Jury Alumni

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  Alex Naghavi

  Creative Director, Block

  2026 Visual Communication Jury Member

  Alex Naghavi is a Creative Director and AI-driven designer based in Los Angeles. For over 17 years, she has worked at the intersection of brand, digital product, and emerging technology—designing brands and experiences that are culturally resonant and strategically grounded.
  
  She is the former Executive Creative Director and Partner at Josephmark, a global design and venture studio where she led brand and product work for clients including Google, Spotify, Sony, Redbull, Hasbro, AMC, XPRIZE, and Twitter. During that time, she helped shape platforms such as We Are Hunted (acquired by Twitter), Clipchamp (acquired by Microsoft), and led the Myspace redesign in 2012 and the RCA Records brand refresh in 2021.
  
  Her work has been recognized by D&AD, Webby Awards, ADC Awards, SXSW, Awwwards, and Fast Company. She has served as a juror for the ADC Awards, Webby Awards, Awwwards, One Screen Film Festival, and the Leo Imagination Fund.
  
  Alongside her client and leadership work, Alex is building Seamless Studio—an AI-powered mockup platform crafted for brand designers. She is also an emerging AI filmmaker whose films have been screened internationally and awarded at Runway’s Gen:48 and the OMNI Film Festival.
  
  Alex is a first-generation Australian of Persian and Dutch heritage. Her practice is rooted in curiosity, cultural awareness, and pushing creative tools toward more expressive, human outcomes—especially as design enters a new era shaped by AI.

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  Yukiko Naoi

  Creative Director, Interwoven Design Group

  2026 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Yukiko Naoi is a creative director and industrial designer focused on human centered wearable technology, soft goods, and medical devices. As Creative Director at Interwoven Design Group, she leads projects from concept to build, designing, prototyping, and coordinating production. Selected collaborations include SharkNinja, Breg, and Areté.
  
  Yukiko led Tanaka Kapec Design Group as President, following an earlier role as Junior Partner, guiding strategy, ergonomics, usability, and end-to-end design from research through DFM for healthcare clients including Johnson & Johnson, Bausch + Lomb, AstraZeneca, and Stryker. During this tenure, she was named on over 20 patents across wearables, user interfaces, and medical devices.
  
  Beyond design, Yukiko founded REST Acupuncture in New York City after a postgraduate apprenticeship in the Integrative Therapies Program for Children with Cancer at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She holds a MID from Pratt Institute and an MS, L.Ac. from Tri-State College of Acupuncture.

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  Thomas Overthun

  Executive Industrial Design Director, IDEO

  2026 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  For over 30 years, Thomas has created products that reflect his unique approach to design. He has a deep interest in how things are made and how this knowledge can help to lessen their impact on the environment; how they connect to the digital realm; and how they act as ambassadors of their brand. Thomas’ work includes furniture for the workplace and home, sports products, consumer electronics, kitchen tools and personal care items, and has won numerous awards. Before IDEO, Thomas was part of the design team at Philips. Thomas holds a bachelor's degree in industrial design from the University of Wuppertal, Germany.

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  Brandi Parker

  Founder/Owner, Parker Brands, LLC

  2026 Sustainability Jury Captain

  Brandi Parker is a Brand-Level Sustainability Consultant, who broke from twenty plus years in the agency world to focus on good, sustainable brand work. Starting Parker Brands has helped fuel creative, radical collaboration with diverse teams. After all, a sustainably designed future must be multidisciplinary, humane and optimistic. She often finds herself acting as a bridge between design and sustainability; bringing each topic to the other. Her specific expertise in brands and consumer packaged goods extends to printing, structure & manufacturing, materials, sourcing, marketing, strategy, messaging across business verticals and sectors. She also has a public speaking platform that spans across podcasts, webinars, conferences and keynotes.

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  Brian Pughe

  Director of Industrial Design, Ensera Design

  2026 Medical & Healthcare Jury Member

  Bio Brian is a design leader that believes great design is multi-sensory and that when engaging with a product, people should feel the values of those who made it. Starting at Ensera Design as an entry-level designer and growing into the Director of Industrial Design role, Brian has contributed to a wide volume of their work over the last decade. This spans experience with leading healthcare companies to innovative start-ups in the diagnostics, surgical, drug delivery, and consumer health categories. As director, he works to ensure medical design is as intuitive and personal as it is lifesaving.

