Jury Alumni

• 

  James Pryor

  Creative Director, Touch

  2024 Home & Living Jury Member

  James Pryor is the co-founder and creative director of Touch, an agency that stands at the forefront of sustainable innovation in packaging and product design. His agency collaborates with renowned FMCG brands like Mondelez, PepsiCo, Colgate Palmolive and Nestle, pioneering future-proof solutions for brand growth. James leads Touch's design and innovation team, managing everything from conceptual exploration to design for manufacture. He frequently liaises with clients, presenting Touch's latest works and proposals.
  Under James's guidance, Touch has achieved significant milestones, including the award-winning Carlsberg Export redesign and the creation of Häagen-Dazs' Loop reusable packaging system. His commitment to sustainability has led to the elimination of thousands of tonnes of packaging waste and enhanced the recyclability and reusability of numerous products. James's innovative contributions are also evidenced by his numerous patents for major clients.
  A passionate advocate for sustainable design, James is a regular speaker at global industry events and has contributed to the European Packaging Design Agency Boost Book. He holds a master’s in consumer product design from Coventry University and has a rich background in design and innovation, having worked with agencies like Impact, 1HQ and 3T.
  Beyond his professional life, James enjoys travel, movies, reading, and photography. He is also an avid guitarist and musician. His greatest joy comes from spending time in the High Wycombe with his wife, Rachel, and their two children, Madeline and Michael.

• 

  Matt Pugmire

  Principal Industrial Designer, Logitech

  2021 Home & Living Jury Member

  As a Principal Industrial Designer at Logitech, Matt’s focused on crafting iconic new hardware designs and experiences with a diverse group of problem solvers that make up the gaming design team. Prior to Logitech Matt was an Industrial Design lead at NewDealDesign in San Francisco where he built creative partnerships and developed ambitious new product visions for tech startups and industry leaders such as Microsoft, Comcast, Herman Miller and more.
  
  When not working, Matt can be found appreciating the great outdoors with his three daughters in tow.

• 

  Pichaya Puttorngul

  Principal/Product Designer, Piece Company Limited

  2021 Home & Living Jury Member

  Pichaya Puttorngul is an independent industrial designer from Bangkok, Thailand. A hands-on practitioner with diverse experiences in Design Innovations, Material Experimentations, and Traditional Crafts.
  
  Through 18 years of industrial design experience, Pichaya collaborated with global and local innovators realising their visions for a positive future, producing award-winning designs with aspirations in longevity, sustainability, and beauty.
  
  Prior to his permanency in Bangkok, Pichaya was the design director of Fuseproject New York

• 

  Nicola Ralston

  VP, Global Innovation Studios, Dell Technologies

  2022 Home & Living Jury Member

  Nicola is an accomplished Designer and Design leader with extensive experience building and leading design & innovation teams for global brands. Having had a Design Career in Automotive design working for brands such as Ford, Hyundai, and Kia she then moved on to Nokia inspired by their global reach and their way of connecting people. For Microsoft Windows and Devices group Nicola built and led a multi-disciplinary, human centered, design team across Design and Human Factors that worked to articulate disruptions, product, and experience opportunities with a focus on edge devices, and looking to ambient futures. Most recently, Nicola has joined Dell Technologies as VP, Global Innovation Studios, responsible for leading the Experience Innovation Studio teams that envision, define, and build differentiated customer experiences and proof of concepts, driving innovation and disruption across Dell’s business units and product portfolios. Nicola has worked and lived as a designer in the UK, Italy, Germany, Finland, and the US.

• 

  Bret Recor

  Founder, Box Clever

  2020 Home & Living Jury Captain

  Bret is an expert in creating physical experiences that delight consumers and help companies lead market categories. Bret leads his Box Clever team to take ideas from concept to market and is committed to executing a challenge to its most brilliant realization. To do this, he balances creative vision with real-world experience of industrial design, brand strategy, and business ventures. Bret has applied his expertise to the launches of several high-profile products and initiatives, including Away, Nebia, and most recently Caraway. Bret has also launched separate studio initiated ventures including Fadestudio, with a flagship product, the Fade task light.
  
  Prior to founding Box Clever, Bret was a design director at fuseproject, working with clients like, One Laptop Per Child, Herman Miller, Johnson & Johnson, Issey Miyake, Jawbone, and the New York City Department of Health.
  
  Bret’s work has earned several awards around the world including INDEX, Spark, IDEA, iF, Clio, D&AD, FX, Spark, and Red Dot. His work is part of the permanent collections of NY MoMA, SFMOMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Centre Pompidou.

