Jury Alumni

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  Shani Sandy

  VP, Experience Design, IBM

  2024 Lifestyle Accessories Jury Member

  Shani Sandy is an artist, multidisciplinary designer, and executive who believes in the transformative power of design. Shani serves as VP, Experience Design at IBM leading design-driven innovation. Her mission is advancing human-centered design with an emphasis on crafting desirable and usable products, services, and experiences alongside cultivating the design culture. Prior to joining IBM, Shani was the Executive Creative Director at S&P Global, where she led the enterprise-wide creative agency, and the creative strategy, communication design, and ux practice areas. From launching her independent design studio in 2002, to present day, Shani continues to explore the many possibilities of a creative calling.
  
  Shani holds a BA in Art History and BFA in Painting and Computer Art from Tufts University along with an MBA from the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. She also attended AIGA & Yale School of Management, Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders.
  
  Shani is actively engaged in the creative and design community, speaking, teaching, and mentoring others and has a passion for nurturing emerging talent. She has been honored by several design institutions including GDUSA and the Design Management Institute and has served as a juror for AIGA, the Service Design College, and America by Design. Her work appears in Stanford University’s Black Graphic Design History Collections.
  
  Shani resides in Brooklyn, NY.

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  Davide Mosconi

  Creative Partner, Auge Design

  2024 Packaging Jury Captain

  Davide Mosconi (born in 1981) is an Italian Designer and Art Director with over 20 years of experience in the field of communication and design. After spending 7 years at McCann-Erickson as an Art Director working on international brands, in 2011, he shifted his focus to branding and design. He became a co- founder and Creative Director of Apart Collective, working on projects for international museum institutions and prominent fashion brands. Starting in September 2016, he has held the role of Co-Founder and Creative Partner at Auge Design, an acclaimed Italian design agency specializing in packaging and branding, with offices in Milan and Florence. In just a few years, Davide has made a significant contribution to elevating Auge Design's status as the most globally recognized Italian packaging design agency, achieving notable awards including Cannes Lions, Clio Awards, D&AD, ADCE, Dieline, Pentawards and has represented Italian creativity on various international design juries.

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  Johanna Augustin

  Managing Partner, Pond Design

  2024 Packaging Jury Member

  Johanna is CEO at Pond Design, a Stockholm School of Economics alumni and former Bocconi University student. She’s received several international awards over the last few years such as gold and silver in Pentawards as well as wins in the Dieline and D&AD awards.
  
  With professional experience in architecture, marketing and advertising, before her career started at Pond Design some twelve years ago, Johanna has developed a holistic approach in her work. She has the ability to look at packaging design and brand strategy from both a business perspective as well as the creative sides of it – working hands on when developing Pond’s award winning designs. Johanna’s portfolio includes iconic local brands and global heavy weights such as Absolut Vodka, Jameson Whiskey, Unilever, Barilla and Eckes-Granini – all whom she’s delivered international packaging, innovation and strategy to, which has contributed into making Pond Design one of Sweden’s most successful design agencies over the last decade.

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  Sebastien Greffe

  Creative Director, WeWantMore® Studio

  2024 Packaging Jury Member

  Sebastien Greffe is an award winning creative director at WeWantMore® Studio, renowned for a demonstrated history in brand- and packaging design, in both the design- and advertising industries, having worked for clients like Coca Cola, Heineken, Pioneer DJ, Microsoft, Cristal, Loop Earplugs and Neuhaus. With a keen eye for design and a strategic mindset, they have consistently delivered compelling creative solutions that not only resonate with target audiences but also drive substantial brand growth and recognition.

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  Dario Volpe

  Creative Director, Lettera7

  2024 Packaging Jury Member

  Dario Volpe is a designer with more than 20 years of experience in brand design, passionate about illustration, type design, and contemporary art. By experimenting with eclectic languages, he crosses multiple and diverse stylistic barriers, encouraging a deeper understanding and interpretation of the project's core message.

  
  In 2010, after several important international experiences as a designer (at Landor, Interbrand, Cb’a), he established Lettera7, a brand design studio based in Vietri sul Mare - Amalfi Coast, where he is both the founder and creative director.
  His ability to work across multiple disciplines has led Lettera7 to handle a variety of projects in different industries over the years, continuously improving their approach to meet a wide range of challenges: "There's no preferred industry for Lettera7; we're designers and any visionary idea well-structured can be turned into a virtuous project, no matter the industry tag it goes into"
  In his experimentation with visual languages, he has successfully led cultural initiatives including international festivals in cinema, music, and theatre, developed complex wayfinding systems in diverse locations, and enhanced brand design for Italian firms to spotlight their true market value. Especially in the food sector, his unconventional approach has blended artistic visuals with business needs, rapidly earning multiple projects international recognition.

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  Afshin Mehin

  Chief Creative Officer, Card79

  2024 Robotics Jury Captain

  Afshin Mehin is the founder of Card79, a creative studio based in San Francisco. The studio focuses on tackling complex and future-facing projects, working on everything from Brain Computer Interfaces to Autonomous Vehicles for agile Startups like Postmates as well as large companies like Amazon and Lululemon. Afshin’s experience blends the old and new, having worked for traditional furniture designers like BarberOsgerby and Terence Conran as well as futuristics institutions such as M.I.T. 's Media Lab Europe and Elon Musk’s Neuralink.

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  Kendra Byrne

  Group Product Manager, Google DeepMind

  2024 Robotics Jury Member

  Kendra is a Group Product Manager at Google DeepMind where she leads product innovation for new research products. For the last 5 years, Kendra has worked with teams to ground research in user-centered needs and help bring new technologies to life.
  
  Before joining Google DeepMind, Kendra held product leadership positions at X the Moonshot Factory, Bot & Dolly, and Formant. At X, she co-founded the project that graduated as Intrinsic, a robotics software and AI company at Alphabet. At Bot & Dolly, Kendra was responsible for developing easy to use interfaces for robotics in cinematography and visual eects.

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  Rhys Newman

  Global Head of Design & User Experience, ABB E-Mobility

  2024 Robotics Jury Member

  Rhys is the Global Head of Design & User Experience at ABB E_Mobility. He previously worked as a consultant and led multi-disciplinary Design teams at Google X's Everyday Robots, Casper Sleep, NOKIA, and Lego. He co-founded his entrepreneurial venture, OMATA in 2015.
  As a Design Leader, he has a reputation for building happy and motivated studios where designers want to work, creativity is the priority, and innovation happens. He is obsessed with nurturing cultures of creativity, optimism, and the value of Design and Designing as a perspective and a practice.
  Rhys has a Master’s Degree in Product Design from the Royal College of Art in London, and a First Class Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Wales, Cardiff, UK. He has been a part-time lecturer at Art Centre, Pasadena; Goldsmiths University, London; Denmark Design School, Copenhagen; and the Royal College of Art, London. He has also served on the jury of numerous competitions, was Chair of the IDSA IDEA Awards, and has multiple patents.

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  Anthony Prats

  Product Lead, Robotics & Automation, Stealth Startup

  2024 Robotics Jury Member

  From creating lovable robot sidekicks to defining the future of food, Anthony Prats is a product and design leader with a decade of experience building category-defining hardware and software products. He got his start at Anki, helping to bring their Cozmo robot to life, built a molecular beverage printer at Cana, and explored the future of human-robot interaction at Google. He currently leads robotics and automation efforts at a stealth startup in the food space.

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  Monika Bielskyte

  Futures Researcher/Futurist Designer, PROTOPIA

  2024 Speculative Design Jury Captain

  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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  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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  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).

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  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).

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  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).

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  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.

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  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.