It is with much gratitude and admiration that we celebrate the jury alumni members of the Core77 Design Awards.
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Jury Alumni
Dror Benshetrit
Principal, Studio Dror
2018 Built Environment Jury Captain
Dror Benshetrit is a designer, thinker, dreamer and futurist. He began his career as an artist and has since amassed an award-winning portfolio of product design, interiors, architecture, master planning and city planning—all before the age of 40. Together with his team of designers, artists, architects, researchers and communicators, he tackles ambitious pursuits to foster authentic connections and improve people’s well-being.
His holistic practice—named one of the most innovative companies in design by Fast Company—intentionally works across all scales, blurring boundaries with each project.
Studio Dror is one of the only practices to bridge Architecture, Design, and Art, and the results are always avant-garde: current endeavors include an innovation lab for the future of nature and humanity, large site-specific installations, a book entitled ‘Dror Dreams’, and The Lookback, an immersive entertainment venture replicating an astronaut’s experience standing on the Moon looking back at Earth.
Collaboration is the cornerstone of his approach: he partners with best-in-class specialists and brands and organizations that share the same spirit of innovation to test the limits of convention and bring profound ideas to life. As a result, Dror’s connections and network includes highly influential people in the worlds of Art, Real Estate Development, Fashion, Design, Academia and Politics.
Charlie Gepp
Founder, INTENTIONALLY BLANK
2018 Built Environment Jury Member
Charlie Gepp is a patron and avid collector of Art and Design, mainly modern and contemporary. He is co-founder of Melissa Shoes USA, the leading global manufacturer of jelly shoes and a pioneer in forging design collaborations with Architects, Artists and Designers such as Zaha Hadid, Mariko Mori, Sebastian Errazuriz and Muti Randolph. Charlie Gepp is also founder of INTENTIONALLY BLANK, which acts as agent and provides coaching and strategic advice to a stable of artists and designers. He is also actively involved with Creative Time, Mariko Mori’s FAOU Foundation and the Storefront for Art and Architecture.
Marc Thorpe
Founder, Marc Thorpe Design
2018 Built Environment Jury Member
MARC THORPE DESIGN WAS FOUNDED IN 2010 BY ARCHITECT AND INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER MARC THORPE. THORPE IS KNOWN INTERNATIONALLY FOR HIS INNOVATIVE AND DYNAMIC WORK, TAKING A RIGOROUS APPROACH TO THE INTEGRATION OF ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY. THORPE AND HIS TEAM COLLABORATE WITH CLIENTS TO DEVELOP AND EXECUTE BRAND GROWTH STRATEGIES. THE STUDIO CONCEPTUALIZES DESIGN WHILE BUILDING BRANDS, AND HAS THE RESOURCES TO PRODUCE CONSISTENT COMMUNICATION PLATFORMS, INCLUDE ARCHITECTURE, INTERIOR DESIGN, DIGITAL MEDIA, GRAPHIC DESIGN, FURNITURE DESIGN, PRODUCT DESIGN, RETAIL AND EXHIBIT DESIGN.
THE STUDIO DESIGNS RELATIONSHIPS. THE FOCUS OF MARC THORPE DESIGN IS IN THE SYSTEMIC INTERSECTIONS A PROJECT PRESENTS. IN ORDER TO DISCOVER A PROJECT’S POTENTIAL, THE STUDIO WORKS CLOSELY WITH CLIENTS AND COLLABORATORS TO FOSTER NEW IDEAS, ESTABLISH COMMON VISION AND INNOVATIVE STRATEGIES OF APPROACH TO NURTURE THE DESIGN PROCESS. THE RESULTS ARE DESIGN SOLUTIONS WITH THE HIGHEST DEGREE OF PRECISION, QUALITY AND CHARACTER.