• 

  Noah Reinhertz

  Sustainability Lead, Innovation Kitchen, Nike

  2021 Home & Living Jury Member

  Noah is a designer and the Sustainability Lead in Nike’s Innovation Kitchen. He collaborates with a diverse group of designers and innovators to blend sustainable materials, technologies and ideas into all of Nike’s advanced innovation efforts. He comes from a family of teachers, hippies and architects and feels most at home staring at the sea in a heavy fog.
  
  Over the past fifteen years or so he has created products with Herman Miller, iRobot and Samsung among others.
  
  Most recently, Noah created the Nike Space Hippie concept and together with a small group of renegade designers produced a line of shoes made almost entirely from trash. Embodying the design philosophy of progress over perfection, it was the next, radical step towards responsible product at Nike.
  
  When not trying to reinvent shoe manufacturing, Noah creates practical problems by sailing wooden boats with his family in the cold waters around Portland, OR.

• 

  Nichole Rouillac

  Founder + Creative Director, level

  2022 Home & Living Jury Captain

  Nichole is Founder and Creative Director of level, a West Coast, women-led industrial design shop based in San Francisco. The level studio is on a mission to create a global positive and progressive influence through smart, thoughtful design.
  
  Nichole’s work at level has helped create new industry categories and propelled products into the global spotlight. The studio’s portfolio encompasses the likes of Microsoft, Google, Logitech, FitBit, North, HTC, AliveCor, Tempo and Nex.
  
  level’s work has garnered wide recognition, including design awards such as FastCo., IDEA, Red Dot, iF and Spark. Notably, level was recognized as #03 in FastCompany’s Most Innovative Design Companies of 2021.
  
  Nichole remains committed to creating a diverse, inclusive industry. She has dedicated her career to balancing motherhood and empowering the next generation of female designers through mentorship, having served as chair of IDSA’s Women in Design from 2017-2021. level are active members of the Diversity in Design (DID) Collaborative, initiated in June 2021 to foster systemic change by increasing diversity and improving conditions for Black creatives across the design industry.

• 

  Hector Silva

  Executive Director, Advanced Design

  2022 Home & Living Jury Member

  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.

• 

  Rotimi Solola

  Founder, SO Dsgn

  2023 Home & Living Jury Captain

  Rotimi Solola is an award-winning industrial designer and the founding partner of SO Dsgn, a Chicago-based creative agency focused on story-driven brand and industrial design. In addition, Solola is an educator, having taught at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago, he values mentorship, community, and design education. Prior to his current roles, Solola worked as a member of Motorola’s Consumer Experience Design team where he acquired much of his knowledge of bringing products to market. Solola stays involved with the design community by giving public lectures, judging design competitions, and mentoring students, and young professionals.

• 

  Bill Valls

  Vice President of Design, Sprout Studio

  2019 Home & Living Jury Member

  Bill has devoted four decades to the design and development of new products and packaging for Fortune 50 and 500 CPG brands. His singular focus has been to harness cultural imagination for progressive clients who long for authenticity in an era of high-volume sameness. Using an innovative studio model that blends creative awareness with process milestones, Bill has a long history of delivering client success across a wide range of consumer categories.

• 

  Joy Young

  Creative Director, Astro Studios

  2022 Home & Living Jury Member

  Joy is a Creative Director at Astro Studios, a brand and industrial design studio based in San Francisco. As a designer, she focuses on crafting compelling stories and experiences that are tailored for brands and people. She works with the team at Astro Studios to build products that bring meaningful and positive experiences to everyday life. Spending much of her upbringing in both Taiwan and New Zealand has given Joy a unique cultural background from which to draw inspiration. Joy has over 14 years of professional experience as an Industrial Designer working in agencies in Asia, Europe and North America. She has worked on a diverse range of categories ranging from homeware, furniture, consumer electronics, health & wellness and medical.

• 

  Joo Young Lim

  Industrial Designer, Vanderbilt Home

  2024 Home & Living Jury Member

  Joo Young Lim is an Industrial Designer at Vanderbilt Home, a lifestyle product manufacturing firm based in New York City. As a designer, Joo Young specializes in studying people’s shifting lifestyles and using the findings to create useful designs for their various aspects of living, especially in cooking and entertaining. Joo Young draws inspiration from his experiences of multi-national upbringing and a deep interest in the history of home entertaining. He has over a decade of experience working in various categories, including food prep, tabletop, decor, organization, and pets.
  Joo Young earned a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2010. Since then, he has held design director roles at Martha Stewart Living and Barkbox and a co-founder role at Gruppo Atelier Home.