Jury Alumni

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  Srini Srinivasan

  President and CEO, Lumium, LUMIUM Design, Inc.

  2016 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Srini Srinivasan is a highly accomplished entrepreneur in creative design and technology development, with over 20 years of work experience in the Silicon Valley, United States. As a highly networked and connected person, Srini has developed business successfully across the globe for the past two decades with F-500 companies. Srini has successfully raised capital from leading VCs in the Silicon Valley and enjoys being in Start-ups with his broad set of skills & global customer experience.
  
  Srini is an avid global traveller and enjoys visiting various locations around the globe and meeting people. He loves to play golf and follows several major sports like Soccer, Golf, basketball & Cricket.

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  Steve Starobinsky

  SVP Trends & New Markets, Gel Blaster

  2024 Toys & Play Jury Member

  A veteran of the toy industry of over 20 years. Selling retailers in all sectors in North America with a focus on trend writing a trend forecasting. My last two projects were launching MIND THE GAP, a game that was acquired by Spin Master and most recently Gel Blaster - one of the fastest growing toy companies in North America!

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  Astrid Stavro

  Partner & Creative Director, Atlas

  2015 Visual Communication Jury Captain

  Astrid Stavro graduated with a First Class Certificate from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and with Distinction from The Royal College of Art in London. In 2004 she returned to her native land of Spain to start her own design practice in Barcelona. Astrid Stavro's strongly rooted conceptual solutions and distinctive typographic approach quickly won international critical acclaim. Her work has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 150 highly acclaimed creative awards including D&AD, The Annual (Creative Review), Design Week Awards, The International Society of Typographic Designers and Art Directors Club of New York. She is a recurrent jury member in design competitions and lectures in design conferences worldwide. Stavro writes for various design journals and is currently the Art Director as well as a contributing editor of Elephant magazine.

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  Ruby Steel

  Co-Founder, Studio Exception

  2026 Home & Living Jury Member

  Ruby Steel is an award-winning inclusive innovation leader and design strategist with over 15 years’ experience shaping products, services, and systems across technology, healthcare, mobility, media, and retail. She is the co-founder of Studio Exception, a pioneering practice that centres excluded voices as a source of insight, creativity, and strategic advantage in design.
  
  Ruby has worked with global organisations and public institutions including the NHS, BBC, Samsung, Jaguar Land Rover, Spotify, Sky, Toyota, Selfridges, and Standard Chartered. Her work blends ethnographic research, systems thinking, and emotionally intelligent design to translate lived experience into scalable principles that benefit both organisations and society. She is particularly interested in how inclusive design can drive innovation at the level of culture, policy, and long-term strategy.
  
  She was one of the expert designers on the BBC Two programme Big Life Fix, collaborating within a multidisciplinary team to create life-changing solutions for people with disabilities and complex needs. This experience helped shape her belief that design is fundamentally emotion-led — and that empathy, when applied with rigour, can unlock meaningful and commercially viable outcomes.
  
  Ruby is the co-creator of The Exception Method, a design and innovation framework that begins with one “exceptional” human — often someone excluded by conventional processes — and uses their experience to inform universal design principles. The method is currently being developed into a book and suite of tools with her Studio Exception co-founder, Dawood Sufi.
  
  A graduate of the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, Ruby has received multiple accolades including the Helen Hamlyn Design Award and a Core77 Design Award runner-up. She is a frequent speaker on inclusive innovation, accessibility, and future design practice.

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  Max Steffen

  Global Design Director, Equipment and Accessories, The North Face

  2020 Sports & Recreation Jury Captain

  Max is the Global Design Director for Equipment and Accessories at The North Face with whom he recently transitioned from the San Francisco Bay Area to Denver, Colorado. Prior to his move to the United States, Max led his industrial design consultancy in Brussels, Belgium. When he’s not exploring the outdoors, he is seeking strategic design solutions that combine the functional world of industrial design with the emotional world of contemporary aesthetics.

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  Michael Steiner

  Senior Designer, Infrastructure & Charging, JUMP Hardware

  2019 Transportation & Mobility Jury Member

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  Jennifer Sterling

  Founder & Creative Director, Jennifer Sterling Design

  2023 Visual Communication Jury Member

  Founder of Sterling Design in 1996, Jennifer is a creative director, designer, animator typographer, illustrator, photographer, and educator. Her work is part the permanent collections of The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Library of Congress, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Museum Fur Kunst Und Gewerbe, Hamburg and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art hosted a three-month solo show entitled "Jennifer Sterling: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Architecture and Design". The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museums Triennial Exhibit showcased the creative work of 83 designers and companies including Jennifer Sterling, Apple, Nike, and Martha Stewart.
  Her work has been featured in over 180 magazine and book articles, Graphis Magazine named her "One of the Top Ten Designers in the World." GD:USA Magazine named her one of the "Twelve Designers to Change Design into the Millennium". Clients and projects include creating an interactive online design to promote the worldwide distribution of aids awareness and medical distribution to third world countries for Yahoo Inc. as well as creating the worldwide brand "Vital Voices" for Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright. In 2016 she created campaign collateral for Hillary Clinton's 2016 Presidential Campaign. Jennifer has served as an adjunct professor at CCA (the California College of the Arts / San Francisco), AAU (Academy of Art University / San Francisco) and SVA (School of Visual Arts / New York).
  

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  Cristie Stevens

  Art Director & Editor, Studio A/C

  2019 Packaging Jury Member

  Cristie Stevens is a Los Angeles based designer, art director and editor of Studio A/C; a curated online platform showcasing the world's most beautiful branding, print, and packaging design. Cristie also heads up Alternating Current; a design studio specializing in creating and elevating brands through strategically-led visual identity, packaging, and digital design.

