Jury Alumni

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  Yasaman Sheri

  Designer and Director

  2019 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Yasaman Sheri is a Designer and Director working with interfaces for sensing. Sheri’s research focuses on interaction of humans, machines and living things, exploring sensing beyond vision, machine perception, networked systems and augmentation of body, objects and ecologies. She has the led Core Interaction Design for the first consumer level Augmented Reality Operating System Head-Mounted Display: Microsoft Hololens and Hololens2 Windows Holographic focusing on intuitive gestural interfaces. She works closely with various companies and organizations including Toyota, Google(X), Ginkgo Bioworks, NASA Ames Research Center and others as facilitator to explore sensing and perception in Design. She is also an educator, teaching Graduate Industrial Design at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Biodesign and Sensory Design at Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design (CIID) and is frequent critic at Columbia GSAPP, Art Center College, NYU, Cooper Union, ZHdK, and Stanford University.

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  Ramon Tejada

  Independent Designer & Assistant Professor, Rhode Island School of Design

  2019 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Ramon Tejada is an independent Dominican/American designer and teacher based in Providence. He works in a hybrid design/teaching practice that focuses on collaborative design practices. His recent design research interest lies in the areas of disruption of the Design Canon, inclusivity, diversity, collaboration and the expansion and openings of design narratives and languages beyond the “traditional” Westernized paradigm of design. He received an MFA in Graphic Design from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and an MFA in Performance Arts from Bennington College.

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  Susie Wise

  Strategic Advisor, Designer & Coach, School Retool, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school)

  2018 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Susie Wise is the founder of the K12 Lab Network at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (a.k.a. the d.school). She founded the K12 Lab in 2007 to investigate the role that design thinking could play in the education sector. This work helped catalyze a national movement to use design thinking as an approach to project-based learning and a method for ed sector innovation. From 2012-2017 she led the team to create innovative professional development experiences for teachers, school leaders, and “edu innovators” that help them build their creative confidence and make experiments happen. Recent programs include School Retool, a fellowship for school leaders, now operating in 18 cities, and the Shadow A Student challenge, launched in 2016 with more than 3500 school leaders participating. Susie is also a co-founder of Urban Montessori Charter School in Oakland, California.
  
  Susie’s early professional experiences include developing educational multimedia for education technology startups and educational programming for Bay Area non-profits including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco International Film Festival, The Exploratorium, and the Bay Area Discovery Museum. She has a PhD in Learning Sciences and Technology Design from Stanford University and a BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania.

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  Kareem Collie

  Director of Design and Creativity, The Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity, The Hive (at the Claremont Colleges)

  2018 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Kareem Collie is a designer, systems thinker and educator. Currently, he is the Director of Design and Creativity at the Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity at the Claremont Colleges and Clinical Professor of Visual Communication at Harvey Mudd College. He is a former Teaching Fellow at Stanford University's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (a.k.a the d.school) where he developed workshops and courses in human-centered design. His research focus is the intersection of design, visual communication, and critical thinking. He spent the first half of his career in branding and creative strategy. He received his MA in Media and Cultural Studies from NYU in 2016 and his BFA in Communication Design from Pratt Institute in 2001.

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  Juliette LaMontagne

  Founder & CEO, Breaker / Chief Learning Architect, Bionic Solutions

  2018 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

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  Tom Maiorana

  Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis

  2018 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Tom Maiorana is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Design at UC Davis where he focuses on product design, design thinking, and prototyping. Tom’s research focuses on how low-resolution prototypes can help designers explore the human experience of interacting with complex systems. He is a Fellow at the John Muir Institute for the Environment where he uses design thinking methods to inform the strategy and development of the OneClimate initiative. Tom is also the founder of Red Cover Studios, which specializes in product development and innovation strategy and uses prototyping as a central practice in work ranging from interaction design to fashion to organizational change. Red Cover Studios helped to conceptualize and launch the Hive at the Claremont Colleges and Denison University’s forthcoming Design Lab. Tom regularly teaches at Stanford University’s d.school.
  
  Tom has an MFA in Design from Stanford University and a Bachelor of the Arts from Vassar College.
  

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  Petrula Vrontikis

  Creative Director, Vrontikis Design Office

  2017 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Petrula Vrontikis is a leading influence in graphic design. Her current work includes research, writing, consulting, creating brand communication strategies, training, and coaching. She received an AIGA Fellows Award honoring her as an essential voice raising the understanding of design within the industry and among the business and cultural communities. She served as a national advisory board member of the AIGA and is frequently asked to serve on numerous local, national, and international design juries.
  
