Jury Alumni

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  Jesse Tylor

  Architectural Designer, FOOD New York

  2019 Built Environment Jury Member

  Jesse is and Architectural Designer. He was worked at Food (Formerly Family) since 2015 and has been the Project Lead on Off-White stores in Tokyo, Singapore and New York, a new community church in the Sydhavnen neighborhood of Copenhagen and the new Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, Germany. Prior to Food, Jesse worked with DFA Architects, Huff+Gooden, and was a designer at Hassell Studio in Perth, Australia. Jesse earned a Master’s in Architecture at the University of Western Australia and University of Arizona, and a Bachelor’s of Environmental Design at UWA. Jesse is from Perth, Australia.

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  Richard Tyson

  Principal Strategy Designer, frog

  2017 Strategy & Research Jury Member

  Richard is a principal strategy director at frog with a focus on data, systems intelligence, innovation, and organizational change. In his role, he helps leaders explore the frontiers of human-centered approaches to intelligent systems. Richard has a long consulting background with innovation leaders like Doblin, Monitor, and SYPartners where he as worked on large scale foresight, innovation, and transformation programs across industries including healthcare, information technology, consumer products, urban systems, humanitarian affairs, international development, and national security. Richard in on the faculty at School of Visual Arts Products of Design Master’s program and has conducted projects throughout the world in Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and the Middle East. Select clients include: BNY Mellon, IBM, Google, Microsoft, SK Telecom, The United Nations, and the US Department of Defense.

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  Yosuke Ushigome

  Creative Technologist & Director, Takram

  2019 Speculative Design Jury Captain

  Yosuke is a creative technologist based in London and Director at Takram, a design innovation firm based in Tokyo and London. His primary interests are centred around emerging technologies. He probes future visions that they promise, reveals the cultural and political mechanisms behind them, and illustrates insights through making various prototypes. By doing so, he aims to facilitate in-depth understanding of the implication of emerging technologies, and encourage better-informed decision-making on our future.

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  Hlynur V. Atlason

  Founder, ATLASON

  2020 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  Hlynur V. Atlason, leads his eponymous design studio ATLASON, based in Manhattan. Leading a team of world-class strategists, innovators and designers, practicing a method of design, deeply informed by research, brand and craft. ATLASON delivers strategy, design innovation and manufacturing expertise, guaranteeing everything imagined, can be made.
  
  ATLASON/studio, his own product design firm founded in 2004, has since built a comprehensive portfolio of furniture, consumer lifestyle products and packaging in collaboration with MoMA, DWR, Ercol, Umbra, Artecnica, Estée Lauder, Microsoft, and Stella Artois.
  
  Hlynur is an adjunct lecturer at School of Visual Arts, Products of Design Masters Degree Program, NYC.

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  Gabriel Valdivia

  Lead Designer, Jigsaw

  2019 Strategy & Research Jury Captain

  Gabe is a Cuban Product Designer based in New York, currently exploring how technology could make people safer at Jigsaw. Prior to that, he explored social VR and content creation at Facebook, as well as smart driving at Automatic. He’s passionate about design mentorship, empowering diverse perspectives, and creating transformative experiences through the power of storytelling.

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  Bill Valls

  disruptive influence & CEO, M80inc.

  2019 Consumer Technology Jury Member

  Bill has devoted four decades to the design and development of new products and packaging for Fortune 50 and 500 CPG brands. His singular focus has been to harness cultural imagination for progressive clients who long for authenticity in an era of high-volume sameness. Using an innovative studio model that blends creative awareness with process milestones, Bill has a long history of delivering client success across a wide range of consumer categories.

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  Deanna Van Buren

  Co-Founder, Designing Justice Designing Spaces

  2017 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Deanna is the co-founder of Designing Justice Designing Spaces, a nonprofit harnessing the power of design and development to transform people and communities. After starting her first company in 2011 she became a national leader in formulating and advocating for restorative justice centers, a radical transformation of justice architecture. Her passion for exploring the intersection of design and culture has been fueled by her work as a design lead on urban design, institutional and education projects in the bay area, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Recent projects with DJDS include the Syracuse Peacemaking Center in New York and Restore, a multi-use hub for restorative justice and work force development in east Oakland. Deanna is currently conducting the first design studios with incarcerated students, and is a recent awardee of the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist grant to develop a prototype mobile resource village. Deanna received her BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia, M. Arch from Columbia University and is an alumnus of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

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  Bas van de Poel

  Co-Founder, Modem

  2023 Speculative Design Jury Captain

  Bas van de Poel is co-founder at Modem, an office for design and innovation committed to creating experiences for a new world. Whether through research papers with institutions like MIT, Harvard GSD or UC Berkeley or its work with clients such as Nike, Google, Teenage Engineering, and OpenAI. Prior to Modem, Bas served as Creative Director at IKEA’s research and design lab SPACE10 where he led large-scale digital transformation and sustainability programs.

