Jury Alumni

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  Maria Silva

  Brand Strategist & Senior Designer, Mucca Design

  2020 Strategy & Research Jury Member

  Maria Silva's passion is discovering the compelling kernel of truth at the root of each brand and using it to create a unique story. In addition to being a brand strategist at Mucca Design, she is an award-winning designer, with recognition from CommArts, TDC, LAD, and BID, and a master’s degree in brand strategy from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Some of her recent clients include Union Square Hospitality, WeWork, 7Fresh, Fairway, and Ficosota.

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  Laura Silva

  Vice President, Accessibility Technology UX Design Lead, Bank of America

  2021 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Laura Silva is Bank of America’s Vice President, Accessibility Technology UX Design Lead. Previously, she worked at Amazon in the Global Search team as Accessibility and D&I designer. She’s originally from Bogota, Colombia but calls the U.S. her home. In her work, she focuses on inclusion, diversity and equity for her customers and coworkers.
  Her experiences being “the first and the only one” as a Afro-Latina in tech inspire her to advocate for the business and cultural benefits of highlighting the intersectionality of their customers.

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  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.

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  Jayson Simeon

  VP, YETI Design, YETI

  2024 Sports & Outdoors Jury Member

  Jayson is a design leader turning design thinking into action. He leverages the experience from his diverse creative career for the benefit of every challenge he takes on, bringing focus to the fuzzy front end, embracing the difficult challenges, collaborating transparently, leading with integrity.
  
  Jayson has led some of the industry's best industrial design and user experience teams through complex programs to create successful product + brand solutions in nearly every industry imaginable.

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  Andrea Simitch

  Associate Professor, Cornell University, Department of Architecture

  2016 Built Environment Jury Member

  Andrea Simitch is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at Cornell University. She teaches courses in architectural design, architectural representation, and furniture design. She served as Director of the Bachelor of Architecture program from 2011–14, as Director of Undergraduate Studies from 2007–08, and as Associate Dean of AAP from 2002–03. She has been a panelist on the New York State Council on the Arts, a department representative for the Cornell Council for the Arts, and was a faculty collaborator with the Andrew Goldsworthy workshop at Storm King. Val Warke and she partner in a collaborative architectural practice and recent projects include the Nalati National Park Resort and the Eco-Tourism Strategic Planning Proposal, both for Nalati, China, as well as numerous design competitions that include the Arbedo Castione school in Ticino, Switzerland, the Center for Promotion of Science of the Republic of Serbia Competition, Benetton Competition "Designing in Teheran”, and the Stockholm City Library Competition.
  
  She has taught extensively for Cornell in numerous international venues that include Europe and Central and South America and is regularly invited to lecture and participate in diploma juries and symposia at peer institutions, most recently in Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Student work from her furniture design course has been exhibited at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York. She was a 2015 Fellow at the Baer Art Center in Hofsós Iceland. The Language of Architecture: 26 Principles Every Architect Should Know, a book she co-authored with V. Warke and published by Rockport Publishers (June 2014) has been translated into four languages. She received her B.Arch. from Cornell in 1979 and also attended Occidental College and l'Ecole Special d'Architecture in Paris.

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  Mike Simmons

  Director of Product Design, Playground Global

  2019 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  Mike currently serves as Director of Product Design at Playground Global, which is a venture investment firm with an added studio of product development and technical experts. Here he blends his consulting, product design, and entrepreneurship experience to help aspiring hardware startup companies create great products and strong businesses. Prior to joining Playground, Mike worked for Google where he built a team and managed the product design and mechanical engineering efforts first with Android and the Nexus line of products and then adding projects with Chrome and Chromecast. Before that, Mike led product design efforts for startups, created new products and businesses at Lunar Design, and ran his own consulting practice. Through these experiences, he has helped develop products across industries and for many clients such as Apple, Danger, HP, Motorola, and SanDisk.
  
  Mike first realized his passion for designing and inventing products while earning his degree in the Product Design program at Stanford. He later went on to fuel his interest in business and entrepreneurship by obtaining an MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Mike grew up in Montana, and he loves to return to his home state for skiing, fishing, and simply taking in the Big Sky.

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  Zack Simons

  Senior Design Manager, Invision

  2020 Packaging Jury Member

  Zack is a professional athlete turned designer based in Park City, Utah. He leads by example with a rigorous, hands-on approach to brand, product, and UX design.
  
