Jury Alumni

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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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  Zoé Bezpalko

  Sustainability Strategy Manager - Design & Manufacturing, Autodesk

  2024 Sustainability Jury Member

  Zoé Bezpalko is an environmental engineer, and designer who strongly believes in the strategic use of technology and design as keys for solving global issues like climate change. At Autodesk she leads the sustainability strategy for the Design & Manufacturing industries where she develops innovative technology to help customers reduce the environmental footprint of their design and make processes, and reach their sustainability goals.

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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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  Matt Brown

  Designer, Extraordinary Facility

  2024 Emerging Technologies Jury Member

  Matt Brown is an independent designer based in Los Angeles. Most of his work is in early-stage invention and prototyping in software and hardware for new products, services, media and environments. Recent clients include Google X, R&D at The New York Times, and The Berggruen Institute. He also runs Extraordinary Facility, a small design studio focused on learning and play.

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  Jenifer Bulcock

  Founder/Owner, Peoplemade LLC

  2024 Apps & Platforms Jury Member

  Jeni is an experience design strategist based in New York City. Born and raised in Australia, she established a design business at the age of 24, which thrived in Australia and Canada before she embarked on a new journey in New York City a decade ago.
  
  Driven by a keen interest in strategic decision-making, Jeni transitioned into design and research roles within consultancy and in-house settings. Her experience encompasses both Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX), where she has spearheaded strategic design initiatives and digital transformation programs across various industries. Her portfolio boasts an array of national and global brands, including Samsung, Meta, Square, IKEA, AIG, Better.com, and KraftHeinz, among others.
  
  In January 2023, fueled by her entrepreneurial spirit, she founded Peoplemade LLC, a Service Design and UX Research consultancy.
  
  Outside of work, Jeni finds joy in taking her dog on long walks and hosting dinner parties featuring seasonal produce sourced from farmers' markets.

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  Jenifer Bulcock

  Founder/Owner, Peoplemade LLC

  2024 Interaction Jury Member

  Jeni is an experience design strategist based in New York City. Born and raised in Australia, she established a design business at the age of 24, which thrived in Australia and Canada before she embarked on a new journey in New York City a decade ago.
  
  Driven by a keen interest in strategic decision-making, Jeni transitioned into design and research roles within consultancy and in-house settings. Her experience encompasses both Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX), where she has spearheaded strategic design initiatives and digital transformation programs across various industries. Her portfolio boasts an array of national and global brands, including Samsung, Meta, Square, IKEA, AIG, Better.com, and KraftHeinz, among others.
  
  In January 2023, fueled by her entrepreneurial spirit, she founded Peoplemade LLC, a Service Design and UX Research consultancy.
  
  Outside of work, Jeni finds joy in taking her dog on long walks and hosting dinner parties featuring seasonal produce sourced from farmers' markets.

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  Kendra Byrne

  Group Product Manager, Google DeepMind

  2024 Commercial Equipment 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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  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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  Farrell Calabrese

  Fractional CSO / Impact Officer, FMC Impact

  2024 Sustainability Jury Captain

  Farrell is a purpose-driven leader with over 20 years of experience spearheading strategic communications and impact initiatives within Fortune 500 and Top 100 companies. She is passionate about integrating sustainability into company culture and operations while driving transformative change through collaboration. Skilled in developing ESG goals and scalable sustainable solutions with multiple stakeholders, she has extensive experience working across sustainability, marketing, product design/engineering, and innovation teams, fostering innovation and challenging norms. She is a driver of the idea that business can be used as a lever for positive impact, and is a sought-after professional to position products, technologies - often resulting in building good brand from the inside out.
  
  You can see her advocating for this work as she speaks on Purpose x Sustainability as a Framework for high-performing companies, as well as the positive impact designers can have on the sustainability of products, services and innovative/novel ideas.
  
  Farrell is a well-respected, empathetic human who values integrity, collaboration, and wellness for herself and others.

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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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  Divya Chaurasia

  Sr. Industrial Designer and UX Lead, Spitfire Industry

  2024 Home & Living Jury Member

  Divya Chaurasia is an award-winning industrial designer, with a background in engineering. An expert in user-centered research, sustainable practices and design for manufacturing, she has a Masters in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute, New York and Bachelor’s in Technology from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India.
  
  Currently, Divya works as a senior industrial designer and user experience lead at Spitfire Industry, a design consultancy based in Brooklyn, New York. She designs products and experiences for brands like Clorox, All Clad, Tefal, Bausch & Lomb, Cook’s Direct, Hunter Douglas, GoTrax, and Nectar. Divya’s work is inspired by the everyday pursuits of people. She is fascinated by the connection between humans, objects and environments, and captures this relationship in delightfully functional products. Her work has been exhibited at NYCxDesign and NYC Media Lab Annual Summit and received recognition by Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award and International Design Awards.

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  Alex Wilcox Cheek

  Design Manager, Google

  2024 Apps & Platforms Jury Member

  Alex Wilcox Cheek is a New York-based designer. For more than ten years, he taught in the School of Design, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon. His courses blended design, architecture, technology, and the humanities, reecting his cross-disciplinary approach to his practice. In that time, he spun o a number of start-ups including Classroom Salon, Macromicro, and Skale. Alex has long been involved with the Interaction Design Association, co- founding the rst chapter in the Middle East, IxDA Doha, and later serving as local leader for New York City. Today, he leads a design team at Google.

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  Alex Wilcox Cheek

  Design Manager, Google

  2024 Interaction Jury Member

  Alex Wilcox Cheek is a New York-based designer. For more than ten years, he taught in the School of Design, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon. His courses blended design, architecture, technology, and the humanities, reecting his cross-disciplinary approach to his practice. In that time, he spun o a number of start-ups including Classroom Salon, Macromicro, and Skale. Alex has long been involved with the Interaction Design Association, co- founding the rst chapter in the Middle East, IxDA Doha, and later serving as local leader for New York City. Today, he leads a design team at Google.

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  Hillary Coe

  Design Leader

  2024 Transportation Jury Member

  Hillary is an Emmy award-winning, hands-on design leader utilizing bold, disruptive multi-platform innovations to solve the world’s greatest challenges. As SpaceX's first Director of Design, she successfully defined the visual strategy and narrative for human spaceflight in the 21st century through NASA’s Commercial Crew program. She led efforts to conceptualize human experience for future spacecraft, while also leading ground-up product development for the high-speed satellite internet service Starlink.
  She is a commercial pilot, astronaut candidate, drag racing record holder and advocate for young women and men entering STEM fields.

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  Benoit Collette

  ID, VALVE

  2024 Gaming Accessories Jury Member

  Following a master degree in Industrial design in France (ISD), Ben had the opportunity to work with numerous talented individuals through dierent design consultancy (design continuum, Teague, Artefact) and is now working for Valve where he focuses on video game hardware equipment such as Steamdeck . For him , Understanding users and targeting issues and opportunities is key to create successful projects , collaborating with complementary skilled people is key to create meaningful and market ready products and experiences.
  
  “After 20 years of strategic innovation and design consulting, I still maintain a strong urge to experiment and explore the frontiers of what comes next with the goal of merging and blurring the boundaries of Industrial Design, User Experience, and Interaction Design.
  I am a strong believer in creating multi-sensorial experiences rather than simply designing hardware products”

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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.