Jury Alumni

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  Délia McNair

  Global Director of Technology Innovation, Nike

  2023 Speculative Design Jury Member

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

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  Angela Bains

  Acting Associate Dean, OCAD University

  2024 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Angela Bains currently serves as the Acting Associate Dean within the Faculty of Design at the OCAD University (OCAD U), Toronto, Canada. Her previous role involved serving as the Graduate Program Director for the Strategic Foresight & Innovation (SFI) program. Notably, a member of the Solid Black Collective research group at OCAD U. She is the co-creator of the SFI’s Decolonising Futures BIPOC Speakers Series, and Black SFI (Strategic Foresight & Innovation). In addition to her academic roles, Angela holds the position of Co-Founder and Strategic Director at TransformExp, an esteemed commercial and social change strategy and design firm located in Vancouver, Canada.
  
  Originating from the United Kingdom, Angela brings with her more than three decades of extensive experience in the creative industry. Her professional achievements extend to being a sought-after speaker and host, notably participating in events such as The State of Black Design, Design Management Institute - Diversity in Design Conference, Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD) – International DesignThinkers Conference and Black Design, Past, Present & Future. Furthermore, Angela has dedicated her expertise to part-time teaching in Strategic Design at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). This multifaceted professional background underscores Angela Bains' substantial contributions to the fields of design, strategic foresight, and innovation.

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  Monika Bielskyte

  Futures Researcher/Futurist Designer, PROTOPIA

  2020 Speculative Design Jury Member

  As the Founder of Protopia Futures, Monika Bielskyte is the architect of a platform and a community to proactively prototype inspiring and actually livable future visions. Her journey as a nomadic explorer in over 100 countries has given her first-person experience of the interconnectedness between human cultural priorities and the unfolding future.
  
  Monika was born in the Soviet Union, and grew up in the newly liberated Lithuania, before leaving the country at age 17. Her perspectives as a futurist have been shaped by the collapse of the physical boundaries of a totalitarian regime, and the opening up of the digital world – its opportunities and its harms. She currently resides in Johannesburg, South Africa – which gives her deeper insights into broader futures perspectives, beyond the imaginations of the Global North.
  
  Monika started her career as a creative – working on movie sets in her late teens and progressively moving towards the bleeding edge of technological innovation and scientific research by her mid-20s. Her multicultural and multidisciplinary background, as well as an uncompromising focus on the intricate relationship between future fictions and real-life, have guided her on a journey that makes her voice clearly distinct in today’s foresight industry.
  
  Monika has worked not only with established global media, tech and lifestyle companies such as Universal, Google, Nike, BBC and the WEF, but also various governments and cities. Her contributions have resonated across both industry corridors and academia, from The Royal
  Society to CERN.

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  Veronica Ranner

  Designer | Artist | Ph.D. Candidate, Royal College of Art

  2021 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Veronica Ranner is an artist, designer and researcher, working transdisciplinary on the intersections of design, science and emerging technologies. With a background in industrial design and design interactions, her research focuses on the burgeoning domain of bio-digitality and encompasses advanced biomaterials (smart materials), biomedical product and interface design as well as the development of experimental methods towards constructive-collective modes of futuring (see Polyphonic Futures).
  
  Veronica has 10+ years experience of working internationally across science, education, art institutions and industry via funded projects, commissions and collaborations. She is a frequently invited lecturer and exhibits her work internationally, including at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, China Technology Museum in Beijing, the National Museum Sweden in Stockholm, the V&A London, the Design Museum Gent, at Martha Herford, and the Futurium in Berlin. She currently completes her PhD at the Royal College of Art.

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  Nkhensani Mkhari

  Director, See Fair Technologies

  2024 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Visionary designer adept at bridging ancestral wisdom with cutting-edge innovation. Expertise in graphic and experience design, specializing in colorimetric research, exhibition curation, and speculative design for post-planetary futures. Proven track record of success in luxury brands, architectural studios, and art institutions. Passionate about sustainability, minimalism, and community-driven design

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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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  Yosuke Ushigome

  Creative Technologist & Director, Takram

  2019 Speculative Design Jury Captain

  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.