THE STUDIO OFFERS ITSELF AS AN OPEN SYSTEM OF EXCHANGE. THORPE HAS DEDICATED THE STUDIO TO THE RESEARCH, PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND EDUCATION OF SYSTEMS THINKING THROUGH THE DISCIPLINE OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN. THORPE STATES, “WE BELIEVE IN A HOLISTIC DESIGN APPROACH, WHICH ENGAGES THE SOCIAL COMPONENTS OF SPACE AND FORM.” COLLABORATIONS WITH DIGITAL ARTISTS, INTERACTIVE DESIGNERS, NEW MEDIA DESIGNERS, SOUND AND LIGHTING ENGINEERS AND SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERTS HAVE ADVANCED THE PRACTICE’S DIVERSITY AND KNOWLEDGE.
Joe Hebenstreit
CEO, Shaper
2018 Commercial Equipment Jury Captain
Joe Hebenstreit is the CEO of Shaper, a human-involved robotics company focused on dissolving barriers between human intuition and machine tool automation. Shaper’s Origin is a handheld CNC router that employs computer vision and real-time positional motor control to auto-correct for imprecise hand movements and enable entirely new fabrication possibilities. Prior to Shaper, Joe led the Product Design & Engineering team responsible for Glass hardware development at Google X. He began his engineering career in the automotive industry before earning his product development stripes at frog while tackling projects across a wide range of industries including medical devices, wearables, home appliances, industrial equipment and consumer electronics. His reputation for shepherding new technology out of the prototyping lab and into consumer products led him to Amazon’s Lab126 in its earliest days of hardware development. At Amazon, he helped usher enabling technologies like touch interfaces and front-lighting to generations of Kindle e-readers.
Gretchen Anderson
Head of Design, PG&E
2018 Commercial Equipment Jury Member
Gretchen spent the first part of her career in design consulting for firms like frog, Cooper, and LUNAR. Currently, she is head of design at PG&E, California’s largest energy company where she’s helping to build the energy company of the future. Previously, she led the design of the hardware and software of a next-generation surgical system and was VP of Product at GreatSchools.org.
Gretchen is a frequent speaker on design topics including the changing role of design in the age of artificial intelligence and bridging physical and digital design. Gretchen has also taught design methods and design thinking in a variety of settings including Stanford and UC Berkeley.
Her past clients include Virgin Records, Samsung, Johnson & Johnson, and Starbucks. Gretchen is a Bay Area native who left only long enough to get a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in History & Literature.
Kiefer Limeback
CEO, Limeback Group Inc, Limeback media, @toolaholic
2018 Commercial Equipment Jury Member
Early on, Kiefer started his career as a professional remodel contractor in Toronto, where he developed his skill using tools and equipment ranging from hand tools to large scale heavy machinery.
When Instagram was in its infancy, he started a page (@toolaholic) where he could discuss tools and techniques amongst the community to better the industry. This quickly blossomed into more detailed media and articles, landing him partnerships with some of the largest names in the industry. He currently works with leaders in power tools and construction products such as Milwaukee, Dewalt, Festool, Fein, Makita, and many more, developing and testing new tools and jobsite solutions. He also writes for publications such as Fine homebuilding and Canadian contractor magazine.
His media company serves an as outlet to show the world the latest in power tools, and also to product detailed content to help our younger generation learn more about tools and techniques.
Andy Logan
Founder & Creative Director, AWOL Company
2018 Commercial Equipment Jury Member
Andy Logan is the Founder and Creative Director at AWOL Company, a small but mighty Southern California-based product design agency. AWOL specializes in award-winning design that challenges assumptions, grows market share, and delights users. A veteran of California’s top consultancies, Andy’s 20-year design career resume includes both BMW/Designworks and frog design, leading creative teams to tackle challenges in the Consumer, Industrial, and Medical categories.
With a strategic design philosophy, he has helped businesses as varied as HP, Nike, John Deere, Proctor & Gamble, Turtle Beach, Welch Allyn, AutoDesk, and SanDisk better connect with their customers through amazing design. Most recently, he installed a kick-ass zip line in his backyard for his three daughters.
Spencer Wright
Proprietor, ThePrepared.org
2018 Commercial Equipment Jury Member
Spencer Wright is a writer, operator, and mechanical designer living in New York City. At theprepared.org he runs a weekly newsletter on manufacturing, logistics, and the business of hardware product development. By day he works on industrial 3D printing software at nTopology.