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  Swar Raisinghani

  Co-founder, Xeno Co-lab

  2026 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Swar is a co-founder and design lead at Xeno Co-lab, and has led teams & projects for global tech companies, fast growing start-ups and pioneers in financial inclusion to help them design user-centric experiences using service design. She has an educational background in Graphic Design with a deep understanding of human-centred design (HCD) and holds a MFA in Design for Social Innovation. Prior to Xeno Co-lab, she worked as a Service Designer at Veryday (McKinsey Design) in NYC and Stockholm.
  
  She is driven by the pursuit of merging her passion for social innovation with her expertise in service design through projects that lead to designing accessible products & services for marginalised or underserved communities especially in emerging markets.

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  Jan Raken

  Senior Principal, Nike

  2026 Commerical & Industrial Equipment Jury Member

  Jan Raken leads design across hardware, softgoods, and UX at Nike’s Advanced Product Ventures group, focusing on the future of powered athletes. Before Nike, Jan served as Design Director at Microsoft Surface and worked at IDEO’s Palo Alto and Shanghai studios across hardware, innovation, and consumer tech. A graduate of Art Center College of Design, he brings a cross-disciplinary perspective rooted in design craft, collaboration, and strategic product development.

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  Arvi Raquel-Santos

  Sr. Staff UX Manager, Google

  2026 Interaction Jury Captain, 2026 Apps & Platforms Jury Captain

  Arvi is a San Francisco-based designer and educator with over 20 years of experience in product and brand design. Currently, he is a Sr. Staff UX Manager at Google, where he leads the App Foundations team for the Google Search app on iOS and Android, contributing to the mission of making the world's information universally accessible and useful.
  
  Previously, Arvi has worked with a broad range of organizations, from startups to global tech giants like Meta, Fitbit, and Instacart. He crafts beautiful, delightful experiences and is passionate about building design teams that solve complex problems. Arvi is driven to design products and services that connect people, inspire creativity, and empower transformative change.

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  Stephen Simantiras

  Head of Creative, Canfield Scientific

  2026 Medical & Healthcare Jury Captain

  Stephen Simantiras is an award-winning industrial designer and creative leader who is passionate about transforming ideas into impactful products and experiences. With over 17 years in the design industry, he has focused on blending creativity, strategy and empathy to deliver human-centered design solutions.
  
  As current Head of Creative at Canfield Scientific, Inc., Stephen leads the Industrial Design and UIUX initiative to further accelerate the brand grow a team of a talented designers. He focuses on harmonizing form, function, and user experience to build a stronger brand language and fuel creative innovation.
  
  Previously, he spent more than a decade at HS Design Inc. (Ensera Design), growing from Industrial Designer to Director of Design. During that time, he led multidisciplinary teams through every stage of development, from research and concepting to prototyping and production. Through this he collaborating closely with clients and his team of designers to bring novel ideas to life. Stephen has designed and developed products for a wide range of industries, including consumer goods, consumer medical devices, and first kind healthcare solutions.
  
  Additionally, he has served over a decade as an adjunct professor of design at Kean University. Here he taught industrial design principals, model making, CAD, rendering, and animation.

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  Ruby Steel

  Co-Founder, Studio Exception

  2026 Home & Living Jury Member

  Ruby Steel is an award-winning inclusive innovation leader and design strategist with over 15 years’ experience shaping products, services, and systems across technology, healthcare, mobility, media, and retail. She is the co-founder of Studio Exception, a pioneering practice that centres excluded voices as a source of insight, creativity, and strategic advantage in design.
  
  Ruby has worked with global organisations and public institutions including the NHS, BBC, Samsung, Jaguar Land Rover, Spotify, Sky, Toyota, Selfridges, and Standard Chartered. Her work blends ethnographic research, systems thinking, and emotionally intelligent design to translate lived experience into scalable principles that benefit both organisations and society. She is particularly interested in how inclusive design can drive innovation at the level of culture, policy, and long-term strategy.
  
  She was one of the expert designers on the BBC Two programme Big Life Fix, collaborating within a multidisciplinary team to create life-changing solutions for people with disabilities and complex needs. This experience helped shape her belief that design is fundamentally emotion-led — and that empathy, when applied with rigour, can unlock meaningful and commercially viable outcomes.
  
  Ruby is the co-creator of The Exception Method, a design and innovation framework that begins with one “exceptional” human — often someone excluded by conventional processes — and uses their experience to inform universal design principles. The method is currently being developed into a book and suite of tools with her Studio Exception co-founder, Dawood Sufi.
  
  A graduate of the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, Ruby has received multiple accolades including the Helen Hamlyn Design Award and a Core77 Design Award runner-up. She is a frequent speaker on inclusive innovation, accessibility, and future design practice.

