Jury Alumni

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  Jennifer Passas

  Brand Strategy Lead, Gensler

  2020 Strategy & Research Jury Captain

  Jennifer Passas is a brand and experience strategist from Vancouver who currently lives in New York City. She has a BA in Art History from the University of Victoria and a Masters in Branding from the School of Visual Arts. Currently a Brand Strategy Lead at Gensler, Jennifer spends her days thinking of ways brands can come to life through analog and digital experiences in the built environment. She has expertise in naming, trend reporting and is a writer for PSFK.

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  Buzz Pearce

  Global Head of Design, Skyscanner

  2017 Service Design Jury Member

  Steve has the mind of an engineer, the eyes and hands of an artist, and a heart for people.
  Since the dawn of internet economy companies, he’s lovingly crafted products and services, that people actually use and enjoy on a daily basis, some have become verbs in global society.
  Steve (or Buzz, it’s a long story!) is a Design Leader and knows what it takes to create products and brands with soul. He’s had the fortune of working with some of the best designers and engineers around, and together they’ve been instrumental in designing some of the most loved products on the planet.
  Buzz is now leading the wonderful design team at Skyscanner, where he’s scaling the design team to take the product and brand to becoming a household name globally.
  Always wanting to share stories and learnings, Buzz teaches at many of the leading design schools in the UK and Europe, and is a regular public speaker.

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  Luke Pearson

  Founding Partner, PearsonLloyd

  2015 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  Luke Pearson is an industrial designer and founding partner (with Tom Lloyd) of the London design studio PearsonLloyd. The studio works in environments that have demanding spatial, ergonomic and social needs, such as healthcare, aviation, workplace and cities. Recent projects include work for Joseph Joseph, Department of Health, Lufthansa, City of Bath, Intercontinental Hotels, Bene, and Poltrona Frau. The studio believes in the power of design to transform the way in which people use and experience public spaces and services, and to deliver products that are both efficient and beautiful. Luke was awarded the distinction of Royal Designer for Industry by The Royal Society of Arts in 2008, and in 2012 Luke and Tom were named in the top 50 designers 'Shaping the Future' by Fast-Co Magazine in New York. Luke trained in Industrial Design at Central St Martins, (BA Hons 1991) before completing a Master's Degree MA (RCA) in Furniture Design at the Royal College of Art in 1993. He worked with Ross Lovegrove in London before joining Tom to found PearsonLloyd in 1997.

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  Nadya Peek

  Designer, MIT

  2017 Open Design Jury Member

  Nadya Peek is a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, a group at the intersection of the physical and the digital. Nadya Peek works on unconventional digital fabrication tools, small scale automation, networked control systems, and advanced manufacturing, and is currently teaching the MIT class How to make something that makes (almost) anything. Nadya Peek is an active member of the global fablab community, working on making digital fabrication more accessible with better CAD/CAM tools and developing open source (hardware) machines and control systems. Previously, Nadya Peek was an editor at Mediamatic in Amsterdam.

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  Phoenix Perry

  Design Researcher, University of the Arts, London

  2024 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Phoenix Perry specializes in developing accessible machine learning tools, founds value-driven creative coding organizations, and creates games that explore our collective interconnectivity. As the founding Course Leader for the MSc in Creative Computing at the University of the Arts London, Phoenix Perry blends embodied gaming, inclusive design, and advanced machine learning in interactive systems. She holds a PhD in Computing from Goldsmiths where she focused on Disability Led Game Design. Founder of the Code Liberation Foundation, Perry has empowered over 6000 women to explore computational creativity with games. She also creates tools and open-source resources for game designers and artists, most notably InteractML. Her installations and games work has shown at museums and festivals such as Wellcome Collection, Somerset House, A Maze, Indie Cade, and GDC

