Jury Alumni

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  Mansi Parikh

  Founder, Future Tense Inc.

  2022 Speculative Design Jury Member

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

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  Susan L. Sokolowski, Ph.D.

  Founding Director and Professor of Sports Product Design, University of Oregon

  2022 Sports & Recreation Jury Captain

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

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  John Acevedo

  Principal: Design Ambassador & Creative Director: Innovation, Under Armour

  2022 Sports & Recreation Jury Member

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

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  Yuki Aihara

  Sr. Director of Advanced Concepts, Lululemon Athletica

  2022 Sports & Recreation Jury Member

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

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  Carly Mick

  Director of Manufacturing Innovation, Skyscrape

  2022 Sports & Recreation Jury Member

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

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  Christel Thue Høgsted

  Senior Sports Apparel Designer, Pas Normal Studios

  2022 Sports & Recreation Jury Member

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

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  Natalie Nixon, Ph.D.

  Founder, Figure 8 Thinking

  2022 Strategy & Research Jury Captain

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

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  Kevin Bethune

  Founder and Chief Creative Officer, dreams • design + life

  2022 Strategy & Research Jury Member

  Kevin Bethune is the Founder & Chief Creative Officer of dreams • design + life, a "think tank" that delivers design & innovation services using a human-centered approach. Kevin's background spans engineering, business and design in equal proportion over his 25+ year career, positioning him to help brands deliver meaningful innovations to enrich people's lives.
  
  His work represents creative problem-solving that brings multidisciplinary teams together to see the future through an open aperture, and a deep industrial design approach to inform and influence desirable, feasible and business-viable design outcomes.
  
  Kevin began his career as a mechanical engineer in the nuclear power industry. This chapter gave him deep product experience working with high performing teams across 14 nuclear reactor upgrade campaigns. After his MBA, Kevin joined Nike, Inc. in a business capacity, but quickly navigated to the Global Footwear product engine to drive advanced digital product creation capabilities, discovering the world of design in the process. After solidifying his creative foundation through further studies at ArtCenter College of Design, Kevin co-founded distinct design & innovation capabilities at two Tier 1 management consulting firms in Booz & Co. and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). As Vice President of Strategic Design at BCG Digital Ventures, he led a large cohort of designers that would influence and shape every corporate venture spun out from the incubator. Kevin left BCG Digital Ventures to carve his own path under the banner of dreams • design + life, focusing on unlocking human potential through strategic design, industrial design and the building of new ecologies.
  
  Kevin also serves as a Board Trustee for ArtCenter College of Design and a Board Director for the Design Management Institute (DMI).

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  Farrah Bostic

  Founder, The Difference Engine

  2022 Strategy & Research Jury Member

  Farrah Bostic is a champion of empathetic, co-creative, and collaborative strategy, design, and research. Her focus is on helping business leaders make big decisions, with research as an essential tool for facilitating decision-making, advocating for the customer, and delivering audience insight that field great storytelling.
  
  She was a Group Planning Director at Digitas, led the consumer immersion practice at Ipsos/OTX, led the innovation practice at Hall & Partners, and developed her skills as a strategist at Mad Dogs & Englishmen/Mad Logic and TBWA\Chiat\Day in Los Angeles.
  
  In 2011 she founded The Difference Engine, where she works with clients across business-to-business and business-to-consumer categories including JetBlue, HarperCollins, eBay, AARP, Google, the Financial Times, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PRX, New York Public Media, The US Soccer Federation, IHG, Citibank, and Dow Jones Media Group. She is also an advisor to twofivesix, a content agency focused on gamers as customers and gaming as a channel, where she mentors and leads a team of strategists and researchers with clients including Intel, Sansar, Soundcloud, and others.

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  Desmond Dickerson

  Director, Future of Work Marketing, Microsoft

  2022 Strategy & Research Jury Member

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

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  Shel Kimen

  Co-Director of Design Thinking, Ford Motor Company

  2022 Transportation Jury Captain

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

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  Serena De Mori

  Product Manager in Innovation & Inclusive Mobility Solutions, Alba Robot

  2022 Transportation Jury Member

  Master of Science in Economics and International Markets with 10+ years experience in managing innovative projects in automotive, mobility solutions and new technology fields in multinational and in startups contexts.
  
  Passionate about new technologies, always curious towards future developments, focusing the attention on society change and impacts on people.
  
  In free time, photographer for hobby, enthusiast bike-rider and a no-stop traveler.

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  Francis Pollara

  Director, Strategy and Development, Urban Movement Labs

  2022 Transportation Jury Member

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

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  Robert Walker

  Director of Design, Advanced Mobility and Experience Studio (AMES), General Motors

  2022 Transportation Jury Member

  Robert Walker is a global automotive design and team leader. He has worked in the automotive design industry for 24 years as a designer, design manager, chief designer, and design director within multiple global automakers.
  
  Walker is currently the Director of Design of the Advanced Mobility and Experience Design Studio at General Motors Design Center, based in Warren, Michigan. As a global advanced design leader, he guides his team in developing what’s next - future automotive and new mobility projects positioned far outside the scope of existing vehicle programs. Prior to joining GM, Walker held the position of Director of Product Design at D-Ford, Ford’s Global Human-centered Design & Innovation LAB, leading the team in both physical and digital product/vehicle design. They challenged assumptions and questioned the status quo, translating human insights into near and far product concepts for the Ford and Lincoln brands.
  
  He also loves mentoring the next generation of automotive designers. As an adjunct professor at the College for Creative Studies (CCS), he teaches multiple automotive/new mobility and design theory courses.

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  Dana Arnett

  CEO, VSA Partners

  2022 Visual Communication Jury Captain

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

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  Lisa Babb

  Professor, School of Industrial Design, Georgia Tech University

  2022 Visual Communication Jury Member

  Lisa Babb comes from a rich history of activism and social justice through engaging citizens. She has worked in the Graphic Design field and has taught Graphic Design at the collegiate level for more than twenty years. Lisa came from Brooklyn (before it became the brand that it is now) and has lived in Atlanta for more than fifteen. She has a Master’s from Pratt Institute and a Bachelor’s from Baruch College. The same year she finished Pratt, she became a graphic design professor after September 11 changed the world for everybody.
  
  She started at a Corporate Design firm specializing in award-winning Annual reports. Some stops along the way include a commercial catalog company, a marketing group for Seagrams, two sizeable pharmaceutical advertising agencies, a commercial magazine in advertising, museums, and museums. She has designed things as small as a button, as vast as a congressional campaign, and as big as a billboard. She has also designed things as unconventional as a float for the Bud Billiken parade and as functional as a point of purchase display.
  
  Within design education specifically, she has created a Graphic Design department from the ground up. This design leader has made a point of teaching in places that encourage diversity in demographics, ideologies, and models. She started teaching Design at schools in New York City, the last one being PACE University in the Master’s program, before coming to Atlanta and teaching at SCAD and now Georgia Tech. She lives by the mantra “if you want a better world, make one” and truly believes that design and especially design education is one of the few things that can change lives. It is hard even to blink once you have graphic literacy and finally see.