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  Marquise Stillwell

  Founder and Principal, openbox

  2019 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

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  Eric Stoddard

  Design Manager, Ford Motor Company

  2015 Transportation & Mobility Jury Member

  Eric Stoddard is an accomplished automotive, transportation and product designer, with 17 years experience at major automotive OEMs including Ford, Hyundai and Chrysler.At Ford, Eric is responsible for mid-size passenger car exterior design, including Taurus and Fusion. He played a key role in establishing an all-new advanced design team in Detroit. Advanced programs include the next generation Fiesta, Focus, Mustang, Expedition and Navigator.At Hyundai, production automotive designs included the 2013 Santa Fe, 2011 Elantra, Genesis Coupe, Tucson, Equus, HCD9 Talus concept (2006), and 2007 Elantra. At Chrysler he conceived and led the exterior design of the Crossfire (concept and production), Pacifica and the Dodge SRT-4. In addition to his automotive work, Eric consults in product design as founder of SpeedStudio Design. He has a passion for bicycle design and alternative transportation, having won awards for bicycle design concepts at Red Dot and the Taipei International Bicycle Show. He actively participates in design education, having taught courses and held demos at Cleveland Institute of Art, College for Creative Studies, Lawrence Technological University and Art Center College of Design. Eric holds Bachelor Fine Art from Cleveland Institute of Art, Class of 1998.

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  Alastair Stokes

  Associate, Gensler

  2026 Built Environment Jury Member

  Alastair is an architect at Gensler in Los Angeles, where he leads the design of education and community-focused projects at the office. He has a keen interest in advocating for a more resilient built environment that can enable new ways for all people to live, learn, play, and work more sustainably. A key part of this advocacy is supporting the next generation of architects and designers as they seek to forge a path for themselves in this crucial work. Alastair has taught architecture at Woodbury University, is a frequent critic on local university juries, is a regular NCARB committee member focused on the future of practice, and runs the internal project presentation platform at Gensler Los Angeles, which is focused on giving more junior team members the chance to present their work.

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  Daniel Stromborg

  Product Development Design Director, Gensler

  2023 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  As Product Development Design Director for Gensler, Daniel applies his insights and industry experience to inspire design teams to translate Gensler’s voice and vision into tangible products for workplace and lifestyle environments. Partnering with manufacturers, his team creates touchpoints that expand the experience for which clients rely upon Gensler. He previously led design teams on projects with Arper, Andreu World, Devon&Devon, Elizabeth Arden, Emser, Estel, Fantoni, Gandia Blasco, Knoll, Muraflex, OXO, Targetti, Zumtobel, and many others.
  
  Daniel’s career began with digital imaging pioneer April Greiman, focusing on brand-based design and conceptual work. From there, he worked with legendary product designers Richard Holbrook and Don Chadwick until eventually striking out on his own. Daniel joined Gensler in 2014.
  

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  Jörg Student

  Executive Design Director, IDEO

  2018 Consumer Product Jury Member

  Jörg Student is an Executive Design Director based in IDEO’s Palo Alto location. He is passionate about exploring the intersection of design and engineering to elevate the human experience.
  
  Whether designing chairs, fitness equipment, medical devices, windows, or multi-tools, Jörg believes that the best designs are developed through rapid, iterative prototyping while always empathizing with users. Since joining IDEO in 2005, Jörg has applied this approach for innovation across a diverse range of industries, including consumer products, healthcare, and technology. His work has been recognized with multiple design awards, including from Fast Company and IDSA. Jörg has also spent a year with IDEO.org, IDEO’s non-profit arm, to improve the lives of people in poor and vulnerable communities.
  
  Outside of IDEO, Jörg enjoys experimenting with advanced origami-folding patterns and translating them into larger-scale structures and interactive, kinetic art pieces. He is the co-founder and lead artist of the art collective FoldHaus, whose sophisticated yet poetic art pieces have been shown at many festivals and museums, including Burning Man, the NY MoMA, the Exploratorium in SF, the Smithsonian in DC, The Kaneko in Omaha, and the Dubai d3 design district.
  
  Jörg holds two Masters degrees—one in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and another in Industrial Design and Engineering from the Royal College of Art in London.

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  Ryan Swedenborg

  Artist and Designer, Spotify

  2022 Interaction Jury Member

  Ryan Swedenborg is an artist and designer based out of NYC, where she currently works for Spotify. Her work takes the form of visual identities, applications, apparel, reports, celebrations, prints, sculptures, and paintings. Being a WNBA fan, collecting Reba merch, and wandering around New York are her hobbies.

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  Aziz Sy

  General Manager, Impact Hub Dakar

  2026 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  A graduate of Brandeis University in Massachusetts with a Master's degree in Sustainable Development, Aziz Sy has worked in business support since joining CTIC as a project manager in 2014. Since then, in 2018, he founded the Impact Hub Dakar incubator, which has supported over 250 companies, and managed the DNA Business Angels network, followed by the La Tanière Business Angels network and the Suguba accelerator. He dedicates most of his time to financing and training startups and has been developing various programs and events in this area for over 10 years.

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  Stephanie Szarwark

  Senior Visual Designer, Enlisted Design

  2021 Commerical & Industrial Equipment Jury Member

  Stephanie is a Senior Visual Designer at Enlisted Design, a visual and industrial design agency based in Oakland, CA where she brings brands to life through tangible visual design. Previously, she was a freelance brand designer, working with small Bay Area startups and large companies such as: Clif Bar, Nestlé, Ancestry, and Waymo (Alphabet). These projects ranged from packaging design to digital product illustrations to copywriting and art direction. Her diverse experience led her to specialize in helping clients hone their brand stories to better resonate with customers. Stephanie is particularly passionate about bridging the gaps between design and business strategy, and helping more people engage their own creative thinking.