  Zack is currently leading a team of UX and product designers as a Sr. Design Manager at InVision. In years past, he worked alongside some of the best in the business at WeWork, Logitech and Ammunition.

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  Vincent Sin

  Executive Head, Industrial Design & Product Development, Secretlab

  2023 Gaming Accessories Jury Captain

  With over 12 years of experience in industrial design, Vincent is focused on bringing to life products that sit at the nexus of engineering and art, combining both elegant form and supreme functionality. He now leads all design at Secretlab, heading the development of the award-winning Secretlab TITAN Evo, MAGNUS desks, monitor arms, and more.
  
  Looking to the future for inspiration, he believes in constantly pushing the boundaries of design and engineering for Secretlab’s next generation of products. Today, Secretlab is at the vanguard of fast and evolving design trends in the gaming industry, leading the way with a relentless focus on improving performance through thoughtful design."
  

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  Jens Martin Skibsted

  VP, Mobility & Foresight, Manyone

  2021 Transportation Jury Captain

  Jens Martin Skibsted is VP of Mobility at Manyone. He is a multiple award-winning designer, entrepreneur, & design philosopher and part of the “Davos” think tanks. Known for his urban mobility designs for Biomega, & collab with Bjarke Ingels. His designs live in the collections at the MoMA, SFMOMA and many more. A published author, and expert blogger.

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  Pickett Slater Harrington

  Faculty, Masters of Arts in Social Design, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)

  2022 Design for Social Impact Jury Captain

  Pickett has spent his career igniting social change. He is the founder and managing principal at Joltage, a social change design firm that champions innovative solutions to social challenges, and serves as full-time faculty in the Master of Arts in Social Design (MASD) at the Maryland Institute of Art (MICA).
  
  Pickett has deep experience connecting and working with communities, for profit businesses, nonprofit institutions and government partners to address complex, systemic social issues.
  
  Pickett holds a Master in Social Work, with a concentration in organizations and communities, from the University of South Carolina. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife and two kids and enjoys woodworking, sailing and sci-fi.

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  Becky Slogeris

  Associate Director, MICA Center for Social Design

  2015 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

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  Rachel Smith

  Founder & Designer, Design to Combat COVID19

  2023 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  Rachel Smith is a Latinx Designer & Founder of Design to Combat COVID-19, a virtual community of creatives over 2,000 strong—who during the pandemic volunteered their skills and time to support underrepresented communities. By day, Rachel Smith is a Product Designer at Facebook, was formerly a Lead Mentor with The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and previously has worked with companies such as Nordstrom and The Home Depot. The rest of the time, the LA native works on a range of creative projects, both within her local and global communities.

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  Barton Smith

  Product Designer, Spotify

  2019 Strategy & Research Jury Member

  Barton is a Product Designer based in New York, many miles from his hometown in Australia. He's currently at Spotify designing creative tools for artists and previously worked at FiftyThree, Facebook and Fuseproject. He equally loves working on complex systems and dynamic interfaces, and spends a lot of time thinking about the movement of culture, trends and ideas.

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  Mark Smout

  Senior Lecturer, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London

  2015 Built Environment Jury Captain

  Mark Smout and Laura Allen are Senior Lecturers at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Their work takes two routes, architectural competitions, where the particular rigor of the competition brief, site and program provide the basis for new investigations and, conceptual design projects which test out the agenda and methodology of the design research practice. They focus on the dynamic relationship between the natural and the man made and how this can be revealed to enhance the experience of the architectural landscape.

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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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  Susan L. Sokolowski, Ph.D.

  Founding Director and Professor of Sports Product Design, University of Oregon

  2022 Sports & Recreation Jury Captain

  Susan L. Sokolowski, PhD is the Founding Director and Professor of the Sports Product Design Graduate Program, at the University of Oregon. She has over 25 years of performance footwear, apparel, and equipment design experience; working at Nike, Burton Snowboards, Fila, the US Department of Defense, and tech start-ups prior to coming back to academia in 2016. Her work is holistic in nature, where consideration of the user’s body shape/dimensions, performance, sport, materials, and styling are addressed to develop innovative solutions. She is specifically focused on issues surrounding design of products for underserved populations, including women and adaptive athletes. Susan has been recognized internationally for her achievements in design and innovation, including 40+ utility and design patents, awards from the United States Olympic Committee, Nike and Volvo, and featured product at the Design Museum London.