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  Doc Martens

  UX Designer, Teach for America

  2022 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Doc Martens is a designer, creative technologist, maker, teacher, lifelong student, and geek working to help people embrace the potential of speculative practice for building futures-agency, the ability to act upon our preferred futures in a complex world.
  
  They are a UX Designer at Teach For America by day and serve on the Design Futures Initiative Board by night. They also organize the Speculative Futures NYC meetup and publish SciFly, a newsletter connecting people to global events & resources related to speculative design, art, and technology. Most recently, they helped develop and teach a new speculative futures framework, Futures x Design.

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  Phil Balagtas

  Experience Design Director, The Design Futures Initiative, McKinsey Design

  2019 Speculative Design Jury Member

  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.

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  Holly Friend

  Deputy Foresight Editor, The Future Laboratory

  2022 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Holly Friend is a trend forecaster and futurist obsessed with consumer behaviour. As The Future Laboratory’s deputy foresight editor and in-house Generation Z expert, her work shapes the trends intelligence platform LS:N Global, including micro and macro trend reports, renowned Trend Briefing events and Futures Forums. As well as being quoted by The Guardian, The Times and Dazed, Holly also consults on projects for some of the world’s leading brands and presents insight-packed keynotes at industry events around the world.

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  Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon, Ph.D.

  Equity Innovation Studio Director, Think Rubix

  2024 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Dr. Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon is an innovation catalyst, researcher, facilitator, and evaluator, impassioned by the space between transformation and liberation.
  
  As the Director of the Equity Innovation studio at Think Rubix, a Black-led social innovation consultancy. Dr. Gordon serves as a shepherd for Equity Innovation to shape our collective future.
  
  He’s taught courses in design, evaluation, international development, and equity across four continents, co-designed partnerships, products, and services with local and international changemakers to support social change, and researched the complexity, evaluation, and emergence of design and innovation across the world.
  
  What can we build together?

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  Tobias Revell

  Artist & Designer, University of London

  2020 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Tobias Revell is an artist and designer. Spanning different disciplines and media his work addresses the urgent need for critical engagement with material reality through design, art and technology. Recent work has looked at the idea of technology as a territory, expectations of the future, rendering software and the occult and supernatural in pop culture discussions of technology.
  
  He holds a BA Hons. (1st) in Design for Interaction and Moving Image from the London College of Communication and an MA in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art from which he graduated in July 2012.
  
  As well as being an internationally exhibiting artist, Programme Director of Graphic Design Communication at the London College of Communication, a founder of Supra Systems Studio and a founding member of research consultancy Strange Telemetry. He is one half of Haunted Machines, a research and curatorial project curating Impakt festival 2017 in Utrecht, NL. He is undertaking a PhD in the Design Department at Goldsmiths, University of London.

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  Dr. Deepa Butoliya

  Assistant Professor, Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan

  2021 Speculative Design Jury Captain

  Dr. Butoliya is a researcher and design educator based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her research is located at the intersection of models of knowledge and critical thinking emerging from multiple and global perspectives. She researches critique in design from pluriversal perspectives- especially grassroots critical practices in design. She has a background in design and architecture with a career spanning 15 years in multiple roles as an industrial designer, researcher, and educator across two continents. She wants to help create a sustainable, equitable, and inclusive environment for societies with local awareness and a global vision.

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  Phoenix Perry

  Design Researcher, University of the Arts, London

  2024 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Phoenix Perry specializes in developing accessible machine learning tools, founds value-driven creative coding organizations, and creates games that explore our collective interconnectivity. As the founding Course Leader for the MSc in Creative Computing at the University of the Arts London, Phoenix Perry blends embodied gaming, inclusive design, and advanced machine learning in interactive systems. She holds a PhD in Computing from Goldsmiths where she focused on Disability Led Game Design. Founder of the Code Liberation Foundation, Perry has empowered over 6000 women to explore computational creativity with games. She also creates tools and open-source resources for game designers and artists, most notably InteractML. Her installations and games work has shown at museums and festivals such as Wellcome Collection, Somerset House, A Maze, Indie Cade, and GDC