Jury Alumni

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  Alex Rainert

  VP of Product, Nucleus

  2016 Interaction Jury Member

  I've got 17 years of experience building teams and shipping products in wildly different creative and business environments - startups (co-founder @dodgeball, head of product @Foursquare), large tech companies (Google), digital agencies (R/GA, Razorfish) and an amazing tech-meets-art graduate program (NYU’s ITP).
  
  I'm currently leading Product at a NYC-based hardware + software company called Nucleus. We're building a smart intercom that will serve as the foundation for people to communicate seamlessly with the ones they care about the most — whether they’re in another room in the same house, in a completely different location (Hi mom!) or on the move on their mobile devices.
  
  You can learn more about the product at www.nucleuslife.com. I'm building up the product team so if you have any interest in designing an experience that will live at the center of families' lives, get in touch and let me know what excites you about it.
  

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  Meghan Romero

  UX Design Lead, JP Morgan Chase

  2024 Interaction Jury Member

  Meghan is a UX Design Lead at JP Morgan Chase, where she uses service design and collaborative design techniques to improve customer and employee experience. Prior to Chase, she designed new products in the healthcare industry to support nurses and patients and also worked in K-12 and higher education in a number of roles. Meghan lives in northern Delaware with her husband and enjoys Saturday morning yard sales, travel, margaritas, and talking about whatever tv shows she has been watching recently.

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  Peder Sandqvist

  Creative Technologist and Head of VR & AR, DigitasLBi

  2017 Interaction Jury Member

  Peder Sandqvist is Creative Technologist and Head of VR & AR at DigitasLBi Nordics.
  
  As the founder of the DigitasLBi VR Lab (www.dlbivrlab.com), he works together with a diverse team of experts in different areas of technology, visual- and immersive communication to challenge conventions, invent new ways to communicate and create value for both the agency’s clients and end users.
  
  Growing up, he spent those famous tens of thousands of hours drawing and building worlds with Lego. Finding out that the skill set he gained could be used to create some truly amazing 3D content he spent fifteen years as a 3D artist producing state of the art visual effects. As it turns out experience in 3D creation and visual communication is essential in the creation of quality virtual- and augmented reality content.
  
  The past four years he has been exploring and challenging the world of VR & AR, with a singular focus on creating spotless magic moments that have a lasting impact.
  
  His work includes the multi award winning VR experience for the global launch campaign for Volvo XC90, Husqvarna Limberjack on SteamVR and ‘The Loop’ for OnePlus.

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  Jordan Shade

  Design Program Lead for Offerings, IBM Consulting

  2022 Interaction Jury Member

  Jordan Shade is a designer, researcher and leader with a bent towards a business context. She has led work in enterprise design thinking, online learning, community building, the art of facilitation, transforming organizations, engaging experiences for local government, and creating insight-led strategy. She lives in Austin, TX and currently works for IBM. Her other projects include founding the group A Functional Democracy and its calling card 'zine: A Beginner's Guide to Local Government, as well as the art collective and podcast The City Says So with partner Hal Wuertz.

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  Kelsey Snook

  Creative Director, Second Story

  2017 Interaction Jury Member

  Kelsey Snook is Creative Director at Second Story experiential design studios. For over 15 years Kelsey has been creating participatory environments where people can connect. She has worked internationally, creating projects that span product, furniture, exhibition and large scale public interactive environments - as artistic pieces and for clients in cultural, commercial and public sectors. Kelsey holds an MA with distinction in Creative Practice for Narrative Environments from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, and a BA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design.

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  Ian Spalter

  UX Lead and Manager, YouTube

  2015 Interaction Jury Member

  Ian Spalter is a UX lead & Manager at Youtube

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  Ryan Swedenborg

  Artist and Designer, Spotify

  2022 Interaction Jury Member

  Ryan Swedenborg is an artist and designer based out of NYC, where she currently works for Spotify. Her work takes the form of visual identities, applications, apparel, reports, celebrations, prints, sculptures, and paintings. Being a WNBA fan, collecting Reba merch, and wandering around New York are her hobbies.

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  Dever Thomas

  Partner, Design, Work & Co

  2021 Interaction Jury Member

  Dever Thomas is a design partner at Work & Co in Copenhagen. She sets and executes create direction for some of the world’s most admired global companies including IKEA, Aesop, Céline, La Mer, YouTube, and Virgin America. In her role, she collaborates closely with other disciplines — technology, product management, strategy — to shape the final product. She is a thought leader on digital design, published in the Wall Street Journal and Business of Fashion, and her work has won awards from Fast Company, Communication Arts, Glossy, and the UX Awards.

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  Drue Thomas

  Product Designer, Netflix

  2022 Interaction Jury Member

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  Christina White

  Head of UX, Google Sheets, Google

  2021 Interaction Jury Member

  Christina is currently at Google, leading the UX design team for Sheets and Apps Script. Prior to Google, she built the UX team for brand and digital agency Gin Lane, where she launched digital-first startups like sweetgreen and Harry’s. She’s also led creative departments at digital agencies SapientNitro and Huge, specializing in retail, health & beauty, & consumer products. Christina holds a BS of Industrial Design from Georgia Institute of Technology, where she first established her belief in ergonomics in that delightful design is achieved when the product naturally fits into the environment, not the other way around. She lives in NYC with her husband and kids Geneveive, William, and Henry.

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  Ruihai Youngblood

  Senior Product Designer, Flatiron Health

  2022 Interaction Jury Member

  Ruihai is a product designer who loves teaching organizations and individuals how to do user-centered design well. He has worked with organizations in healthcare, government, ecommerce, and esports to implement regular user research, accessibility practices, and lean UX. Ruihai trained the first product designers at Ford UK, the FAA, and the US Air Force. He's currently helping teams deliver cancer research data faster.
  
  Outside of work, Ruihai fosters cats, skates, translates video games, and collects vintage Carhartt.

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  Desirée Zamora García

  Product Design Manager, Webflow

  2022 Interaction Jury Member

  Desirée is a designer, speaker, and editor whose practice has spanned a diverse range of spaces in interaction design. She is driven by a desire to push the boundaries of interaction design in service of creative expression, and giving people agency over their own presence and opportunities on the web.
  
  Today she leads teams of product designers at Webflow, a no-code website publishing platform. Her editorial work enables designers to influence discussions about web technologies, standards, and frameworks. In 2013, her design of personal finance tools for funding a college education were the runner-up for the Core77 award in government. She also works as an editor at A List Apart