It is with much gratitude and admiration that we celebrate the jury alumni members of the Core77 Design Awards.
Lalita Abhyankar is a family medicine physician based in Brooklyn, New York and provides full spectrum patient-centered primary care for all ages. She currently consults for a federally qualified health center improving care of older adults through collaborative research and design methods, targeting electronic health record chart review and interdisciplinary workflows for end of life conversations. She also serves as the Chair of Advocacy for the New York State Academy of Family Physicians and is a regular contributing author to the American Academy of Family Physicians Fresh Perspectives blog.
Sunil Achia is an award winning industrial designer at HealthCraft Group, a Canadian manufacturer of fall prevention products designed to help people live more independently at home.
During his +20 years with the company, Sunil has become a leader in all aspects of product design and business development. He leads a team of talented designers through product development, manufacturing and creative marketing initiatives. He is also part of the leadership team at HealthCraft, responsible for the strategic direction and culture of the company.
His design approach is smart and curious, never shy to challenge the social stigmas and assumptions surrounding mobility support products. This curiosity led to the development of a new product category: 2- in-1 combination grab bar + bathroom accessories. This category has won HealthCraft several universal design awards at major exhibitions across North America, and most recently a 2023 Red Dot Design Award (a bucket list item for Sunil) for the Plus Series.
In his spare time, Sunil does what he loves - Design! He is the Chapter President of Carleton University's Industrial Design Alumni Association, where he partners students with alumni professionals for one on one mentorship. Sunil is involved in design education, teaching ID courses at Carleton. He also runs a freelance business with his wife (also a successful industrial designer), providing environmental graphics services.
Sunil makes time for his #1 love - music. He can be found playing bass in bands around town, or playing solo acoustic guitar at fancy dinner events.
Life motto: Do what you love.
Nadia Beyzaei (MRes, BSc) is a designer and researcher working in the spaces of health and community engagement. Nadia is the Coordinator of the Health Design Lab at Emily Carr University and an instructor in the Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media. Through her role at the Health Design Lab, Nadia has been a communication designer and design researcher on Indigenous health, aging, and complex care projects, while supporting the dissemination of research both locally and internationally.
Nadia holds a Master of Research in Healthcare + Design degree from the Royal College of Art, with her thesis work focusing on how design can enhance engagement in evidence-based medicine.
Through her 7 years at BC Children's Hospital Research Institute, Nadia has worked on a range of behavioural health research projects, including UX/UI projects which aim to improve access to care, and service design projects across clinics at BC Children's Hospital. Her practice focuses on making complex topics accessible and approachable through visual and strategic design.
I am the Founder + Design Director of Knack, the illustration studio that helps corporate innovators visualize their product ideas.
Over my 12+ year career, I have seen and worked behind the curtains of dozens of big brand product innovation teams, concepting (literally) thousands of product innovations.
I use that experience to lead Knack's team and help our clients determine what products their companies should design next.
It kills me to see companies waste resources developing bad ideas!
If you're interested in collaborating on product innovation, feel free to get in touch.
Over her 10+ year career, she has seen and worked behind the curtains of dozens of big brand product innovation teams. She and her Knack team bolster these teams by helping them conceptualize and visually communicate product ideas.
While her expertise is ultra-focused, her experiences are incredibly diverse. She's designed a wide variety of products; from one-off yachts for individuals to medical devices for a Fortune 500 company to consumer electronics and housewares, and everything in between. This variety has afforded her a large and deep pool of understanding to cross-reference and pull into new projects.
When she’s not in the studio, she can be found on a mountain bike trail, trying to keep up with her husband on her dirt bike, or exploring the Tennessee river on their vintage stand-up jet skis.
Paul Danial is a creative and technical industrial designer with an interest in product and experience design. Bridging his academic backgrounds in human kinetics and industrial design, he creates human centered designs that empower and optimize user experiences. Paul works with Noble-Metaphase, Part of Aptar Pharma, to consult and design hand-intensive products with a focus on medical devices. He finds passion and motivation in finding solutions to challenges that improve the quality of life of patients and effectiveness of practitioners. Paul has always been curious about how things work and often takes things apart and reimagines them. He could also be found sketching and doodling on any surface available. In his free time, Paul is passionate about aerospace and aviation, motivating him to pursue his private pilot's license. He also loves to travel the world with his wife, and he is excited to be a dad soon.
Rachael is the founder of Social Workers Who Design and speaks publicly about, educates on, and advocates for greater awareness to the value of social work in design, as well as responsible and respectful trauma responsive, healing focused, and care centered design practices and research. Her current work draws from north of 20 years of experience across serious and complex cause-driven social justice issues in health and human rights, student rights advocacy, housing and homelessness services, and teaching and program management at the intersection of social work, social impact, and design in higher education.
Sarah Fathallah is an independent designer, researcher, and educator, who specializes in applying participatory research and design to the social sector, with impact-driven clients like the International Domestic Workers Federation, the International Rescue Committee, and Open Society Foundations, to name a few. Sarah co-founded Design Gigs for Good, a free community-driven resource to help more people use the tools of design to create positive social change. Sarah is a graduate of Sciences Po Paris, where she studied International Business and Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Affairs. She also studied design innovation at the Paris Est d.school, User Experience design at General Assembly, and participatory design at MIT.
