Jury Alumni

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  Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar

  Acting Director, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum

  2022 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar is the Nerman Family President-select of the Kansas City Art Institute.
  
  Originally from Chennai, India, Ruki draws from her international experiences as a designer to reimagine education and improve access to creative career pathways. Most recently, she has served as the Acting Director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design museum. At the height of the pandemic, Ruki was the Smithsonian’s Acting Under Secretary for education, responsible for leading a Smithsonian-wide team that responded to the distance-learning needs of families that were caught in the digital divide. Ruki has also served as the Smithsonian’s Associate Provost for education and was Director of education at the Cooper Hewitt.
  
  Before joining the Smithsonian in 2017, she was the Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Central Oklahoma, where she had advanced from Professor to Director of graduate programs and Chair of the Department of Design.
  
  Ruki has served in leadership roles at all levels of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), including the AIGA Design Educators Community and local and national boards. She has been recognized by AIGA's Oklahoma Chapter with the Fellow Award in 2015 and her alma mater, Iowa State University with the Design Achievement Award in 2021.

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  Liz Ogbu

  Founder and Principal, Studio O

  2020 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Liz Ogbu is an American architect, designer and urbanist whose work focuses on issues related to community building and spatial justice. She is the founder and principal of the design consulting firm Studio O.

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  Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon, Ph.D.

  Equity Innovation Studio Director, Think Rubix

  2022 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Dr. Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon is an innovation catalyst, researcher, facilitator, and evaluator, impassioned by the space between transformation and liberation.
  
  As the Director of the Equity Innovation studio at Think Rubix, a Black-led social innovation consultancy. Dr. Gordon serves as a shepherd for Equity Innovation to shape our collective future.
  
  He’s taught courses in design, evaluation, international development, and equity across four continents, co-designed partnerships, products, and services with local and international changemakers to support social change, and researched the complexity, evaluation, and emergence of design and innovation across the world.
  
  What can we build together?

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  Rose Piccioni

  Associate Provost, Online Education, ArtCenter College of Design

  2019 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Associate Provost: executive leader, strategist, educator
  A natural educator, leader, creative problem solver, and business developer with 25+ years of experience implementing story and new media meaningfully in teaching and learning.

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  Kat Reiser

  Senior Design Strategist, Booz Allen Hamilton

  2021 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Kat Reiser is a strategic thinker, driving innovation by understanding what to make and why it matters. In her time as a designer, Kat has consulted and participated in in-house design teams. She has had the opportunity to work with companies focused on housewares and packaged goods including Pampered Chef, PepsiCo, Chevron, P&G, AB InBev, and Oculus.
  
  Kat is also an instructor at Offsite, where she helps designers build the tools they need to seek employment while guiding the students through understanding and reflecting upon who they are and how they present themselves as designers.

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  Jennifer Rittner

  Principal, Content Matters

  2020 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Jennifer is a writer, educator and communications strategist. Her consulting firm, Content Matters, helps creative businesses thrive by defining their voice and learning how to communicate effectively with diverse audiences. Prior to consulting, Jennifer worked for Pentagram, Columbia CNMTL and the AIGA. She has been published in The New York Times, Core77, Against the Grain, as well as a variety of trade publications. As an educator Jennifer led Art Access II, an initiative designed to increase museum attendance among under-served communities through education and community outreach. She has taught at Parsons and FIT, and is currently on faculty in the SVA Products of Design program where she teaches design and social impact.

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  Jenny Rodenhouse

  Director of the Immersion Lab, ArtCenter College of Design

  2019 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Jenny Rodenhouse is an artist, designer, and researcher in Los Angeles. She is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Immersion Lab at ArtCenter College of Design, teaching for the Interaction Design Department and Media Design Practices MFA program. Her work explores our increasingly immersive, screen-based lifestyles.

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  Yasaman Sheri

  Designer and Director

  2019 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Yasaman Sheri is a Designer and Director working with interfaces for sensing. Sheri’s research focuses on interaction of humans, machines and living things, exploring sensing beyond vision, machine perception, networked systems and augmentation of body, objects and ecologies. She has the led Core Interaction Design for the first consumer level Augmented Reality Operating System Head-Mounted Display: Microsoft Hololens and Hololens2 Windows Holographic focusing on intuitive gestural interfaces. She works closely with various companies and organizations including Toyota, Google(X), Ginkgo Bioworks, NASA Ames Research Center and others as facilitator to explore sensing and perception in Design. She is also an educator, teaching Graduate Industrial Design at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Biodesign and Sensory Design at Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design (CIID) and is frequent critic at Columbia GSAPP, Art Center College, NYU, Cooper Union, ZHdK, and Stanford University.

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  Hector Silva

  Executive Director, Advanced Design

  2021 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Hector Silva brings over 7 years of teaching experience at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Notre Dame, the Academy of Art University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Rochester Institute of Technology at their nationally-acclaimed industrial design programs. Recognized for his contributions in academia, Hector was awarded the Young Educator of the Year by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). An active professional in the field, Hector works as an industrial design contractor through his own studio, H Design, partnering with Crate & Barrel, DesignLab, Nickelodeon, LeapFrog, Foster Grant, Insight Product Development, Lund & Company Invention, as well as various entrepreneurs. Hector is also the founder of the design nonprofit, Advanced Design (AD), an organization awarded the Special Achievement Award by the IDSA for making design education more accessible and through disrupting the mediums through which design education has been traditionally offered. AD continues to grow today, connecting students and working professionals to foster a community of design excellence. Most recently, Hector founded Offsite, a 12 week pilot program catered towards furthering design education outside of traditional academia space. This program was developed to translate the needs of the industry into course content taught by design industry leaders. The goal is to help students develop the right skill set and mentorship to thrive on the job and support them along the way.

