Jury Alumni

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  Lona Vincent

  Strategy & Innovation, Johnson & Johnson

  2021 Health & Wellness Jury Member

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  Kelly Custer

  Founder + Creative Director, Knack

  2019 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  I am the Founder + Design Director of Knack, the illustration studio that helps corporate innovators visualize their product ideas.
  
  Over my 12+ year career, I have seen and worked behind the curtains of dozens of big brand product innovation teams, concepting (literally) thousands of product innovations.
  
  I use that experience to lead Knack's team and help our clients determine what products their companies should design next.
  
  It kills me to see companies waste resources developing bad ideas!
  
  If you're interested in collaborating on product innovation, feel free to get in touch.
  Over her 10+ year career, she has seen and worked behind the curtains of dozens of big brand product innovation teams. She and her Knack team bolster these teams by helping them conceptualize and visually communicate product ideas.
  
  While her expertise is ultra-focused, her experiences are incredibly diverse. She's designed a wide variety of products; from one-off yachts for individuals to medical devices for a Fortune 500 company to consumer electronics and housewares, and everything in between. This variety has afforded her a large and deep pool of understanding to cross-reference and pull into new projects.
  
  When she’s not in the studio, she can be found on a mountain bike trail, trying to keep up with her husband on her dirt bike, or exploring the Tennessee river on their vintage stand-up jet skis.

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  Praveen Prabhakar KR

  Human Factors Design Engineer, Metaphase-Noble, part of Aptar Pharma

  2024 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  Praveen is a Human Factors Engineer with a Master's in Kinesiology, focusing on Cognitive and Motor Neuroscience and a foundation in I&C Engineering. Praveen's professional passion lies in the intersection of technology and healthcare, using biomechanics, neuromechanics, and a blend of quantitative and qualitative methods to understand people, their strengths and limitations and design user-friendly medical devices. In his role at Aptar Pharma, Praveen is instrumental in consulting on medical device design projects, ensuring they are accessible and effective. His enthusiasm for technology extends to incorporating AI and cutting-edge innovative methods to optimize medical device design, functionality and user experience. As a tech geek, Praveen is always exploring the latest technological advancements and their potential applications in healthcare. Outside of work, he is passionate about outdoor activities and fitness.

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  Bryce Rutter

  Head of Consulting Services | UX, HF, ID, Noble Aptar Pharma

  2024 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  Dr. Rutter is Head of Consulting Services for Nobel, and Aptar Pharma company. He is a worldwide expert in the research, ergonomics and design of handheld medical devices, products, and packaging. Aptar acquired Metaphase, a design consultancy specializing in research, human factors, and industrial design founded by Dr. Rutter in 1991. His leadership and vision has consistently delivered award-winning, innovative breakthrough designs for several of the world’s most prestigious and influential Fortune 500 brands having earned 120+ Global Design Excellence Awards, 115+ patents, 2 products included the Museum of Modern Art, several designs in the Chicago Athenaeum’s Good Design Museum Collection, 2 Edison Innovation Awards, and a Design of the Decade Award. Dr. Rutter has been profiled, an invited guest, and interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, CNN, CTV, IdeaCity, CityTV, The Chicago Tribune, The Ottawa Citizen, The Globe & Mail and Business 2.0. Dr Rutter holds a Bachelor of Industrial Design from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and a Master Degree in Industrial Design and Ph.D. in Kinesiology, specializing in motor hand function, both from the University of Illinois.

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  Paul Danial

  Industrial Designer, UX-HF Ergonomics Expert III, Noble-Metaphase, Part of Aptar Pharma

  2024 Health & Wellness Jury Captain

  Paul Danial is a creative and technical industrial designer with an interest in product and experience design. Bridging his academic backgrounds in human kinetics and industrial design, he creates human centered designs that empower and optimize user experiences. Paul works with Noble-Metaphase, Part of Aptar Pharma, to consult and design hand-intensive products with a focus on medical devices. He finds passion and motivation in finding solutions to challenges that improve the quality of life of patients and effectiveness of practitioners. Paul has always been curious about how things work and often takes things apart and reimagines them. He could also be found sketching and doodling on any surface available. In his free time, Paul is passionate about aerospace and aviation, motivating him to pursue his private pilot's license. He also loves to travel the world with his wife, and he is excited to be a dad soon.

