Jury Alumni

• 

  Helen Maria Nugent

  Dean of Design, California College of the Arts (CCA)

  2023 Commercial Equipment Jury Member

  Helen Maria Nugent has been leading progressive innovation in art and design education for over 25 years. Currently, she is the Dean of Design at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco where she oversees 9 graduate and undergraduate design programs including an MBA in Design Strategy. She envisions the Design Division at CCA as a sanctuary for those with radical curiosity, where wonder and imagination are amplified through rigor and craft.
  Previously she was a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she founded the Designed Objects programs that cultivate a reciprocal relationship between products and humanity. In the way-back machine, she was the co-director of the transformative and aptly named, Workshop for Art Research and Practice (WARP), a radical foundation program for artists and designers at the University of Florida.
  
  Helen Maria is also the co-founder of Haelo Design, an interdisciplinary research-oriented design studio that is undertaking the transition from object design to strategic futuring.
  

• 

  Charles Johnson

  Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University

  2023 Sports & Outdoors Jury Member

  For nearly three decades Charles has worked within the context of sports, fashion, and active lifestyle products for leading global brands such as Adidas, Puma, Converse, and Ralph Lauren. With a design degree from Carnegie Mellon, his professional starting point as a product designer has transformed to executive-level leadership shaping vision, teams, product experiences, and global strategies. Charles’ ambition to combine a humanistic design approach with digital technology informs his work.
  
  His consulting business, Driven By Charles, services a range of industries helping startups navigate their vision, corporate product engines shape new experiences, and venture capitalists and incubators in need of expert insight to help guide their investment decision.

• 

  Inigo Hernandez-Ysasi

  Co-Founder, Casa Ysasi

  2023 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  Iñigo Ysasi is a co-founder at Casa Ysasi; a Los Angeles-based creative studio with an emphasis on light.
  Iñigo self-taught designer constantly experimenting with new mediums from wood to neon all the way to concrete. He is driven by curiosity and the combination of nontraditional materials in new formats. He moved to LA back in 2016 to join a large technology company while simultaneously pursuing a creative profession in his free time. He worked for a furniture company before co-founding Casa Ysasi with his brother Patricio Ysasi in 2020.
  

• 

  Patricio Hernandez-Ysasi

  Co-Founder, Casa Ysasi

  2023 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  Patricio “Pato” Ysasi is a co-founder at Casa Ysasi; a Los Angeles-based creative studio with an emphasis on light. Patricio is a Los Angeles-based art director and filmmaker whose work explores the intersection of photography, film, and text. Since graduating from Cornell University, Patricio has worked in collaboration with Farm League, MACRO, and Tortoise.

• 

  Margaret Lee

  Leadership Coach, Design Dept.

  2023 Interaction Jury Captain

  Margaret Lee is a Leadership Coach helping Design and Product executives and practitioners to lead with authenticity and confidence. Prior to coaching with Design Dept., Margaret was a User Experience leader at Google, where she built and led teams in Chrome, Search, and Maps. She led Google Maps UX from its early days as a groundbreaking desktop experience, to an indispensable tool for navigation and local exploration. Margaret also served as Director of UX Community + Culture at Google, a program she founded to serve and empower the company’s global User Experience organization. Decades in the tech industry has shaped her current commitment: to create conditions for teams to flourish and individuals can uncover their unique potential and leadership style. Margaret speaks and writes about her personal journey as a leader, the importance of a healthy culture in the workplace, and our collective responsibility to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

• 

  Karen Feder

  Head, MFA, Design for Play, Design School Kolding

  2023 Toys & Play Jury Member

  Karen Feder is the head of the world’s first international Design for Play Master’s Program at Design School Kolding, educating the next generation of play designers. The program recognizes the understanding of play as a prerequisite for designing high quality toy design. The curriculum is based on research within play and toy design qualified through dialogue with institutions around the world and in collaboration with experienced toy design companies.
  
  Karen is an assistant professor, in the LAB for Play & Design, where she does research in child-centered design for play and how to teach designers to design opportunities for play from a child-centered perspective. Her current research focusses on how taking the starting point in the children and their everyday lives, can lead to more relevant and meaningful design for children.
  

• 

  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.

• 

  Todd Palmer

  Director, Diversity in Design Collaborative

  2023 Built Environment Jury Captain

  Todd Palmer is a strategist, curator, and cultural leader of purpose-driven platforms at the intersection of design, public learning and spatial equity. As Director of the Diversity in Design Collaborative he steers a start-up driven by over 56 design-focused organizations that are aligned to confront systemic barriers faced by Black talent at critical moments in the design lifecycle.
  
  Palmer orchestrated the second and third editions of the Chicago Architecture Biennial as its’ Executive Director, defining the platform’s identity as a global catalyst connecting design experimentation with civic urgencies. As Curator and Associate Director of Chicago’s National Public Housing Museum (2013-2016), Todd ensured exhibits and programs served grassroots efforts to rehabilitate a community site as a cultural framework for confronting poverty.
  
  Palmer’s transdisciplinary efforts have been profiled in range of media outlets - most recently the DID Collaborative under Palmer’s leadership was recognized by a 2022 Fast Company Innovation By Design Award. As an independent creative Todd co-founded Program Collective, the design team behind immersive exhibitions tackling sustainability at the core of Spain’s World Expo 2008. He has also designed urban justice prototypes for Harlemworld at the Studio Museum (2004) and published critical essays in Columbia University’s The Avery Review (2015) and Illinois Institute of Technology’s 2022 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize catalogue. As an educator, Todd has created high school design curriculum for Miami’s Design and Architecture Senior High School, and taught professional certificate and advanced degree courses in design and curatorial practices at NYU and for RISD’s M.Arch program.

