Jury Alumni

• 

  Brian David Johnson

  Professor of Practice, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University

  2022 Speculative Design Jury Member

• 

  Malina Dabrowska

  Foresight Design lead, Arup

  2024 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Malina is a multidisciplinary Design Lead in Arup’s Foresight team. They design experiences and strategies that reimagine our relationship with the built environment.

• 

  Radha Mistry

  Practice Leader for Foresight, Autodesk

  2020 Speculative Design Jury Captain

  Radha Mistry has a background in architecture, narrative environments, and strategic foresight. As the Practice Leader for Foresight at Autodesk, Radha explores the impact of emerging technologies and how it will change the way we design and make things in the future. Prior to Autodesk, Radha focused on the Future of Work with the Steelcase Applied Research group. Her work sought out ways organizations could drive Innovation through design. Previous to Steelcase, Radha was part of the Arup Foresight + Innovation team in London and San Francisco, crafting speculative futures for global clients; and was one of the original co-founders of GOATstudio in New Orleans — bringing some “swagger” and better opportunities for young architects. Radha has also exhibited during the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and worked on design-led community engagement initiatives in cities across Europe.

• 

  Pumla Maswanganyi

  Founding Director, by lue.

  2024 Speculative Design Jury Member

  My practice is multi-disciplinary.
  Using my background as an artist and development practitioner by training, I design experiences, products and futures that center often overlooked narratives.
  
  I am a director and partner at by lue. and MM+co, two visionary African woman founded design agencies that use art and design as tools to elevate experience building in the Global South.
  At by lue. we use our creative approach to advance arts and culture with a focus on honouring heritage; and at MM+co we are leaders in African Life Centered Design and infuse our principles of indigenous knowledge into the design process.
  
  Through my work as a creator, speaker and advisor; I have partnered with African Union, Soho House, MTN, the Clinton Foundation, Roddenberry Foundation, and Roche to name a few.
  
  Overall, my TL;DR is that I am driven to ensure that the aesthetic realm is recognised for its importance in shaping socio-economic outcomes in a tangible way.

• 

  Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay

  PI and Lead, CoFutures, University of Oslo

  2024 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay leads the international research group CoFUTURES, and is the principal investigator of “CoFutures: Pathways to Possible Presents” (European Research Council), and “Science Fictionality” (Norwegian Research Council) which explore contemporary global futurisms movements. He is manager and co-founder of Theory from the Margins, a research collective with over 16,000 followers worldwide. Chattopadhyay is an Associate Professor of Global Culture Studies at the University of Oslo. He is also an Imaginary College Fellow at the Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University. He has served as an innovations consultant with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and has been a visiting researcher at the Department of Informatics at the University of California at Irvine and the Evoke Lab/Calit2, as well as the Department of English, University of Liverpool. Chattopadhyay has written or edited ten books, published numerous articles, exhibited in six transnational art projects, and produced the award-winning lm Kalpavigyan: A Speculative Journey, the rst documentary on science ction from India and Bengal. Other than his research and artistic research grants, he is also the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the prestigious World Fantasy Award (2020), the Johannes H Berg Memorial Prize (2019), the Foundation Essay Prize (2017), and the Strange Horizons Readers’ Poll Award (2013).

• 

  Ti Chang

  Co-founder & VP of Design, Crave

  2021 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Ti Chang is a design activist-entrepreneur and activist bridging modern design and activism. She is co-founder and VP of Design of CRAVE, a San Francisco-based company specializing in aesthetic pleasure products. Ti leads the design vision for the company’s full line of products which has won international design awards and has led CRAVE to mainstream partnerships with the likes of Nordstrom, MoMA Design Store, Goop, and Saint Laurent. 
  
  Ti is best known for her design of the Vesper vibrator necklace in 2014, an iconic necklace that symbolizes female empowerment and creating conversations to normalize pleasure. 
  
  Ti holds an M.A. in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in London and a B.S. in Industrial Design from the Georgia Institute of Technology. In 2021, Ti co-founded Design Allyship (designallyship.com) to provide anyone with actionable resources to improve the condition of historically marginalized designers in the industrial & product design industry. 
  

• 

  Kevin Bethune

  Founder and Chief Creative Officer, dreams • design + life

  2024 Speculative Design 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).

• 

  Gem Barton

  Ms, Experimental Realism / Office for Speculative Spatial Design

  2024 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Gem is an author and senior academic specialising in the interrelations between human behaviour, speculation, and spatial design. Currently teaching at the Royal College of Art, she was awarded a coveted National Teaching Fellowship in 2019, is Senior Fellow of AdvanceHE, and founding chair of QuEAN - Queer Educators in Architecture Network. Gem’s work in the future(s) space comes to life through her advisory, research, teaching and leadership of superFUTURES at the RCA, her directorship of the Experimental Realism platform and consultation services offered through her Office for Speculative Spatial Design (O-SSD).

• 

  Alisha Bhagat

  Futures Lead, Forum for the Future

  2022 Speculative Design Jury Captain

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

• 

  Robert Bolton

  Principal, From Later

  2020 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Robert Bolton is a Canadian artist, strategist, and principal at the foresight studio, From Later. Recognizing art works and practices as powerful antennae for detecting change, Robert experiments with ways of understanding and imagining how emerging ideas, technologies and cultural phenomena may influence longer-term futures. As an advisor to decision-makers within all matter of organizations, Robert leads interdisciplinary teams, developing strategies for long-term growth and resilience. Robert was a National Science Foundation AoSL Innovation Fellow and holds a Masters of Arts in the Humanities from the University of Chicago. His essays on the future of DIY biotech have been published by MIT Press’s Innovations Journal and the Eindhoven University of Technology’s Next Nature Lab. In 2019, Robert instructed a course on strategic foresight at CityLAB: Berlin — a satellite campus of Norwich University.

• 

  Jeremy Glenn

  Foresight Analyst, From Later

  2020 Speculative Design Jury Member

• 

  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.

• 

  Timi Oyedeji

  Interaction Designer & Prototyper, Google

  2023 Speculative Design Jury Member

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

• 

  Sarah Gold

  CEO, IF

  2019 Speculative Design Jury Member

  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.

• 

  Laura Forlano

  Associate Professor of Design & Director of Critical Futures Lab, Illinois Institute of Design

  2021 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Laura Forlano, a Fulbright award-winning and National Science Foundation funded scholar, is a writer, social scientist and design researcher. She is an Associate Professor of Design at the Institute of Design and Affiliated Faculty in the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology where she is Director of the Critical Futures Lab. Forlano’s research is focused on the aesthetics and politics at the intersection between design and emerging technologies. Over the past ten years, she has studied the materialities and futures of socio-technical systems such as autonomous vehicles and smart cities; 3D printing, local manufacturing and innovation ecosystems; automation, distributed labor practices and the future of work; and, computational fashion, smart textiles and wearable medical technologies. She is an editor of three books: Bauhaus Futures (MIT Press 2019), digitalSTS (Princeton University Press 2019) and From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen (MIT Press 2011). She received her Ph.D. in communications from Columbia University.

• 

  Bas van de Poel

  Co-Founder, Modem

  2023 Speculative Design Jury Captain

  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.