  She is creative director and owner of Vrontikis Design Office (@vrontikis and 35k.com) and a professor at Art Center College of Design, teaching graphic design, career development, and professional practice courses.
  
  Her professional practice gives her role as a teacher an important authenticity. She encourages students to explore their potential as designers and as a catalyst for change in the larger creative community.
  
  Petrula is an avid traveler and visual translator. It’s not unusual to find her scuba diving with giant manta rays, climbing a steep and rocky slope, or twisting her body like a pretzel in a yoga class.

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  Roshi Givechi

  Partner and Executive Design Director, IDEO

  2017 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Roshi Givechi is a Partner and Executive Design Director at IDEO, a global design consulting firm. Having called many of IDEO's US and Asia offices home, Roshi channels her global exposure to amplify creativity and culture – cultivating opportunities for designers, clients, and an extended creative network to inspire and challenge each other in service of making a difference in the world. This exposure also means she spots patterns and edges across region as well as industry, enabling her to help shape good design. As a designer inspired by choreography, Roshi loves dissecting the many parts that come together to make a greater whole—whether designing for cities, products, services, or shaping stories themselves. Her years at IDEO have given her an intimate view of the changing nature of design’s role, and what it means to envision and define products and systems that bring disproportionate impact to the world. Roshi’s clients include Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bank of America, the Kaufman Foundation, Medtronic, NASA, Nokia, Ritz-Carlton, Steelcase, Timberland, and YouTube.
  
  
  In her role at IDEO, Roshi regularly teaches design thinking through facilitated innovation workshops within organizations. She has also taught cross-disciplinary design at the California College of Arts and, most recently, Human Values in Design at Stanford In New York. She is a frequent collaborator of the Sundance Institute Theater Program, helping to host public conversations on topics that inform our daily lives through a forum coined Creative Tensions (creativetensions.com). Roshi holds an MFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, a BS from University of California, Davis, and in January 2009, was profiled in I.D Magazine’s “I.D. 40” list as one of 40 leading design innovators. She’s keen to figure out what to show for it in 2049...

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  Phil Hamlett

  Director, School of Graphic Design, Academy of Art University

  2017 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Phil Hamlett is the Director of the School of Graphic Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, the largest private art and design school in the country. In this setting, he teaches classes, develops curriculum, recruits and manages instructors, advises students, manages the graduate thesis development process, conducts outreach and establishes the strategic agenda for the School. His students emerge as advanced design practitioners and go on to acquire positions at leading firms around the world. Phil joined the Academy in 2004 and served for thirteen years as the Graduate Director for the School of Graphic Design, building the nascent MFA program from scratch.
  
  Prior to becoming a design educator, Phil led design studios on both coasts, creating award-winning work for clients large and small. His extensive professional experience provides him with the perspective necessary to prepare students for the challenges of the real world. Capable of playing a wide variety of design, communication and managerial roles, he is adept at identifying creative challenges, distilling core objectives, formulating a plan of attack, and managing the team that will then fix everything.
  
  Phil recently completed his term as president of the AIGA San Francisco chapter, for which he continues to serve ex officio. He is also a former AIGA national board member, founder of Compostmodern and co-author of the Living Principles for Design — the means by which he guides the development of sustainable business practice within the design community As a charter member of the Winterhouse Institute Founder’s Circle, he helps articulate the value of design education for social impact.
  
  In his off time, he can usually be found chasing around his two adorable children (photos available upon request).

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  Jeremy Mende

  Founder, MendeDesign

  2017 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Jeremy Mende is a visual artist and designer from San Francisco, California. In 2000 he founded MendeDesign, a creative practice that balances commercial projects with strategic design work for socially oriented non-profits. The studio has been recognized internationally for its work and currently has pieces in several collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Jeremy is a professor of design at California College of the Arts.

