It is with much gratitude and admiration that we celebrate the jury alumni members of the Core77 Design Awards.
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.
As Wearables Industrial Design Manager at Google, Gina leads a team making radically helpful products, bringing together the best of Google AI, software and hardware. Notable launches include Google’s headphone family and watch bands.
Prior to Google, Gina has worked at the New York based innovation agency Redscout, Industrial Design agency Smart Design and Philips Design in The Netherlands.
She’s designed for some of her favourite brands, including Nike, OXO, and Microsoft, and for which she has some fancy awards that decorate a shelf in her Santa Cruz Mountain home, where she lives with her wife and two cats.
Clay has been working in design and research since late last century, having shifted over from film and cultural studies. He spent much of his early career at frog, working in interaction and design research. There, he focused on complex design systems, innovation methods, and prototyping, and taught prototyping at SVA's MFA in Interaction Design program.
He left frog to build the interaction team at Smart Design, and spent many days in awe of the physical prototyping skills of the industrial design team.
He now leads design at Zocdoc, a service that help people navigate tough healthcare choices by quickly connect them to the right care. He remains focused on user-centered design, and works to ensure that everyone at Zocdoc develops a deep understanding of the patients and providers they help. Throughout his design career he has rescued cats.
As Design Director at Smart Design’s New York studio, Stephanie has led projects across the continuum of wellness products and services including: public health, pharmaceuticals, devices, personal care, fitness, and reproductive health. Her personal journey of redesigning the fertility treatment experience as a single woman to be more accessible to all—which she called Project Junior—garnered national attention and was featured in Fast Company and 99u.
In her spare time, Stephanie has shared her expertise in strategic design innovation with audiences ranging from venture capitalists to government agencies; across topics including—designing for social impact, saving women from bad design, and inclusive design. Stephanie also serves on the Board of Advisors as the user-centered design expert for Simprints, a non-for-profit tech company hoping to close the identification gap of over 1 billion people in emerging countries.