Christina Harrington (she/her) is a designer and qualitative researcher who works at the intersection of interaction design and health and racial equity. She combines her background in electrical engineering and industrial design to focus on inclusive approaches to support historically excluded groups such as Black communities, older adults, and individuals with differing abilities in areas of health, wellness, and community building. She looks to methods such as design justice and community collectivism to broaden and amplify participation in design as a universal language of communication and knowledge. Dr. Harrington is the Director of the Equity and Health Innovations Design Research Lab at Carnegie Mellon University.
Jen Horonjeff, Ph.D., is a patient advocate and the Founder & CEO of Savvy Cooperative. She was named one of the 50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs by Entrepreneur Magazine, alongside Elon Musk and Reese Witherspoon, for her work at Savvy, which helps companies equitably gather input and insights from diverse patients. Jen is passionate about patient co-design as she grew up with juvenile idiopathic arthritis and survived a brain tumor as an adult. She also holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Medicine and previously worked as a health outcomes researcher, human factors engineer, and user-centered designer, and an advisor to the FDA. Jen serves on the Board of Directors for The Sequoia Project, a non-profit focused on health data exchange, the Advisory Board of Trialbee, a clinical trial recruitment company, and numerous other committees to ensure the patient voice is included.
Morgan Hutchinson, MD is the Assistant Medical Director of the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital Emergency Department, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of Education for the Jefferson Health Design Lab where she directs the first curricular design thinking program in a US medical school. She is a creator, educator, international speaker, clinical leader and advisor working at the intersection of human-centered design, medical education and clinical quality improvement. Her work has been highlighted by the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Business Journal, Pennsylvania Medical Society and others.
Morgan is passionate about applying human-centered design to reimagining healthcare. Morgan’s created Jefferson’s COVID-19 Mobile Unit to increase access to testing and vaccines in Philadelphia’s vulnerable communities, and has advised on multiple mobile health programs focusing on primary care, women's health and cancer prevention. She has led multiple initiatives to expand clinical spaces to boost surge capacity; leverage 3D-print technology to meet supply chain shortages, and reimagine healthcare services. She has advised and partnered with diverse teams across industries to find creative, collaborative solutions to challenges in service design, health equity and medical education.
Linda is based in Mountain View, California, where she is an Industrial design lead within Google’s fast-growing hardware design team. She is currently focused on designing Google’s next generation of Pixel and Chrome products.
With a background in consumer electronics, Linda has a passion for designing a future based on innovation and compelling experiences. Prior to joining Google, Linda served as the Head of Industrial Design at Essential Products, a Palo Alto-based startup that launched its first PH-1 smartphone in 2017. Before moving to Silicon Valley, Linda was a Senior Designer with Motorola’s Consumer Experience Design team in Chicago, Illinois.
Linda was born in Chengdu, China but grew up in countries across the globe, including Belgium, Spain, and eventually the United States. She received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Product Design from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. Go Peacocks!
Emilie Lasseron is a seasoned leader working at the intersection of brand, innovation and design. A human-centered approach to products, systems, and storytelling drives her work.
Most recently as Senior Strategy Director at Wolff Olins, Emilie created new brands for Sage Therapeutics, a biopharma focused on brain health disorders including the first and only treatment specifically approved for postpartum depression, and Zymergen, a molecular technology company using a unique integration of biology, machine learning, and high-throughput automation to create previously unimaginable materials.
Previously, she led in-house design and innovation teams at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital and Celmatix, a biotech focused on women’s health. She also spent years at IDEO and other innovation consultancies working across diverse challenges including improving the bone marrow transplant process and repositioning long-acting birth control.
Lesley-Ann Noel was trained as an Industrial Designer at the Universidade Federal do Paraná. She holds a PhD in Design from North Carolina State University and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of the West Indies. She is an Assistant Professor at the College of Design at North Carolina State University. She is co-Chair of the Pluriversal Design Special Interest Group of the Design Research Society. She is one of the co-editors of The Black Experience in Design for Allworth (2022) and has created several design tools for critical reflection such as The Designer’s Critical Alphabet and the Positionality Wheel.
Miya Osaki is a partner at Diagram, a New York based, women- and minority-owned healthcare design studio. Miya brings her passion for design, research, collaboration, and storytelling to improve outcomes and create more caring and equitable experiences for people and our communities. Prior to founding Diagram, Miya served as Director of Experience Design at Johnson & Johnson’s Global Strategic Design Office, where she created innovative services for patients managing chronic conditions. Miya is also the Chair of the graduate Design for Social Innovation (DSI) program at the School of Visual Arts, the first MFA program in social design, and serves on the Board for the Public Policy Lab. She is the co-host for the podcast, Yah, No, focused on the intersection of design, business, and healthcare. A west-coast native, Miya currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Praveen is a Human Factors Engineer with a Master's in Kinesiology, focusing on Cognitive and Motor Neuroscience and a foundation in I&C Engineering. Praveen's professional passion lies in the intersection of technology and healthcare, using biomechanics, neuromechanics, and a blend of quantitative and qualitative methods to understand people, their strengths and limitations and design user-friendly medical devices. In his role at Aptar Pharma, Praveen is instrumental in consulting on medical device design projects, ensuring they are accessible and effective. His enthusiasm for technology extends to incorporating AI and cutting-edge innovative methods to optimize medical device design, functionality and user experience. As a tech geek, Praveen is always exploring the latest technological advancements and their potential applications in healthcare. Outside of work, he is passionate about outdoor activities and fitness.