With a formal education in English syntax, Spencer built his project management experience in construction, learned to machine and weld building custom bicycle frames, and cut his engineering teeth designing structural and actuator assemblies for robotic sliding doors.
Ti Chang
Co-founder & VP of Design, Crave
2018 Consumer Product Jury Captain
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.
Ivy Ross
VP of Design for Hardware, Google
2018 Consumer Product Jury Member
Ivy Ross is currently the Vice President of Design for the Hardware Product Area at Google. Previously, she was VP of Project Aura (Glass & Beyond) at Google and held executive positions ranging from head of product design and development to CMO and presidencies with several companies, including Calvin Klein, Swatch, Coach, Mattel, Art.com, Bausch & Lomb and Gap.
Ivy has been a contributing author to numerous books, including The Change Champion’s Field Guide and Best Practices in Leadership Development and Organizational Change. She has also been referenced in Ten Faces of Innovation, Rules of Thumb, and Unstuck, among other books. Ivy was the keynote speaker at the Nokia World Design Conference and Fortune Magazine’s Women Conference, and has been cited by Fast Company and Businessweek as “one of the new faces of Leadership.”
A renowned artist, her innovative metal work in jewelry is in the permanent collections of 12 international museums. A winner of the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts grant, Ivy has also received the Women in Design Award and Diamond International Award for her creative designs.
Ivy’s passion is human potential and relationships. She believes in the combination of art and science to make magic happen and bring great ideas and brands to life.
Raja Schaar
Assistant Professor of Product Design, Drexel University
2018 Consumer Product Jury Member
Raja Schaar, MAAE, IDSA is an Assistant Professor of Product Design at Drexel University. She is an industrial designer, museum exhibition designer, and STEAM education evangelist. She is an active museum exhibition designer working with community organizations, National Parks, and museums all over the country.
Her interdisciplinary research focuses is on methods engaging girls and underrepresented minorities in STEM/STEAM through design and technology, innovation and entrepreneurship education, healthcare wearables, and biologically inspired design. Her current research collaborations include working with departments of Dance, Education, and computing to uncover STEAM identities in African American girls through the development of performance-driven wearable technology; developing pedagogy with Drexel’s Schools of Biomedical Engineering and Entrepreneurship to examine the role of clinical immersion on product innovation; and working with the college of Nursing to develop a pre-diagnostic wearable device for preeclampsia in low-resource communities.
Before joining Drexel's Product Design faculty, Raja taught at GA Tech in both the Colleges of Design and Engineering.
In addition to her career as an industrial designer and design educator, Raja has also served as the Coordinator of School Programs at the High Museum of Art, and the Director of Programs and Operations at Museum of Design Atlanta. Raja speaks on Industrial Design, STEAM and design education at conferences and workshops all over the US.
Jörg Student
Executive Design Director, IDEO
2018 Consumer Product Jury Member
Jörg Student is an Executive Design Director based in IDEO’s Palo Alto location. He is passionate about exploring the intersection of design and engineering to elevate the human experience.
Whether designing chairs, fitness equipment, medical devices, windows, or multi-tools, Jörg believes that the best designs are developed through rapid, iterative prototyping while always empathizing with users. Since joining IDEO in 2005, Jörg has applied this approach for innovation across a diverse range of industries, including consumer products, healthcare, and technology. His work has been recognized with multiple design awards, including from Fast Company and IDSA. Jörg has also spent a year with IDEO.org, IDEO’s non-profit arm, to improve the lives of people in poor and vulnerable communities.
Outside of IDEO, Jörg enjoys experimenting with advanced origami-folding patterns and translating them into larger-scale structures and interactive, kinetic art pieces. He is the co-founder and lead artist of the art collective FoldHaus, whose sophisticated yet poetic art pieces have been shown at many festivals and museums, including Burning Man, the NY MoMA, the Exploratorium in SF, the Smithsonian in DC, The Kaneko in Omaha, and the Dubai d3 design district.