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  Avra van der Zee

  COO, Elemental Excelerator

  2023 Sustainability Jury Member

  Avra is a climate tech executive passionate about supporting innovative climate tech startups as they scale. She is an experienced advisor, organization builder, and board leader, including as Director of Made of Air. As the former COO & GC at micro-mobility company JUMP, she led the company from its early inception to its strategic sale to Uber. She is currently COO of Elemental Excelerator, a global, non-profit climate investor and impact organization with over a decade of experience investing in place-based climate technologies.

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  Julien Van Havere

  Principal, DesignPractice™

  2020 Sports & Recreation Jury Member

  Julien is a Stockholm based designer with a broad experience in strategy, brand and graphic design. He is currently running DesignPractice™, a design consultancy with a focus on brand identity, SearchSystem™, an ever-growing collection of references and TypeFoundry™, a collection of typefaces and collaterals. He has been working for small and large enterprises both nationally and internationally including: Askul, Duvel, Escuyer, IKEA, Lexus, NIO, Polestar. His work has been awarded and exhibited at the Design Museum of London, Bozar Center for Fine Arts in Brussels and MAD Center for Fashion and Design in Brussels.

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  Mesve Vardar

  Director of Industrial Design, Humanscale

  2017 Commercial Equipment Jury Member

  Mesve Vardar is the Director of Industrial Design at Humanscale. With a decade of Humanscale experience behind her, Mesve Vardar has been a key contributor to a number of celebrated Humanscale products, including the Red Dot award-winning T7 Mobile Technology Cart. She joined the company in 2006 as a designer after earning a Master of Arts in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute. Before accepting the role of Design Director, Vardar worked as a Senior Industrial Designer and Researcher. In this capacity she worked on product development and research across categories, including seating, monitor arms, healthcare and lighting. Having conducted dedicated research into the future workplace, she is motivated by front-end thinking and the broad impact Humanscale can have on the changing office.

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  Remi Versteeg

  Partner Architect, Beyond Space

  2022 Built Environment Jury Member

  Remi Versteeg is equal parts architect and entrepreneur. He founded his first company back in 2002 (many were to follow) and obtained his degree in architecture from Delft University. In 2016, he co-founded office for architecture Space Encounters. In 2021, he co-founded Beyond Space together with Stijn de Weerd. Remi is driven to innovate and always seeks to combine diverse perspectives to forge new connections and lead him down roads less traveled.

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  Boriana Viljoen

  Senior Interaction Designer, Fitbit

  2022 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  Boriana Viljoen is a hybrid UX/service designer with extensive experience in the wellness and health tech industry. Boriana utilizes a human-centered design approach to create experiences that aim to improve people’s lives. Based in San Francisco, CA, Boriana has a passion for displaying complex information in easy to grasp ways, simplifying complicated user interactions, and making digital products intuitive and appealing.

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  Lona Vincent

  Strategy & Innovation, Johnson & Johnson

  2021 Health & Wellness Jury Member

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  Dario Volpe

  Creative Director, Lettera7

  2024 Packaging Jury Member

  Dario Volpe is a designer with more than 20 years of experience in brand design, passionate about illustration, type design, and contemporary art. By experimenting with eclectic languages, he crosses multiple and diverse stylistic barriers, encouraging a deeper understanding and interpretation of the project's core message.

  
  In 2010, after several important international experiences as a designer (at Landor, Interbrand, Cb’a), he established Lettera7, a brand design studio based in Vietri sul Mare - Amalfi Coast, where he is both the founder and creative director.
  His ability to work across multiple disciplines has led Lettera7 to handle a variety of projects in different industries over the years, continuously improving their approach to meet a wide range of challenges: "There's no preferred industry for Lettera7; we're designers and any visionary idea well-structured can be turned into a virtuous project, no matter the industry tag it goes into"
  In his experimentation with visual languages, he has successfully led cultural initiatives including international festivals in cinema, music, and theatre, developed complex wayfinding systems in diverse locations, and enhanced brand design for Italian firms to spotlight their true market value. Especially in the food sector, his unconventional approach has blended artistic visuals with business needs, rapidly earning multiple projects international recognition.

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  Parul Vora

  Designer, Researcher, Technologist, User Experience Specialist, IDEO

  2021 Strategy & Research Jury Member