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  Beau Perschall

  Director, Omniverse Sim Data Ops, NVIDIA

  2023 Emerging Technologies Jury Member

  Beau is a 30+ year 3D animation industry veteran and respected management professional with a long track record of delivering high-quality tools, services, and support on his partners' behalf. He's developed and maintained deep relationships with all of the major players in the 3D arena including NVIDIA, Amazon, Autodesk, Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, Maxon, Epic Games, and Unity just to name a few, and has been deeply involved in helping bring standards to 3D over the past 20 years as part of TurboSquid, which was acquired by Shutterstock in 2021. He was instrumental in the development of both the CheckMate 3D modeling standard and StemCell initiatives to help train artists on how to create visual content in a more consistent and professional manner so it could be utilized in multiple projects easily. In his role at NVIDIA, he is building a new 3D content creation standard called SimReady to help ensure that 3D art assets can be utilized across a wide range of machine learning, AI and simulation platforms in a consistent and predictable manner.

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  Chuong Pham

  Creative Director & Co-founder, Kaarem

  2018 Packaging Jury Member

  Chuong Pham is the creative director and co-founder of Kaarem, a design and production studio based in Saigon and New York City. Prior to Kaarem, Chuong worked as a mechanical engineer. In 2013, he founded Kaarem with Kathy Minh Bach and launched a women’s line designed and produced entirely in their studio in Saigon. The studio focuses on blending contemporary designs with hand-crafted details.

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  Rose Piccioni

  Associate Provost, Online Education, ArtCenter College of Design

  2019 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Associate Provost: executive leader, strategist, educator
  A natural educator, leader, creative problem solver, and business developer with 25+ years of experience implementing story and new media meaningfully in teaching and learning.

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  Emily Pilloton

  Founder, Project H

  2016 Design for Social Impact Jury Captain

  Emily Pilloton is the founder of the nonprofit Project H Design. Since 2008, she has run Project H and worked with young people ages 9-18 to bring the power of design and building to schools and communities. Emily is trained as an architect with degrees from UC Berkeley and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but found that she is physically incapable of working in an office or for a boss and much prefers the creative chaos of a public school classroom filled with tools and welding equipment. Project H Design was born out of the hope that authentic, on-the-ground, face-to-face work with young people could transform what it means to be a design professional, what it means to learn in the 21st century, and what it means to get dirty and physically build solutions for your community.
  
  Specifically, Emily launched 2 Project H programs: Studio H, an in-school design/build curriculum, and Camp H, an after-school and summer building camp for young girls ages 9-13. Exploring the intersection of science, art, math, and community development, Emily has led Project H youth in the design and construction of an award-winning 2,000-square-foot farmers market structure, chicken coops, playgrounds, their own school library, microhomes for the homeless, laser-etched skateboards, and welded steel public sculpture.
  
  Emily believes that by giving youth, particularly girls and students of color, the skills to design and build their wildest ideas, we can support the next generation of creative, confident changemakers. Her ideas and work have made their way to the TED Stage, The Colbert Report, the New York Times, and more. Her work is the subject of the full-length documentary If You Build It. She is the author of two books, Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People, and Tell Them I Built This: Transforming Schools, Communities, and Lives with Design-Based Education. Emily is also a Visiting Professor in the Department of Design at UC Davis.

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  Michael Place

  Founder, Studio.Build

  2020 Packaging Jury Member

  A professional designer for almost 30 years, Michael co-founded Studio.Build in 2001. Beginning his career in 1990, he gained experience at various influential design studios in London, before joining the maverick graphics studio The Designers Republic in Sheffield, producing many works that have since earned a place in cultural history. Michael founded Studio.Build on one simple idea to do great work with great people- and that is at the core of the studios philosophy today. With a lifelong interest in typographic design, Michael is fascinated by the powerful part it can play at the heart of graphic communication, which is evident in the work of the studio. Michael has been on the judging panel of design awards worldwide, and has given talks and offered opinion on design at conferences across the globe. The studio has won several awards including from the prestigious D&AD global design awards.