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  Pradyumna Vyas

  Director, National Institute of Design

  2016 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Pradyumna Vyas acquired a Masters in Industrial Design from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. In June 2010, Vyas was conferred with an honorary Master of Arts degree from the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, United Kingdom in recognition of his contributions to design education and design promotion. Vyas has more than 30 years of professional and teaching experience in different spheres of design. Since the last 25 years, he has been associated with the National Institute of Design (NID) as a faculty in the Industrial Design discipline. In April 2009, he was appointed as the Director of the National Institute of Design.
  Prior to joining NID, Vyas acquired three years overseas experience at the Kilkenny Design Centre, Republic of Ireland.
  In July 2011, Vyas was given the award for his outstanding contribution to design education at the second edition of Asia’s Best B School Award that was held at Singapore. Vyas was invited as the jury member for the special awards screening panel at Good Design Award (G-Mark) by the Japan Institute of Design Promotion, Japan consequently in 2012, 2013 and 2014.He has been at the helm of design promotion events in India and has represented NID in various international and national events. He was elected as an ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design) Executive Board Member for 2009–11.
  In pursuance of the National Design Policy approved by the Cabinet in February 2007, an India Design Council was constituted in March 2009 and Mr Vyas has been nominated as its Member Secretary by the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India. In July 2015, World Education Congress, 2015 conferred the award for Outstanding Contribution to Education to Mr. Vyas.

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  Hrridaysh Deshpande

  Director, DYPDC Center for Automotive Research and Studies

  2016 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Hrridaysh has been in the field of education for over 21 years. Presently, Hrridaysh is the member of Governing Body of Ajeenkya DY Patil University and is the Director of DYPDC School of Design and School of Film and Media.
  
  He is associated with the India Design Council (IDC) as its consultant advisor. IDC is a national strategic body of Government of India established under the aegis of Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, Government of India. Under the aegis of IDC he is spearheading the India Design Mark program in cooperation with Good Design Award, Japan. He is the member of CII National Committee on Design. In 2004 he founded Creative-i College one of India’s first private initiatives in the field of Design Education.
  
  Over the years Hrridaysh has acquired proficiency in business innovation strategy and design driven Innovation. He focuses on structured innovation practices for organizational innovation via appropriate tools, methods and processes. Hrridaysh has worked on several committees on innovation and has been a speaker at many prestigious forums. Through his work, Hrridaysh has assisted leading companies across a range of industries.
  
  Hrridaysh is an experienced, enthusiastic, and energetic educator and innovation facilitator. He is passionately committed to education and capable of expanding the limits of traditional pedagogy through the development and realization of a unique integrative and interdisciplinary curriculum.

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  Shashank Mehta

  Activity Chairperson, National Institute of Design

  2016 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Shashank Mehta is a principal faculty of Industrial Design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Currently, he is the Activity Chairperson of the Institute’s Professional Education Programme.
  
  Over the last five and half years, Shashank also served as the project head of the Design Clinic Scheme for MSMEs, a unique and ambitious design intervention scheme for the country’s large MSME sector. Supported by the Ministry of MSMEs, Government of India, the scheme reached out to over 200 MSME clusters through organization of Design Sensitization Seminars, Design Awareness Programmes and Design Projects.
  
  Over the years Shashank has taught at the Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels, spanning various design disciplines. Shashank has spearheaded the introduction of new course modules 'Design Process', ‘Indigenous Innovations’, ‘Service Design’, ‘Design Audit’, and ‘Introduction to Experience Design’, that are in sync with the rapidly changing demands and aspirations of the industry and economy in general. He also anchored and conducted several workshops on these topics for the participants from various sectors of industries. In 2007, he developed the vision report and the curriculum for the four year undergraduate programme in Product Design. Shashank also developed curriculum for the Postgraduate Programme in Product Design Engineering.

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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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  Mike Weikert

  Director & Founder, Center for Social Design, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)

  2015 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Mike Weikert is founding director of the Center for Social Design and Master of Arts in Social Design at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). In 2008, he established MICA's Center for Design Practice, a multi-disciplinary, project-based studio bringing together students and outside partners to collaborate on innovative solutions to social problems. Previously, he served as co-chair of the graphic design department at MICA, partner/creative director at Atlanta-based Iconologic, and as a design consultant to the International Olympic Committee. In 2011, he was nominated for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award and in 2014, received the Ashoka U-Cordes Innovation Award.

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  Jess Gartner

  CEO & Founder, Allovue

  2015 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Jess Gartner is the CEO & founder of Allovue, an education resource planning platform for K-12 schools and districts. Allovue helps education administrators connect spending to student outcomes. In the past, Jess has taught in numerous schools throughout the world including South Africa and Thailand. She received her M.A in teaching from John Hopkins University. She was featured as one of The Baltimore Sun's 2013 Women to Watch as a leader in education and Baltimore Magazine's 40 Under 40. In July 2012, she was a featured panelist alongside prominent education leaders at the Education Technology Innovation Summit in New York City. Her writing and photography has been published in Weekly, Changing, Skillcrush and Women 2.0.