Jury Alumni

• 

  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.

• 

  Dan Wu

  Privacy Counsel & Legal Engineer, Immuta

  2019 Service Design Jury Member

  Dan Wu is a privacy lawyer with a JD and PhD from Harvard. TechCrunch, The Multifamily Executive, Hackernoon, Columbia Public Policy Review, and Shareable have featured his research on how technology and law can advance affordable housing and transit. He works on data ethics and product at a leading data governance startup.

• 

  Arianna Orland

  Co-founder, Creative Director and Experience Designer, In/Visible Talks

  2021 Interaction Jury Member

  Arianna is a seasoned creative leader, community builder, and holistic thinker fluent in product, brand, and marketing with a deeply held passion for the craft of design. With over 20 years of industry experience, Arianna draws from an enormous quiver of design processes and techniques to galvanize teams and projects to success. Currently, Arianna's impressive client roster includes Twitter, Instacart, and Lyft.
  
  Arianna is the co-founder of In/Visible Talks, a conference for creative professionals that celebrates the art of design. Now in its 5th year, In/Visible Talks has hosted 50+ speakers on the topic of creativity from all over the world. She proudly serves as Board President of Creativity Explored, a San Francisco based nonprofit that gives artists with developmental disabilities the means to create and share their work. Arianna also frequently writes on the subject of creativity and her work has been featured in prestigious publications such as Co.Design, 99u, and Forbes.

• 

  Hanna Bossmark

  Senior Industrial Designer, Independent

  2022 Commercial Equipment Jury Member

  Hanna Bossmark is an independent designer based in San Francisco with focus on making products and experiences that connect purpose, culture, beauty and commercial viability. Previously, Hanna led industrial design efforts at Branch Creative, and also worked for IDEO, Ammunition and Zound, turning ideas to reality for companies such as Hims, Equal Parts, Lyft and Urbanears.
  
  
  Outside of design work, Hanna is a certified yoga teacher and founder of Space For Stillness, creating tools to encourage meditation practices in promotion for a healthy lifestyle.

• 

  Luis Arnal

  President and Founder, INSITUM

  2015 Service Design Jury Member

  Luis is President and Founder of INSITUM, a leading innovation consulting firm. He co-founded INSITUM in 2002 and today has more than 110 employees and offices in Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Colombia, Argentina, Peru and the United States. INSITUM helps the biggest companies in the world create an innovation culture by envisioning new products, developing new services and designing better experiences. He has been involved in more than 1000 innovation projects for a wide variety of sectors. Before founding INSITUM he worked as a strategy consultant for DiamondCluster in Barcelona and E-Lab (now Sapient) in Chicago.Luis holds a bachelor's in Industrial Design and a Master's degree in Innovation Planning from the Institute of Design, IIT in Chicago. He is a prolific speaker a member of the committee for various conferences on innovation and research.

• 

  Stewart Scott-Curran

  Executive Creative Director, Instrument

  2019 Visual Communication Jury Member

  Stewart is currently Executive Creative Director at Instrument, a digital and brand experience agency in Portland, Oregon. Prior to Instrument he was Director of Brand Design at Intercom in San Francisco where he built the Intercom Brand Studio from 3 to 22 people working across digital brand, content, events and everything in between. Stewart also has worked at CNN leading a redesign of their digital presence, at Coca-Cola where he led a rebrand of Sprite and at Nike where he worked for 10 years designing soccer uniforms for the best teams and athletes in the world. He is originally from Glasgow in Scotland.

• 

  August Heffner

  Creative Director, Instrument

  2021 Interaction Jury Captain

  August is a designer and creative director. He works to bridge the divide between the functionality of digital products and the emotion of brand marketing. He began by leading internal design teams at MoMA, J. Crew, Kate Spade, & Casper. He’s been a regular contributor of editorial illustrations to The New York Times and an instructor at Parsons and SVA. August transitioned to digital product design and began leading project teams for Huge, and Work&Co. Today, August leads a team at Instrument where he creates digital first brands, marketing, and products for organizations including Twitter, PATH and the WNBA.

• 

  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.

• 

  Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman

  Founder & Principal, Interwoven Design Group

  2024 Sports & Outdoors Jury Captain

  Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman is a highly accomplished design professional working at the intersection of design and technology with a focus on wearable product, smart textiles and soft goods. With a background in performance apparel, product design and consumer products, she is a pioneering researcher in design methodologies and smart materials, and is Professor of Industrial Design at Pratt Institute. She is the author of Smart Textiles for Designers: Inventing the Future of Fabrics; has published many articles; and speaks internationally on design, innovation and the future.
  
  With over 25 years of corporate experience in athletic, medical, wearable, and consumer product design, she has held positions as Design Director for Fila, Champion and Nike and has been a key influencer in shaping innovative products. As the founder of Interwoven Design Group, she has led the creation of award-winning projects, including the Apex Exosuit for HeroWear, the Perci Emergency Preparedness V est, and the upcoming GLDN PNT padel collection. For the Core 77 Design Jury in the Sports and Outdoor category, Rebeccah emphasizes her extensive corporate background. Her dual role as a design leader and academic, coupled with her commitment to diversity in design, positions her as a valuable contributor to the evaluation of sports and outdoor design.

