Jury Alumni

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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 & Mobility 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.

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  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.

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  Kirsten Southwell

  Service Design Lead, Fjord, part of Accenture Interactive

  2022 Service Design Jury Captain

  After earning her Bachelors in Graphic Design from North Carolina State University, Kirsten started her career as an Experience Designer at Second Story Interactive Studios where she did work for cultural clients including the World of Coca-Cola, the College Football Hall of Fame, and the National Archives. She then moved in-house to the Art Institute of Chicago as one of the founding members of the Experience Design studio, initially recruited to lead the strategy and discovery work for the website redesign. Kirsten eventually became Creative Director, Visual Design where she led all visual design and design strategy work in the digital, print, brand, and environmental workstreams. After six years at the museum, she joined Fjord's midwest team to expand her service design capabilities. Outside of work, Kirsten is passionate about her art practice, rockhounding, birding, and cultivating a native prairie landscape in her backyard.

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  Omari Souza

  Assistant Professor, Communication Design, Texas State University

  2022 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Omari Souza is an assistant professor in the Communication Design program at Texas State University. He is the organizer of the State of Black Design Conference (online, April 2021). He previously organized and hosted a multipanel event titled "The State of Black Design" (online, Sept. 2020), which drew a live audience of 2,071 — the second-largest Livestream audience for an educational event in Texas State's history.
  
  Omari is a first-generation American of Jamaican descent, raised in the Bronx, New York. Before arriving at Texas State, he gained work experience with companies and institutions such asVIBEmagazine, the buffalo News, CBS Radio, and Case Western Reserve University. He earned a BFA in Digital Media from Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA in Design from Kent State University. Omari's research explores the idea of perceptions and how visual narratives influence culture — how we view ourselves and others around us.

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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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  Christopher Specce

  Independent Designer & Professor, Rhode Island School of Design

  2018 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  Christopher Specce is a designer and teacher working in Providence, Rhode Island. His practice spans from commercially oriented product design to creating experimental, one a kind of objects. In addition to serving as associate professor in the Department of Furniture Design at Rhode Island School of Design, his professional experiences include projects across the furniture and consumer product industries. Prior to joining the full-time faculty at RISD, he was lead designer at the consultancy Observatory, where he contributed to projects for clients including Herman Miller and P&G.
  
  With a belief that designed objects make an important contribution to culture, he explores the various ways that designers can embed objects with meaning. His studio practice features extensive use of digital design and fabrication tools alongside hands-on work with materials to create works that are at once mundane, delightful, modest, and forthright.

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  Joe Speicher

  Executive Director, AutoDesk Foundation

  2017 Design for Social Impact Jury Captain

  Joe Speicher is the Executive Director of the Autodesk Foundation. Under his leadership, the Foundation supports the people and organizations designing and engineering high-impact solutions to the world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. Prior to joining Autodesk, Speicher was on the founding team of Living Goods, where he spent six years leading operations for the global health organization. He began his career in the banking and finance sector, working with Deutsche Bank and Cambridge Associates. He then spent three years in the Peace Corps in the Philippines and has worked as a consultant for the Economist Intelligence Unit, the World Bank and Google.org. He earned a Masters degree in Development Economics from Columbia University and holds a Bachelors of Science degree from Washington and Lee University.