Jörg holds two Masters degrees—one in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and another in Industrial Design and Engineering from the Royal College of Art in London.
Ani Liu
Designer, Experimental Artist & Speculative Technologist
2018 Design Concept Jury Captain
Ani Liu is a designer, experimental artist and speculative technologist working at the intersection of art & science. A recent member of MIT Media Lab, she creates research-based art that explores the social, cultural & emotional implications of emerging technologies.
Ani's work has been presented at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Asian Art Museum, MIT Museum, MIT Media Lab, Wiesner Gallery, Harvard University, and media channels such as VICE, Gizmodo, TED, FOX and WIRED.
In 2014-15 she lead the research program in Sensory Mediation at the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, exploring how information visualization and augmented reality, can be harnessed to extend the human sensorium to redefine spatial experience. She taught as an Associate Instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she co-taught an advanced-level architectural studio called Architecture of Cultural Prosthetics: Tools for Communication and Expression in the Public Space with Krzysztof Wodiczko. She has served on numerous design panels at esteemed institutions including Dartmouth College, MIT, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.
Ani has a B.A. from Dartmouth College, a Masters of Architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Master of Science from MIT Media Lab. She is on the committee of Art Scholars at MIT. Ani continually seeks to discover the unexpected, through playful experimentation, intuition, and speculative storytelling. Her studio is based in New York City.
Dan Chen
Engineer & Designer
2018 Design Concept Jury Member
Dan Chen is a designer and engineer. He communicates his ideas through working prototypes, investigating new ways of approaching user interactions.
He has several degrees including a MAS from MIT, an MFA in digital media from RISD and a BFA in communication design from UConn. He has over 8 years of design experience and now works at Culture Robotics as senior engineer. Previous positions include MIT Lifelong Kindergarten as an industrial designer. Johnson & Johnson as Senior Interaction Designer. Senior Interaction Designer at IDEO.
His personal work has been featured in CNET, The Huffington Post, the verge, Engadget, Mashable and Daily Mail. Dan was invited as a speaker at TEDx Vienna on the future of intimacy in 2016. His work was exhibited in Vitra Design Museum, MAK Wien, Design Museum Gent & Ars Electronica.
Working in the realms of robotics, communication design, interaction design and product design, Dan explores the new ways of communication and human experience through working prototypes and storytelling, inviting a reflective evaluation and implication.
Chris Woebken
Co-founder, Extrapolation Factory
2018 Design Concept Jury Member
Chris Woebken is a designer, researcher and educator living and working in Brooklyn. Chris teaches at New York University’s Integrated Digital Media (IDM) program and he co-founded the Extrapolation Factory, a studio developing experimental methods for collaboratively prototyping, experiencing and impacting future scenarios. Chris's work was awarded the Core77 Design Award in the Speculative Design category, got nominated for the Design Museum’s Designs of the Year award and received the NYFA Fellowship in Digital/Electronic Arts. Chris's work has been exhibited at MoMA in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Design Museum in London. Chris holds an MA in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art in London.
Susie Wise
Strategic Advisor, Designer & Coach, School Retool, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school)
2018 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain
Susie Wise is the founder of the K12 Lab Network at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (a.k.a. the d.school). She founded the K12 Lab in 2007 to investigate the role that design thinking could play in the education sector. This work helped catalyze a national movement to use design thinking as an approach to project-based learning and a method for ed sector innovation. From 2012-2017 she led the team to create innovative professional development experiences for teachers, school leaders, and “edu innovators” that help them build their creative confidence and make experiments happen. Recent programs include School Retool, a fellowship for school leaders, now operating in 18 cities, and the Shadow A Student challenge, launched in 2016 with more than 3500 school leaders participating. Susie is also a co-founder of Urban Montessori Charter School in Oakland, California.
Susie’s early professional experiences include developing educational multimedia for education technology startups and educational programming for Bay Area non-profits including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco International Film Festival, The Exploratorium, and the Bay Area Discovery Museum. She has a PhD in Learning Sciences and Technology Design from Stanford University and a BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania.