists and previously worked at FiftyThree, Facebook and Fuseproject. He equally loves working on complex systems and dynamic interfaces, and spends a lot of time thinking about the movement of culture, trends and ideas.

Kristin is a product designer based in New York. Before transitioning into a product design role, she worked as a User Experience Researcher at Facebook and Refinery29. She is passionate about mission-driven technology and in her free time volunteers as a designer for Tech of Campaigns, an organization that connects tech workers with state-level political campaigns.

Linda is based in Mountain View, California, where she is an Industrial design lead within Google’s fast-growing hardware design team. She is currently focused on designing Google’s next generation of Pixel and Chrome products.

With a background in consumer electronics, Linda has a passion for designing a future based on innovation and compelling experiences. Prior to joining Google, Linda served as the Head of Industrial Design at Essential Products, a Palo Alto-based startup that launched its first PH-1 smartphone in 2017. Before moving to Silicon Valley, Linda was a Senior Designer with Motorola’s Consumer Experience Design team in Chicago, Illinois.

Linda was born in Chengdu, China but grew up in countries across the globe, including Belgium, Spain, and eventually the United States. She received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Product Design from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. Go Peacocks!

Kelly Custer is the Founder and Creative Director of Knack, a product design studio with passion for products that move. Whether for a startup, a major corporation or anything in between, Kelly leads her team in designing user-centric products that build desire.

Driven by the belief that design powerfully impacts people and business, Kelly’s mission is not only to prove the value of good design to the world, but to shake up the way designers work
while she’s at it. Her approach brings new energy, empowerment and mentoring to her teams.

Kelly earned a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Transportation Design from the College for Creative Studies in the “Motor City”, Detroit, MI. That motor oil runs through her veins.

Mike currently serves as Director of Product Design at Playground Global, which is a venture investment firm with an added studio of product development and technical experts. Here he blends his consulting, product design, and entrepreneurship experience to help aspiring hardware startup companies create great products and strong businesses. Prior to joining Playground, Mike worked for Google where he built a team and managed the product design and mechanical engineering efforts first with Android and the Nexus line of products and then adding projects with Chrome and Chromecast. Before that, Mike led product design efforts for startups, created new products and businesses at Lunar Design, and ran his own consulting practice. Through these experiences, he has helped develop products across industries and for many clients such as Apple, Danger, HP, Motorola, and SanDisk.

Mike first realized his passion for designing and inventing products while earning his degree in the Product Design program at Stanford. He later went on to fuel his interest in business and entrepreneurship by obtaining an MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Mike grew up in Montana, and he loves to return to his home state for skiing, fishing, and simply taking in the Big Sky.

Elizabeth Costa is an industrial designer focused in experiential and environmental design.

Hannah June Lueptow is a design researcher and strategist at Questtono in Brooklyn, New York. She utilizes in-depth user engagement to solve experience based design challenges across a wide spectrum of product categories. Excited about understanding people’s relationship with the products around them, Hannah works to develop empathetic user experiences in disruptive tech spaces. Hannah has conducted international research projects in India, China and Indonesia and has worked with companies such as LG, Ford, Anheuser-Busch InBev, leading mixed reality companies, and more. In her spare time, Hannah designs and slipcasts functional objects out of her Brooklyn-based ceramic studio.

Kristy Tillman currently serves as the Head of Global Experience Design at Slack. As the first in the first in the role, she is building a vision and a team whose mission it is to lead the transformation of branded and built environments, workplace experience and culture, and their integrated services and programs through the use of design and technology to make Slack employees, partners and visitors’ lives more pleasant and productive.

Prior to this role, Kristy lead and built Slack’s first Communication Design team, as the Head of Communication Design. Where was lead the design of Slack’s first user conference, marketing website’s first overhaul, and the creative direction of several brand marketing campaigns.

Before Slack, Kristy was the Design Director at Society of Grownups— where she lead design teams dedicated to crafting exceptional experiences across both brand and product. She also worked as a designer at IDEO, an award-winning global design consultancy where she helped solve design problems across a variety of industries including consumer product goods, finance, education, and healthcare.

Kristy believes in a future where design is a tool that aids underserved communities in solving sociocultural problems. As the co-founder of the Detroit Water Project and founder of Tomorrow Looks Bright, Kristy has a strong commitment to furthering the accessibility of design.

She is an alumna of Florida A&M University.

Amélie Lamont is an independent product designer(d) and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She specializes in using cultural studies and design anthropology to inform her design process.

She’s also the co-founder of Good for PoC and creator of The Guide to Allyship, two resources aimed at helping marginalized communities. She’s had the honor of presenting her research and work at places such as The White House, The Great Discontent, Etsy, Twitter, Dropbox and Cooper.

Maria is a Senior Communications Designer at Slack. She is an award winning designer and illustrator with experience working at startups and advertising agencies. Her work has been featured in Print Magazine, Lurzer’s Archive, Interface Lovers and has won a D&AD Impact Award, Gold Effie, Silver Addy, and more. She has a diverse skill set ranging from web and app development, UI, TV, print, social, illustration, art direction and brand identity design.

Stewart is currently Executive Creative Director at Instrument, a digital and brand experience agency in Portland, Oregon. Prior to Instrument he was Director of Brand Design at Intercom in San Francisco where he built the Intercom Brand Studio from 3 to 22 people working across digital brand, content, events and everything in between. Stewart also has worked at CNN leading a redesign of their digital presence, at Coca-Cola where he led a rebrand of Sprite and at Nike where he worked for 10 years designing soccer uniforms for the best teams and athletes in the world. He is originally from Glasgow in Scotland.