Jury Alumni

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  Joshua Taylor

  CEO, Product EVO

  2023 Commercial Equipment Jury Member

  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.
  

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  Kaitlyn Benoit

  Design Director, Rivian Automotive

  2023 Lifestyle Accessories Jury Member

  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.
  

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  Jenn Horonjeff, PhD

  Founder & CEO, Savvy Cooperative

  2023 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  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.

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  Adriana Young

  Design Research & Director, Programs, SVA MFA Interaction Design, School of Visual Arts

  2023 Built Environment Jury Member

  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.

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  Vincent Sin

  Executive Head, Industrial Design & Product Development, Secretlab

  2023 Gaming Accessories Jury Captain

  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."
  

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  Farai Madzima

  UX Manager, Shopify

  2023 Interaction Jury Member

  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.
  

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  Dan Lion

  Senior Director, Business Development + Sales, 3D, Shutterstock

  2023 Emerging Technologies Jury Captain

  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.

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  John Siczewicz

  Lighting & Compositing Artist, Skydance Animation

  2023 Emerging Technologies Jury Member

  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.

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  Rotimi Solola

  Founder, SO Dsgn

  2023 Home & Living Jury Captain

  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.

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  Michelle Enright

  Director, Packaging Experience & Visual Design, Sonos, Incl

  2023 Packaging Jury Member

  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.

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  Georgina McDonald

  Creative & Partnerships, SPACE10

  2023 Speculative Design Jury Member

  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.

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  Sabina Weiss

  Designer and Researcher, Special Projects

  2023 Consumer Technology Jury Captain

  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.

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  Dan Formosa, Ph.D

  Founder, ThinkActHuman

  2023 Commercial Equipment Jury Member

  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.
  

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  Robert Pugliese

  Director of Innovation Design, Thomas Jefferson University

  2023 Health & Wellness Jury Captain

  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.

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  Pepin Gelardi

  Co-Founder, Tomorrow Lab

  2023 Commercial Equipment Jury Member

  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.
  

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  Ethan Imboden

  Venture Partner and Business Activist, Tuesday Capital & Standard Deviation

  2023 Sustainability Jury Member

  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.