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  Lesley-Ann Noel

  Assistant Professor, Design Studies, North Carolina State University

  2023 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  Lesley-Ann Noel was trained as an Industrial Designer at the Universidade Federal do Paraná. She holds a PhD in Design from North Carolina State University and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of the West Indies. She is an Assistant Professor at the College of Design at North Carolina State University. She is co-Chair of the Pluriversal Design Special Interest Group of the Design Research Society. She is one of the co-editors of The Black Experience in Design for Allworth (2022) and has created several design tools for critical reflection such as The Designer’s Critical Alphabet and the Positionality Wheel.

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  Mike Simmons

  Director of Product Design, Playground Global

  2019 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  Mike currently serves as Director of Product Design at Playground Global, which is a venture investment firm with an added studio of product development and technical experts. Here he blends his consulting, product design, and entrepreneurship experience to help aspiring hardware startup companies create great products and strong businesses. Prior to joining Playground, Mike worked for Google where he built a team and managed the product design and mechanical engineering efforts first with Android and the Nexus line of products and then adding projects with Chrome and Chromecast. Before that, Mike led product design efforts for startups, created new products and businesses at Lunar Design, and ran his own consulting practice. Through these experiences, he has helped develop products across industries and for many clients such as Apple, Danger, HP, Motorola, and SanDisk.
  
  Mike first realized his passion for designing and inventing products while earning his degree in the Product Design program at Stanford. He later went on to fuel his interest in business and entrepreneurship by obtaining an MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Mike grew up in Montana, and he loves to return to his home state for skiing, fishing, and simply taking in the Big Sky.

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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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  Stephanie Yung

  Design Director, Smart Design

  2020 Health & Wellness Jury Captain

  As Design Director at Smart Design’s New York studio, Stephanie has led projects across the continuum of wellness products and services including: public health, pharmaceuticals, devices, personal care, fitness, and reproductive health. Her personal journey of redesigning the fertility treatment experience as a single woman to be more accessible to all—which she called Project Junior—garnered national attention and was featured in Fast Company and 99u.
  
  In her spare time, Stephanie has shared her expertise in strategic design innovation with audiences ranging from venture capitalists to government agencies; across topics including—designing for social impact, saving women from bad design, and inclusive design. Stephanie also serves on the Board of Advisors as the user-centered design expert for Simprints, a non-for-profit tech company hoping to close the identification gap of over 1 billion people in emerging countries.

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  Rachael Dietkus

  Founder, Social Workers Who Design

  2022 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  Rachael is the founder of Social Workers Who Design and speaks publicly about, educates on, and advocates for greater awareness to the value of social work in design, as well as responsible and respectful trauma responsive, healing focused, and care centered design practices and research. Her current work draws from north of 20 years of experience across serious and complex cause-driven social justice issues in health and human rights, student rights advocacy, housing and homelessness services, and teaching and program management at the intersection of social work, social impact, and design in higher education.

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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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  Clay Wiedemann

  Head of Design, Zocdoc

  2020 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  Clay has been working in design and research since late last century, having shifted over from film and cultural studies. He spent much of his early career at frog, working in interaction and design research. There, he focused on complex design systems, innovation methods, and prototyping, and taught prototyping at SVA's MFA in Interaction Design program.
  
  He left frog to build the interaction team at Smart Design, and spent many days in awe of the physical prototyping skills of the industrial design team.
  
  He now leads design at Zocdoc, a service that help people navigate tough healthcare choices by quickly connect them to the right care. He remains focused on user-centered design, and works to ensure that everyone at Zocdoc develops a deep understanding of the patients and providers they help. Throughout his design career he has rescued cats.