Jury Alumni

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  Noopur Agarwal

  Associate Professor + Program Director, Design, University of San Francisco

  2024 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Noopur Agarwal is a visual communication designer and educator dedicated to increasing critical public engagement with issues of global and local concern. Her practice is based both on service: working collaboratively and interdisciplinarily to make a strategic difference within an organization; and authorship: producing exploratory works. Her creative output often takes the form of “experiential graphic design” (physical and digital interactive environmental graphics) and includes brand identity concepts for events, organizations, exhibitions, publications, and advertisements.
  Agarwal is currently is an Associate Professor and Design Program Director in the Art + Architecture department at the University of San Francisco. She maintains an active consultancy practice in addition to her teaching, where her client list has included nonprofit, publishing, and technology organizations.

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  Paola Aguirre

  Founder, Borderless Studio

  2019 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Paola Aguirre Serrano is founder of BORDERLESS — Chicago-based urban design and research practice focused on cultivating collaborative design agency through interdisciplinary projects. With emphasis on exchange and communication across disciplines, Borderless explores creative civic design and engagement interventions that address the complexity of urban systems and social equity by looking at intersections between architecture, urban design, infrastructure, landscape, planning and community participatory processes. Paola is an active educator, and currently teaches architecture The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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  Lora Appleton

  Founder, kinder MODERN & Female Design Council

  2021 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Lora Appleton is a thought leader, celebrated designer, curator, gallerist and founder of kinder MODERN and Female Design Council. Leading the charge for womxn in design, she is working to shift the narrative away from “traditional” gender roles and family structures and towards womxn’s technical skills, artistry and professional merits.
  
  Appleton formed the Female Design Council as a direct response to the long history of imbalanced representation of gender in the design industry. FDC is dedicated to engaging equity and tangible gender parity in design. Appleton continues to focus her furniture and rug design efforts on thoughtful, practical and sustainable design in the family home. She serves on the NYCxDESIGN Steering Committee and is a Board Trustee at the Blue School in Manhattan.

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  George Aye

  Co-founder, Greater Good Studio

  2023 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  George co-founded Greater Good Studio to use design to heal, to be just, to be restorative, Previously, he spent seven years at a global innovation firm before being hired as the first human-centered designer at the Chicago Transit Authority. Since founding Greater Good he guides clients and teams through complex projects that honor reality, create ownership, and build power. He speaks frequently across the US and internationally. George holds the position of Full Professor (Adj) at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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  Sabiha Basrai

  Co-Owner, Design Action Collective

  2024 Design for Social Impact Jury Captain

  Sabiha Basrai is a co-owner of Design Action Collective — a worker-owned cooperative dedicated to serving social justice movements with art, graphic design, and web development. She is co-coordinator of the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, where she works with racial justice organizers on international solidarity campaigns. Sabiha is also part of the Center for Political Education advisory board, an affiliate trainer with Race Forward, and a faculty member in the University of San Francisco's Department of Art and Architecture.

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  John Bielenberg

  Partner, Future Partners

  2016 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  John Bielenberg is a designer, entrepreneur, and imaginative advocate for creating a better world through the application of creativity and ingenuity. John co-founded Future Partners, a Silicon Valley Innovation firm, in 2012 to teach Rapid Ingenuity Practices to individuals, teams, and organizations around the world. In 2001, John co-founded C2 Group, a brand strategy firm, to help leaders from technology start ups, Fortune 500 companies, and the world’s top business management consulting firms develop, build and protect their brands. In his career, John has won more than 250 design awards, including the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) Gold Medal for lifetime achievement.

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  Brian C. Rubin

  Senior Education Designer, Education Design Lab

  2022 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

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  Antionette Carroll

  Founder, President and CEO, Creative Reaction Lab

  2020 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Antionette Carroll is the Founder, President and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit educating and deploying youth to challenge racial and health inequities impacting Black and Latinx populations. Within this role, Antionette has pioneered an award-winning form of creative problem solving called Equity-Centered Community Design (named a Fast Company World Changing Idea Finalist). Through this capacity, Antionette has received several recognitions and awards including being named an ADL and Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellow, Roddenberry Fellow, Echoing Green Global Fellow, TED Fellow, ADCOLOR Innovator, SXSW Community Service Honoree, Camelback Ventures Fellow, 4.0 Schools Tiny Fellow, St. Louis Visionary Award Honoree for Community Impact, and Essence Magazine Woke 100.
  
  Within her almost 10 years of volunteer leadership, Antionette was named the Founding Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force of AIGA: The Professional Association of Design. She’s a former AIGA National Board Director and Chair Emerita of the Task Force. During her tenure, she founded and launched several initiatives, including the Design Census Program with Google, Racial Justice by Design Initiative, Diversity and Inclusion Residency, and national Design for Inclusivity Summit with Microsoft. Additionally, she’s the co-founder of the Design + Diversity Conference and Fellowship and an active member of Adobe's Design Circle.
  