• 

  Marie Williams

  CEO, Dream Networks

  2023 Toys & Play Jury Member

  Marie is a playful chartered engineer, design lecturer, TedX speaker, and CEO of Dream Networks. She founded Dream Networks in 2016 and has collaborated with businesses, schools, and communities to co-design and build engaging play spaces in economically deprived communities around the world. To date, Dream Networks has adopted sustainable design practices to create inclusive play spaces for over 60,000 children in the UK and Africa.
  
  She is an advocate for children's right to change the spaces they inhabit through play and design practices that prioritizes the needs of the community and the environment. In her recent TEDx, she suggests deconstructing the playground and demonstrates how we can collectively make play possible for all by adopting a child-centered approach that focuses on inclusive spaces, playful materials, and local connections. Through her Ph.D. at the UCL Institute of Global Prosperity within the Bartlett school of architecture, she has developed a critical blueprint for cultivating sustainable outdoor play spaces in urban refugee communities that relies on culturally specific co-design, materiality, and ethnography. She is a lecturer on design and innovation at Universities in the UK, Kenya, and the USA. Marie is a Christian, mother, and spontaneous baker.
  

• 

  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.

• 

  Jaye Buchbinder

  Director of Product, Emeco

  2023 Furniture & Lighting Jury Captain

  Born and raised in Long Beach, California, Jaye studied Sustainable Engineering at Stanford and currently works at Emeco in Product Development and Sustainability, where she chairs out of recycled materials. She lives and surfs in Venice Beach, California.

• 

  Miri Chan

  VP of Branding & Visual Design, Enlisted

  2023 Packaging Jury Member

  As VP of Branding & Visual Design at Enlisted, Miri leads a team of visual designers to solve business challenges with design excellence. Originally hailing from Hong Kong, she's our constant source of all things cool. Her insights into consumer audience behaviors and brand strategy keep her team focused and challenged every day. She has led and designed branding and packaging projects for Fortune 500s and emerging startups alike—including Jabra, Diamond Crystal Salt, Linksys, Jaybird, Nestle, and PAX.

• 

  Beau Oyler

  CEO, Enlisted Design

  2023 Packaging Jury Captain

  A design entrepreneur, Beau Oyler is the Founder of Enlisted Design where he works at the intersection of business, data, and design to create product experiences for the world’s most sought-after brands. Such as Allbirds, Samsung, Bose, MrBeast, and Amazon. His work has won every major international design award and can be found at the Museum of Modern Art, Apple Store, and Whole Foods, to name a few. Beau graduated with a degree in Industrial Design from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He also serves as Chief Design Officer at Pattern, where he uses an industry-first approach that harnesses the soul of design and the science of data analytics to create craveable brands that consumers love.

• 

  Cilia Indahl

  Head, EQT Foundation

  2023 Sustainability Jury Member

  Cilia Indahl joined the global investment organization EQT during the pandemic to set up the EQT Foundation, an impact first investor and incubator. The foundation provides catalytic capital to entrepreneurs, who are building solutions within climate, health or inclusion and supports research accelerating impact investing. Indahl has a double degree in sustainable innovation and international business from HEC Paris and the NHH and started her career as trainee for the Norwegian Mission to the UN, assisting on the negotiations of the UN SDGs. Prior to joining EQT, Indahl was CEO of the impact investing organization Katapult and Sustainability Director at Aker Biomarine, where she also holds a board position.

• 

  Felicia Ferrone

  Founder, f f e r r o n e design

  2023 Home & Living Jury Member

  Felicia Ferrone is an architect, designer, academic, and entrepreneur. Her international namesake design brand f f e r r o n e- based in Chicago and Milan- is known for delivering the unexpected through a seemingly simple gesture. Born in Chicago, Felicia graduated with a degree in architecture from Miami University, Ohio after which she moved to Italy. Ferrone’s expansive reach is informed by her early experience as an architect in Milan, where she was first taught to “blur boundaries” in design.
  
  Ferrone's award-winning designs have been widely exhibited, published internationally, and featured in numerous films and TV series. Several of her works are included in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Permanent Collection. In 2022 she was named Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago’s Creator of the Year for her contribution to the field through her design and utility patents. Felicia was also included in Woman Made: Great Women Designs, published by Phaidon, recognized as 1 of 200 women who have shaped the history of design.
  
  In addition to producing and distributing her own designs under her brand, Felicia is the director of Undergraduate Studies in Industrial Design and a Clinical Associate Professor atthe University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Previously she was the Director of Graduate Studies from 2015-2022 and a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) for many years at the beginning of her academic career.

• 

  Dee Halligan

  Director, Forth

  2023 Sustainability Jury Member

  Dee Halligan is an accomplished creative strategist with expertise in new models for creative engagement and learning. As the co-founder and Managing Director of Forth, a London-based Community Interest Company, Halligan leads a team that researches and prototypes new ways to promote social and environmental sustainability through creative engagement. Her creative consultancy From Now On, founded in 2009, built a portfolio of forward-thinking community engagement projects with clients such as the National Trust, Marks & Spencer, and Google. In 2016 she co-founded FixEd, a non-profit think-and-do-tank concerned with reimagining creative education for a new generation, winning multiple awards and European Commission research funding. In 2021 a merger produced Forth as a vehicle for an increasingly urgent agenda around engagement, learning, and skills for climate response. Her dedication to sustainability, innovation, and creativity has earned her recognition from the design and education communities, including most recently the Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education.