It is with much gratitude and admiration that we celebrate the jury alumni members of the Core77 Design Awards.
Brian Gaffney is a seasoned workflow specialist working alongside media and entertainment companies over the last 25 years, including Technicolor, PIX System, CODEX, Turbo Squid, and Autodesk in support of Visual Effects, Games Development, Content Management and real-time 3D virtual production. Brian is a creative technologist who assists artists and engineers in realizing their creative visions and currently works at Unity 3D with the Professional Artistry team.
Beatrice Galilee is a London-based curator, writer, critic, consultant and lecturer of contemporary architecture and design. Trained in Architecture at Bath University, and in History of Architecture MSc at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, Beatrice specialises in the dissemination of architecture and design through city-wide projects, media, curatorial practice, research, editing and teaching.
Beatrice is the Chief Curator of the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Close, Closer. She was co-curator at 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale, 2009 Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, and curator of the experimental performance design projects Hacked and Afrofuture at Milan Design Week. She is the co-founder and director of The Gopher Hole, an exhibition and project space in London, and is associate lecturer at Central Saint Martins.
From 2006-2009 Beatrice was Architecture Editor for Icon Magazine, one of Europe's leading publications in architecture and design. In 2008 she won the IBP Architectural Journalist of the Year Award.
Beatrice's writing has been published in a number of international magazines and books as well as daily newspapers, including Domus, Abitare, MARK, Tank, Pin-Up, Above, Building Design, Architectural Review, Architecture Today, RIBA Journal, Architect's Journal, DAMn, Frame, Wallpaper, Another Magazine, and the Serpentine Pavilion catalogue.
Mike Gallagher is VP of Design for Crown Equipment Corporation; a manufacturer of lift trucks and related products and services. Mike oversees the global multi-disciplined Design operations and leverages his competent staff to provide strategic innovation influence to an expanding and evolving company. Before his 20 years at Crown he held various corporate design and management positions. Mike graduated from the University of Cincinnati in Design and has juried several international design competitions. Crown Design has won over 50 major international design awards and was recognized by Fast Company Magazine as Thirty Companies that Get Design.
Menaja (currently in-between bodies and in-between names) is a gay Tamil & Bengali artist originally from Kolkata and currently based in San Francisco. Their practice lies between language and presentation, familiarity and loss. It manifests thru printmaking, multi-media installation, writing, and a sporadically maintained sketchbook. Their curatorial practice is born from and constantly dying within the archives. Their inspirations range from the fashion of 90s Karan Johar movies, to Arundhati Roy’s texts. They love independent publishing, and handloom saris. They currently work at Letterform Archive, activating the permanent collection through public programming. In their personal and professional life, they are always preoccupied with the conversation between preservation and access. They think of their grandmother daily.
Meredith Gannes began her automotive design career in Shanghai and she has continued to explore the different facets of automotive design over the past decade. As a design manager in the advanced color and materials studio at FCA US, she oversees interior color mastering and program information for all NAFTA vehicle programs. She spends the majority of her day working with FCA designers and suppliers to execute color and material for vehicle production. Additionally, Gannes manages a separate team that creates documents illustrating FCA vehicle interiors for internal and external use. Most recently, Gannes designed the color and materials for the latest Jeep® concept car, the YunTu, revealed at the 2017 Shanghai Auto Show. She also worked on the new Jeep Compass, as well as variations of the Fiat 500.
She earned her Bachelor of Arts in fashion and textile design from Michigan State University and her Master of Science in business administration from Wayne State University. She is passionate about design and enjoys working with her team of color, material and finish designers. When she is not working, she loves traveling and immersing herself in different cultures.
Antonio García is Head of Design at TXI, and also the founder of Dadwell & Co. He serves as a Board Advisor to AIGA Chicago.
In addition to design leadership, Antonio is a mentor, educator, and lecturer.
If he’s not hard at work, Antonio is most likely DJing, drawing, or training for his next marathon.
Paul Gardien is Vice President of Philips Design and as member of the Philips Design Board responsible for both the strategic development of the global design function and the Design Research & Innovation program. In his strategy role, he has been instrumental in transforming Philips Design from a service unit into a global function. The Design Research & Innovation program creates new design competences, future visions and new propositions for Philips and has won numerous awards. The drive in the program is to create meaningful and relevant propositions based on a solid understanding of how these will evolve in the future, while ensuring that the propositions land in the various businesses increasing their hit rate of innovation.