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  Francis Pollara

  Director, Strategy and Development, Urban Movement Labs

  2022 Transportation Jury Member

  Francis Pollara is a strategy and innovation executive known for leading transformative work for industry-leading organizations spanning across the public, private and nonprofit sectors. Prior to co-founding Urban Movement Labs, he joined Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office as the entrepreneur-in-residence tasked with establishing a model and organization that could augment city governing authority to design and deploy transportation tech solutions in real urban conditions. Francis is an investor and four-time founder with expertise in scaling organizations commercializing products, and establishing structure in startup and core corporate management functions. Francis holds an MBA from USC’s Marshall School of Business and a Bachelor of Fine Arts double major in Product Design and Digital Media from Art Center College of Design.

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  Martin Postler

  Founder, PostlerFerguson

  2017 Consumer Product Jury Captain

  Martin Postler (born Germany 1977) studied Industrial Design at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design, graduating with a Diplom (MA aequivalent) in 2004. He received his MA Design Products in 2007 from the Royal College of Art and Kyoto University of Arts.
  
  Martin worked for diverse design agencies in Hamburg, Hong Kong and London for clients including Boeing, Lufthansa, Airbus, Nokia and Deutsche Telekom and received numerous awards including the Raymond Loewy Foundation Award, Red Dot, IF Design, DAAD and Invent Scholarship from the German Ministry of Education. From 2011 - 2015 he taught at the Royal College of Art Design Products Departement.
  
  Along with Ian Ferguson, he is a founder and director of PostlerFerguson, an industrial design office creating products for a meaningful future. PostlerFerguson works with clients to design and develop products combining bold creative vision with refined technical solutions. With offices in London and Hamburg, they have an international roster of clients including LG Electronics, Nike, Acoustic Research, Nudeaudio, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Victoria and Albert Museum.
  
  In 2011, he also co-founded PostlerFerguson’s sister company in Hong Kong, Papafoxtrot, a lifestyle and wood toy company. They produce a range of wood toys based on modern industrial marvels and the Staeckler shoe display systems. Their products have received accolades and awards including nominations for the Designs of the Year by London’s Design Museum, and Space.com’s Space Age Award.
  
  He is currently a Professor of product systems and production processes at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design.

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  Cher Potter

  Research Fellow, Victoria and Albert Museum

  2015 Speculative Concept Jury Member

  Cher Potter is an LCF/V&A Museum Senior Research Fellow. She is currently working as part of the curatorial team for a forthcoming exhibition at the V&A Museum titledThe Future: A History.As a Design Futurist, her practice has a number of applications in forecasting, research, curating and writing. Before starting at the V&A, she lead the Creative Direction at WGSN Forecasting Agencyùthe global leader in design research and trends. Here, her reports garnered a readership of over 2,150,000 people within the design industry, and became the source from which many product and fashion industry tendencies emanate today.As an expert of design futures, she curated the 23rd edition of the Impakt Arts Festival in 2012 which focused on post western arts and design practice. She has organized design symposiums, ran workshops and presented design trends globally, and her writing has appeared in various publications, including a regular feature on design futures in 032C Magazine.

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  Praveen Prabhakar KR

  Human Factors Design Engineer, Metaphase-Noble, part of Aptar Pharma

  2024 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  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.

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  Anthony Prats

  Product Lead, Robotics & Automation, Stealth Startup

  2024 Commercial Equipment Jury Member

  From creating lovable robot sidekicks to defining the future of food, Anthony Prats is a product and design leader with a decade of experience building category-defining hardware and software products. He got his start at Anki, helping to bring their Cozmo robot to life, built a molecular beverage printer at Cana, and explored the future of human-robot interaction at Google. He currently leads robotics and automation efforts at a stealth startup in the food space.

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  Anthony Prats

  Product Lead, Robotics & Automation, Stealth Startup

  2024 Robotics Jury Member

  From creating lovable robot sidekicks to defining the future of food, Anthony Prats is a product and design leader with a decade of experience building category-defining hardware and software products. He got his start at Anki, helping to bring their Cozmo robot to life, built a molecular beverage printer at Cana, and explored the future of human-robot interaction at Google. He currently leads robotics and automation efforts at a stealth startup in the food space.