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  Laura Silva

  Vice President, Accessibility Technology UX Design Lead, Bank of America

  2021 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Laura Silva is Bank of America’s Vice President, Accessibility Technology UX Design Lead. Previously, she worked at Amazon in the Global Search team as Accessibility and D&I designer. She’s originally from Bogota, Colombia but calls the U.S. her home. In her work, she focuses on inclusion, diversity and equity for her customers and coworkers.
  Her experiences being “the first and the only one” as a Afro-Latina in tech inspire her to advocate for the business and cultural benefits of highlighting the intersectionality of their customers.

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  Becky Slogeris

  Associate Director, MICA Center for Social Design

  2015 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

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  Omari Souza

  Assistant Professor, Communication Design, Texas State University

  2022 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Omari Souza is an assistant professor in the Communication Design program at Texas State University. He is the organizer of the State of Black Design Conference (online, April 2021). He previously organized and hosted a multipanel event titled "The State of Black Design" (online, Sept. 2020), which drew a live audience of 2,071 — the second-largest Livestream audience for an educational event in Texas State's history.
  
  Omari is a first-generation American of Jamaican descent, raised in the Bronx, New York. Before arriving at Texas State, he gained work experience with companies and institutions such asVIBEmagazine, the buffalo News, CBS Radio, and Case Western Reserve University. He earned a BFA in Digital Media from Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA in Design from Kent State University. Omari's research explores the idea of perceptions and how visual narratives influence culture — how we view ourselves and others around us.

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  Srini Srinivasan

  President and CEO, Lumium, LUMIUM Design, Inc.

  2016 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Srini Srinivasan is a highly accomplished entrepreneur in creative design and technology development, with over 20 years of work experience in the Silicon Valley, United States. As a highly networked and connected person, Srini has developed business successfully across the globe for the past two decades with F-500 companies. Srini has successfully raised capital from leading VCs in the Silicon Valley and enjoys being in Start-ups with his broad set of skills & global customer experience.
  
  Srini is an avid global traveller and enjoys visiting various locations around the globe and meeting people. He loves to play golf and follows several major sports like Soccer, Golf, basketball & Cricket.

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  Ramon Tejada

  Independent Designer & Assistant Professor, Rhode Island School of Design

  2019 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Ramon Tejada is an independent Dominican/American designer and teacher based in Providence. He works in a hybrid design/teaching practice that focuses on collaborative design practices. His recent design research interest lies in the areas of disruption of the Design Canon, inclusivity, diversity, collaboration and the expansion and openings of design narratives and languages beyond the “traditional” Westernized paradigm of design. He received an MFA in Graphic Design from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and an MFA in Performance Arts from Bennington College.

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  Petrula Vrontikis

  Creative Director, Vrontikis Design Office

  2017 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Petrula Vrontikis is a leading influence in graphic design. Her current work includes research, writing, consulting, creating brand communication strategies, training, and coaching. She received an AIGA Fellows Award honoring her as an essential voice raising the understanding of design within the industry and among the business and cultural communities. She served as a national advisory board member of the AIGA and is frequently asked to serve on numerous local, national, and international design juries.
  
  She is creative director and owner of Vrontikis Design Office (@vrontikis and 35k.com) and a professor at Art Center College of Design, teaching graphic design, career development, and professional practice courses.
  
  Her professional practice gives her role as a teacher an important authenticity. She encourages students to explore their potential as designers and as a catalyst for change in the larger creative community.
  
  Petrula is an avid traveler and visual translator. It’s not unusual to find her scuba diving with giant manta rays, climbing a steep and rocky slope, or twisting her body like a pretzel in a yoga class.

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  Pradyumna Vyas

  Director, National Institute of Design

  2016 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Pradyumna Vyas acquired a Masters in Industrial Design from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. In June 2010, Vyas was conferred with an honorary Master of Arts degree from the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, United Kingdom in recognition of his contributions to design education and design promotion. Vyas has more than 30 years of professional and teaching experience in different spheres of design. Since the last 25 years, he has been associated with the National Institute of Design (NID) as a faculty in the Industrial Design discipline. In April 2009, he was appointed as the Director of the National Institute of Design.
  Prior to joining NID, Vyas acquired three years overseas experience at the Kilkenny Design Centre, Republic of Ireland.
  In July 2011, Vyas was given the award for his outstanding contribution to design education at the second edition of Asia’s Best B School Award that was held at Singapore. Vyas was invited as the jury member for the special awards screening panel at Good Design Award (G-Mark) by the Japan Institute of Design Promotion, Japan consequently in 2012, 2013 and 2014.He has been at the helm of design promotion events in India and has represented NID in various international and national events. He was elected as an ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design) Executive Board Member for 2009–11.
  In pursuance of the National Design Policy approved by the Cabinet in February 2007, an India Design Council was constituted in March 2009 and Mr Vyas has been nominated as its Member Secretary by the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India. In July 2015, World Education Congress, 2015 conferred the award for Outstanding Contribution to Education to Mr. Vyas.