Paul has spent his entire professional career at Philips Design, working in many different areas ranging from product-, multimedia- and internet design, to different management and development functions. He is and has been a member of various boards, juried in multiple renowned design competitions. He’s also a frequent speaker at international design and innovation conferences. Paul studied industrial design engineering at the Delft University of Technology and holds a PhD in Design Innovation from the Eindhoven University of Technology.
Jess Gartner is the CEO & founder of Allovue, an education resource planning platform for K-12 schools and districts. Allovue helps education administrators connect spending to student outcomes. In the past, Jess has taught in numerous schools throughout the world including South Africa and Thailand. She received her M.A in teaching from John Hopkins University. She was featured as one of The Baltimore Sun's 2013 Women to Watch as a leader in education and Baltimore Magazine's 40 Under 40. In July 2012, she was a featured panelist alongside prominent education leaders at the Education Technology Innovation Summit in New York City. Her writing and photography has been published in Weekly, Changing, Skillcrush and Women 2.0.
Born in Monterrey, Danie is in charge of managing and following up on every single one of Anagrama’s current projects. She is also Creative Director and is in charge of organising Anagrama’s growing design team.
Anagrama is an international branding, architecture and software development firm with offices in Monterrey and Mexico City. Their clients include companies from varied industries in countries all around the world. Anagrama creates the perfect balance between a design boutique and a business consultancy, from focusing on the development of creative pieces with the upmost attention to details, to providing perfect solutions based on the analysis of tangible data. Services reach all of the branding spectrum, from strategic brand consulting, to logotype, naming, peripherals and captivating illustration design, through architecture & interior design projects, and business based solutions around custom developed software. Anagrama breaks from the traditional creative agency scheme, integrating multidisciplinary teams of creative and business experts.
Christine Gaspar is a designer and planner with over fifteen years of experience in community-engaged design practice. She was the Executive Director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) from 2009 to 2022. CUP is a New York-based nonprofit whose mission is to use the power of design and art to increase meaningful civic engagement in partnership with historically marginalized communities. Prior to that, she was Assistant Director of the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio in Biloxi, Mississippi, where she provided architectural design and community planning services to low-income communities of color recovering from Hurricane Katrina. She is a founding member of the Design Futures Student Leadership Forum Advisory Board, and holds Masters in Architecture and in Urban Planning from MIT, and Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from Brown University. Her work is driven by a belief that design can be a powerful tool, particularly when it’s used to support community-led visions for change.
Hartmut Gaßner is a founding partner of Gaßner, Groth, Siederer & Coll. He focuses on renewable energy law (photovoltaic, geothermal, wind power projects), nuclear law, emissions trading, Stadtwerke, PPP procurement, recycling business, ministerial and municipal consulting, associations and policy advice. He studied law in Berlin, was a research associate of the Bundestag Greens (Otto Schily, Flick committee of inquiry), and had a traineeship in Berlin, admitted in 1987 before establishing GGSC.
Sharon Gauci a native Australian, was appointed to Executive Director of Design – Global Buick and GMC on October 1, 2021. An experienced design leader, Gauci has held a variety of different global roles. Prior to her current appointment, Gauci was the Executive Director of Industrial Design at General Motors, a role held since January 2018. In June 2020, Sharon joined GM’s Sustainability Office, where she was one of seven executive leaders working across the organization to implement strategies supporting GM’s Zero Emissions vision.
In her current role, Gauci is responsible for leading studios to create the visual expression and design strategies for Buick, GMC and GMC Hummer trucks, cars, crossovers and SUVs across all of GM’s markets.
In her previous role, Gauci oversaw the redesign of the GM logo, introduced globally in January 2021—only the fifth change in the history of the brandmark.
Gauci is the first recipient of Good Design Australia’s inaugural Women in Design Award in 2019, the first female keynote speaker at Wards Auto Interior Conference in 2018 and the first female to be included as a core judge for the Australian Design Awards in 2005, at the time a 50 year award program. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design in 1993 from Swinburne University in Melbourne.
Gauci worked at both Ford Motor Company and BMW Australia before joining GM Holden in 2004.
In 2021, she commenced service as a Board of Trustees member for PRATT Institute, a global leader in higher education situated in New York City.