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  Alastair Stokes

  Associate, Gensler

  2026 Built Environment Jury Member

  Alastair is an architect at Gensler in Los Angeles, where he leads the design of education and community-focused projects at the office. He has a keen interest in advocating for a more resilient built environment that can enable new ways for all people to live, learn, play, and work more sustainably. A key part of this advocacy is supporting the next generation of architects and designers as they seek to forge a path for themselves in this crucial work. Alastair has taught architecture at Woodbury University, is a frequent critic on local university juries, is a regular NCARB committee member focused on the future of practice, and runs the internal project presentation platform at Gensler Los Angeles, which is focused on giving more junior team members the chance to present their work.

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  Aziz Sy

  General Manager, Impact Hub Dakar

  2026 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  A graduate of Brandeis University in Massachusetts with a Master's degree in Sustainable Development, Aziz Sy has worked in business support since joining CTIC as a project manager in 2014. Since then, in 2018, he founded the Impact Hub Dakar incubator, which has supported over 250 companies, and managed the DNA Business Angels network, followed by the La Tanière Business Angels network and the Suguba accelerator. He dedicates most of his time to financing and training startups and has been developing various programs and events in this area for over 10 years.

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  Yuko Takagi

  Design Manager, The Coca-Cola Company

  2026 Packaging Jury Captain

  Yuko is a Tokyo-based designer and design director, currently a Design Manager at The Coca-Cola Company. She specializes in brand development, package design, and visual identity—bringing brands to life through clear and creative ideas.
  
  With over a decade of experience across both client and agency environments, she has delivered award-winning design solutions for global and local brands. Her work spans branding, packaging, structural design, and visual identity systems, recognized by the Pentawards, The Dieline Awards, and the A’ Design Award.

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  Dingdong Tang

  Project Coordinator, Corgan

  2026 Built Environment Jury Member

  Dingdong Tang is an award-winning architectural designer, Project Coordinator and BIM Lead at Corgan, and Founder & Principal of LYT-X Studio. He holds an M.Arch from the University of Southern California. At Corgan, he leads BIM strategy and cross-disciplinary coordination for large, mission-critical, next-generation AI campuses, setting standards that align design ambition with resilience, energy performance, and sustainability. His design philosophy holds that architecture is most powerful when it is context-specific—each site calling for a spatial language that honors cultural, environmental, and historical narratives.
  
  Advancing a performative and adaptive approach, Tang champions parametric design, computational strategies, and AI-assisted workflows to translate data, behavior, and human experience into spaces with clarity and consequence. Through LYT-X Studio, he leads interdisciplinary work in heritage revitalization, urban regeneration, adaptive reuse, and cultural/public architecture—treating technology not as an aesthetic end but as a generative medium that amplifies site-specificity, programmatic coherence, and emotional impact. He continues to push the boundaries of design through interdisciplinary research and experimentation, fostering architecture that is responsive, inclusive, and visionary.
  
  Previously at Yazdani Studio of CannonDesign, he advanced a sustainability-driven practice; a highlighted project—the Caltech Resnick Sustainability Center—achieved LEED Platinum and multiple honors. His work has earned Red Dot, IDA Architectural Design of the Year (2024), AIA, and Architizer A+ awards, and has been exhibited internationally, including NYCxDesign and the Red Dot Design Museum. Across research and practice, he grounds advanced technologies in memory, context, and imagination to create sustainable, future-oriented environments.

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  Vineet Thuvara

  Chief Product Officer, Fluke Corporation

  2026 Commerical & Industrial Equipment Jury Captain

  Vineet Thuvara is the Chief Product Officer at Fluke Corporation, one of world’s leading companies in test and measurement devices, software, and services. In his role he leads the Fluke business units and is responsible for growth, new product innovation and strategy apart from being a champion for AI. Prior to Fluke he was General Manager and Director at Amazon, leading the Echo product organization responsible for developing and shipping Amazon's First-party Alexa based AI devices and experiences.
  
  Before Amazon in 2021, Vineet spent 15 years at Microsoft in various leadership roles across Surface, Xbox, and Server and Cloud product organizations. Prior to that he was the co-founder and CEO of 5th Quadrant, an Industrial Design company based out of New Delhi, India.
  
  Vineet holds a Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from University of Calicut, MS in Industrial Design from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, and an MS in Engineering and Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. He is co-author of the Life-Cycle Engineering Handbook for Indian Industries, guest lecturer at multiple universities, product advisor for start-ups, holds several patents, and has held scholarships at the Delft University, Netherlands and Hitachi Design Center, Japan.