  Antionette also is an international speaker and facilitator, previously speaking at Google, TED, Capital One, Harvard, Stanford University, Microsoft, NASA, TEDxHerndon and TEDxGatewayArch, AIGA National Conference, The Ohio State University, and more.

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  Marc Dones

  Associate Director, Equity Initiatives, Center for Social Innovation

  2018 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Marc Dones has worked in program and policy development for their entire career. Currently their work focuses on the development and integration of equity oriented policies and program procedures across a number of projects. In this role Marc also leads the SPARC (Supporting Partnerships for Anti-Racist Communities) Initiative. SPARC is currently focused on reframing homelessness response systems through an anti-racist lens. Additionally, Dones worked with a small team of C4 staff to build a training institute for over 300 provider agencies funded to work with individuals living with substance use disorders. Prior to joining C4, Dones served as a Program Manager in the MA Executive Office of Health and Human services where they assisted in the development and implementation of Governor Deval Patrick’s youth violence reduction program, the Safe and Successful Youth Initiative. Additionally, Marc served as the policy manager for the Massachusetts Special Commission on Unaccompanied Homeless Youth.

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  Sarah Dunham

  Partner, MTWTF

  2024 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Sarah is a Partner at MTWTF, where she has been shaping design processes, managing interdisciplinary design teams, and facilitating community engagement since joining the studio in 2014. MTWTF is a communication design studio that believes that good design has the power to help individuals, organizations, and businesses clarify what they do and manifest their ideas to make change happen. The studio situates itself within the broadest discipline of design — the shaping of our shared physical and electronic environment — and creates communication tools that foster discussion and facilitate change.
  
  Acting as project manager and art director, Sarah develops design strategies for projects that are drawn from a rigorous engagement with their content. This approach has driven exhibitions including ‘Utopia— Dystopia’ a multimedia exhibition at the Audi Design Incubator in Brooklyn; ‘Seeing Equal Rights in New York State’ an interactive exhibition at the Equal Rights Heritage Center; ‘Climates of Inequality’ an interactive exhibition of student work on environmental justice by the Humanities Action Lab; and 'Maneuvers at Millers River' a case study exhibition currently in development for the National Pubic Housing Museum in Chicago.

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  Heather Fleming

  Founder and CEO, Catapult Design

  2017 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Heather Fleming is the CEO and co-founder of Catapult Design, a product and service design firm with an expertise in human-centered design for marginalized communities. Catapult partners with organizations to develop sustainable solutions that address technology and social issues such as: rural electrification, water purification and transport, food security, and improved health. Before starting Catapult, Heather was a product design consultant in Silicon Valley, designing products for a diverse range of corporate clients and an Adjunct Lecturer at Stanford University and California Academy of the Arts. In 2005, she co-founded and led a volunteer group, the Appropriate Technology Design Team (ATDT), focused on social impact design work through a professional chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) in San Francisco. Heather was named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader for her work with EWB and Catapult Design. She is also a Board member for the Navajo Chamber of Commerce and serves on ASME’s Engineering and Global Development committee, chairing an initiative to create standardized evaluation metrics and design guidelines for products distributed in impoverished communities.

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  Mike Ford

  Founder, Hip Hop Architecture

  2019 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

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  Menaja Ganesh

  Gallery & Collections Programming Associate, Letterform Archive

  2024 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Menaja (currently in-between bodies and in-between names) is a gay Tamil & Bengali artist originally from Kolkata and currently based in San Francisco. Their practice lies between language and presentation, familiarity and loss. It manifests thru printmaking, multi-media installation, writing, and a sporadically maintained sketchbook. Their curatorial practice is born from and constantly dying within the archives. Their inspirations range from the fashion of 90s Karan Johar movies, to Arundhati Roy’s texts. They love independent publishing, and handloom saris. They currently work at Letterform Archive, activating the permanent collection through public programming. In their personal and professional life, they are always preoccupied with the conversation between preservation and access. They think of their grandmother daily.

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  Christine Gaspar

  Community-Engaged Designer & Nonprofit Leader

  2023 Design for Social Impact Jury Captain

  Christine Gaspar is a designer and planner with over fifteen years of experience in community-engaged design practice. She was the Executive Director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) from 2009 to 2022. CUP is a New York-based nonprofit whose mission is to use the power of design and art to increase meaningful civic engagement in partnership with historically marginalized communities. Prior to that, she was Assistant Director of the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio in Biloxi, Mississippi, where she provided architectural design and community planning services to low-income communities of color recovering from Hurricane Katrina. She is a founding member of the Design Futures Student Leadership Forum Advisory Board, and holds Masters in Architecture and in Urban Planning from MIT, and Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from Brown University. Her work is driven by a belief that design can be a powerful tool, particularly when it’s used to support community-led visions for change.