• 

  Lionel Mohri

  VP of Design, Intuit Innovation Practices, Intuit

  2018 Strategy & Research Jury Member

  Lionel is an innovation leader with a proven track record in large, complex organizations. He is passionate about galvanizing organizations around bold, customer-driven visions and empowering teams to do the best work of their lives. Currently the head of innovation at Intuit, Lionel leads a team of designers, researchers, marketers and storytellers to fuel innovation across the Small Business Group. Prior to joining Intuit in 2011, Lionel spent seven years at global innovation consultancy IDEO.

• 

  Zach Kaplan

  CEO, Inventables

  2018 Open Design Jury Captain

  Zach Kaplan is the founder and CEO of Inventables, the leader in 3D carving. A maker his whole life, he is on a mission to ignite digital manufacturing world wide and provide everyone with ambition a way to get started. Inventables flagship products Easel, Carvey, and X-Carve are used by a new wave of makers carving everything from circuit boards to skate boards. Named a “modern Leonardo” by the Museum of Science and Industry and a 40 under 40 by Crain’s Chicago Business, his dream is to create a world with 2 million digital manufacturers that have raving fans, not just customers.

• 

  Zack Simons

  Senior Design Manager, Invision

  2020 Packaging Jury Member

  Zack is a professional athlete turned designer based in Park City, Utah. He leads by example with a rigorous, hands-on approach to brand, product, and UX design.
  
  Zack is currently leading a team of UX and product designers as a Sr. Design Manager at InVision. In years past, he worked alongside some of the best in the business at WeWork, Logitech and Ammunition.

• 

  Jeremy Cai

  CEO, Italic

  2022 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  Jeremy Cai was born and raised in Illinois where his entrepreneurial streak began while operating a lending business at his middle school lunch table. Jeremy studied at Babson College before dropping out as an early member of the Thiel Fellowship to pursue a career in technology. Since then, Jeremy has brought many successful companies to life, including Fountain, a leading software platform that businesses such as Uber and Amazon use to hire millions of people each year, Not Pot, a cult-favorite wellness brand, and Tonari , a Japanese anime
  studio.
  
  In his current role as CEO of Italic, Jeremy oversees global strategy and culture.

• 

  Shawn Rickenbacker

  Assoc. Professor, Architecture, CCNY Spitzer School of Architecture, J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures

  2023 Built Environment Jury Member

  Shawn L. Rickenbacker is a trained architect, urbanist and urban data researcher. He is currently the Director of the J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures where he directs the Center’s sponsored and partnership research and is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the CCNY Spitzer School of Architecture. His research and work at the Bond Center confronts the complex urban intersection of spatial equity and the social and economic impacts of place-based policies, programs and design through the lens of urban data, forensic and design research. He’s served as Senior Research Fellow at the Phyllis M. Taylor Institute for Social Innovation, where he researched ‘Artificial Intelligence and The Future of Social Urbanism’, The Favrot Chair in Architecture at Tulane University, Gensler Distinguished Professor at Cornell University and Director of the Motorola Sponsored Future Interactions Lab at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Design. His work and research have been published in The New York Times, NY Daily News and Global Architecture, Wired and exhibited at Studio Museum of Harlem. Shawn holds a MArch with a Certificate in American Urbansim from the University of Virginia where he was the Dupont Scholar and a BArch from Syracuse University.

• 

  Stephanie Aaron

  Vice President, J.P. Morgan Chase

  2024 Apps & Platforms Jury Captain

  Stephanie Aaron is a design lead at J.P. Morgan Chase where she focuses on making things simpler for employees and customers every day. She has previously worked at quite a few large financial firms and the New York Federal Reserve. She ran her own design firm for more than a decade, with clients including The American Museum of Natural History, Citibank and Barnes & Noble.
  Outside of work she is North America regional coordinator for IxDA.
  A native New Yorker, she holds a BFA from the Cooper Union and an MFA in Interaction Design from the School of Visual Arts. In her free time she can be found with her nose in a book and a 62-pound pit bull on her lap or in a kayak on the Hudson River.

• 

  Stephanie Aaron

  Vice President, J.P. Morgan Chase

  2024 Interaction Jury Captain

  Stephanie Aaron is a design lead at J.P. Morgan Chase where she focuses on making things simpler for employees and customers every day. She has previously worked at quite a few large financial firms and the New York Federal Reserve. She ran her own design firm for more than a decade, with clients including The American Museum of Natural History, Citibank and Barnes & Noble.
  Outside of work she is North America regional coordinator for IxDA.
  A native New Yorker, she holds a BFA from the Cooper Union and an MFA in Interaction Design from the School of Visual Arts. In her free time she can be found with her nose in a book and a 62-pound pit bull on her lap or in a kayak on the Hudson River.