Throughout her extensive design career including regional roles and advanced design, Gauci has worked on many global vehicles including trucks, performance cars and mobility solutions such as the award winning ARIV e-bike, Brightdrop and Cruise Origin. Most recent vehicles include the Cadillac Lyriq, GMC Hummer EV, Cadillac Escala, Buick Avista and Avenir – which won the Eyes on Design C&T award.
Maria is the Executive Creative Director and Partner at Creable, a strategic brand design agency with offices in Culver City, Bogota and Cincinnati. Originally from Bogotá, Colombia, Maria’s career started in advertising as she worked at Procesos Creativos / Euro RSCG, Bogota where she led the design department for many years. After gaining recognition by winning first place on the Premios Nacionales de Cultura 1996, she decided to follow her design career abroad and attend the prestigious Art Center College of Design where she graduated with Honors. Maria is also the mother of two awesome boys and splits her time between Los Angeles and Bogota.
Joe Gebbia is a designer and entrepreneur, and is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Airbnb. In 2009, Gebbia was listed in BusinessWeek’s Top 20 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs. In 2010, he was named in Inc. Magazine’s Thirty under Thirty, and 2013, he was named in Fortune Magazine’s Forty-under-Forty.
As Chief Product Officer, Gebbia oversees various teams to create a simple and easy Airbnb experience for all. The results are a product that considers the user’s experience from the moment of online contact to the end of their physical stay in Airbnb listings around the world. Under his leadership, Airbnb is now at the forefront of the emerging discipline of service design, a practice that improves the quality of interactions between service providers and their customers.
Gebbia's lifelong appreciation for art and design led him to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he now sits on the Board of Trustees. There, he honed his skills while obtaining degrees in product design and graphic design. While studying in the Northeast, Gebbia complimented his creative pursuits and studies at RISD with business coursework at Brown University and MIT. Influenced by the work of Jean Prouve, Charles and Ray Eames, and the Bauhaus movement, Gebbia has long been immersed in the art of designing for the human experience.
After moving to San Francisco, Gebbia worked as a designer for Chronicle Books where he experienced first-hand how a design-led business worked, department by department. The culmination of these ideas and experiences came to fruition in 2008, when he co-founded Airbnb with Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk. What began in an apartment in San Francisco during an IDSA conference has spread to 34,000 cities in over 192 countries.
Roman Gebhard is managing partner and co-founder of FLUID Design (formerly LUNAR Europe), a Munich-based design and innovation consultancy founded in 2006. FLUID helps organizations humanize technology through strategic, human-centered design.
With experience across LUNAR Design in San Francisco, frog in New York, and Siemens Design / Designafairs in Munich, Roman brings a rare blend of industrial-, UX, and interface-design expertise - paired with strategy and insights that turn complex challenges into elegant, people-first solutions.
He earned a B.Sc. (Hons) in Industrial Design from Art Center College of Design and has led workshops at the Design University in Lund, Sweden.
Roman leads multidisciplinary teams to create user-centric products, services, and experiences for clients in health, consumer tech, and critical industries. His approach combines the agility of a boutique studio with the rigor and scale of enterprise programs, ensuring innovation remains grounded in real human needs.
His work has been featured in major professional publications and recognized with numerous international design awards. Being active in the global design community, Roman has served as a juror for the iF Design Award, IDSA Design Awards, and the Spark Design Award. As a leader and evaluator, he champions thoughtful, impact-driven design that improves everyday life.
Pepin Gelardi works at the intersection of purpose and possibility, exploring the role of entrepreneurship and technology in solving future-facing problems. He has cultivated a skill set deep in idea development, user insights, concept visualization, form development, hardware prototyping, mechanism design and manufacturing.
As a teenager, Pepin developed products for his family’s injection molding business. He holds a BSME from Columbia University, New York and a Post-Baccalaureate Diploma in Industrial Design from Scuola Politecnica di Design, Milan, Italy.
He Co-founded Tomorrow Lab® in 2010 and leads the Industrial Design and Mechanical Engineering teams to invent and develop new, impactful hardware products. Prior to Tomorrow Lab®, he developed new CPG ideas, products, and brands at Fahrenheit 212 and Procter & Gamble.
After hours, Pepin teaches workshops in design, creates costumes and toys with his twin children, and creates site-specific art with his wife Teresa.