Jury Alumni

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  Menaja Ganesh

  Gallery & Collections Programming Associate, Letterform Archive

  2024 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Menaja (currently in-between bodies and in-between names) is a gay Tamil & Bengali artist originally from Kolkata and currently based in San Francisco. Their practice lies between language and presentation, familiarity and loss. It manifests thru printmaking, multi-media installation, writing, and a sporadically maintained sketchbook. Their curatorial practice is born from and constantly dying within the archives. Their inspirations range from the fashion of 90s Karan Johar movies, to Arundhati Roy’s texts. They love independent publishing, and handloom saris. They currently work at Letterform Archive, activating the permanent collection through public programming. In their personal and professional life, they are always preoccupied with the conversation between preservation and access. They think of their grandmother daily.

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  Indya McGuffin

  Design Operations Lead, Netflix

  2024 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Originally from Chicago, Indya McGuffin is a designer, storyteller, and creative strategist currently based in Oakland, California. Indya has dedicated her career to empowering Black creatives, entrepreneurs, and those envisioning more equitable futures through design.
  
  Inspired by her self-designed major at Stanford University, she co-founded PURSUIT Design, a studio that leveraged visual storytelling and creative strategy to help people understand themselves and others. Indya has since returned to Stanford to teach "Print on Purpose," a design course investigating how social justice is imprinted in our local, national, and global consciousness.
  
  In her current role as a Design Operations Lead at Netflix, Indya works with the Design Systems team, ensuring that their work effectively supports the company's creative vision.
  
  When Indya isn't designing, she is competing with her friends to spot music samples, attempting to replicate her mom's recipes, and exploring the spaces around her on foot.

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  Julie Arrivé

  Co-founder & Design Director, Approach Studio

  2024 Emerging Technologies Jury Captain

  After many years working for industrial design consultancies worldwide and across a wide range of scales, Julie is now the co-founder of Approach Studio. Approach is a design agency developing hardware solutions using emerging technology for a mixture of startups and larger established brands. At Approach she also experiments on speculative and future technology usage.

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  Alex Hulme

  Co-founder & Creative Director, Approach Studio

  2024 Emerging Technologies Jury Captain

  Alex is co-founder of Approach Studio and has been designing and manufacturing products for over 20 years. He spent the best part of a decade at Map Project Office, where as studio co-director he oversaw the studio's creative output including projects for Sky, Google and Deutsche Telekom
  Since 2020 his focus at Approach has been on crafting tomorrow’s technology products. Approach’s clients are a mixture of big tech (Google, Logitech, Nothing) and upcoming hardware startups.

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  Matt Brown

  Designer, Extraordinary Facility

  2024 Emerging Technologies Jury Member

  Matt Brown is an independent designer based in Los Angeles. Most of his work is in early-stage invention and prototyping in software and hardware for new products, services, media and environments. Recent clients include Google X, R&D at The New York Times, and The Berggruen Institute. He also runs Extraordinary Facility, a small design studio focused on learning and play.

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  Joey Zeledón

  Designer, Joey Zeledón Studio

  2024 Furniture & Lighting Jury Captain

  Joey Zeledón (they/she) is a designer who helps objects find their purpose in life. They do this by creating aspirational narrative identities – sticky stories that drive meaning – for object archetypes. Is it just a printer? or could it be furniture that prints? Is it just a coffee maker? or could it be a barista in your kitchen? Is it just a clothes hanger? Or could it be a closet you can sit on? In 2022, they founded a design studio based on this approach, creating purposeful objects for people and market differentiation for clients. Prior to starting their own studio, Joey brought dozens of products to market from shoes and furniture to housewares, consumer electronics and consumer packaged goods during their 15-year career working for Clarks, Continuum, Smart Design, Steelcase and HP. Their designs have won 40+ awards and have been featured in leading publications. Joey is a proud RIT alum.

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  Yuka Hiyoshi

  Designer, MillerKnoll

  2024 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  Yuka is a Japanese industrial designer based in Michigan. She has over fifteen years of experience designing and consulting for companies in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. She is lead designer at MillerKnoll’s Tailored Studio.

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  Fernando Ramirez

  Co-founder and Designer, Common Object

  2024 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  Fernando Ramirez is a designer dedicated to exploring the intersection of sustainability and community and how it drives value in design. Specializing in industrial design, furniture design, and environmental design, he has left his imprint on diverse projects, collaborating with both major corporations and innovative startups. His deep commitment to sustainability propels him beyond conventional boundaries, driving him to explore pathways that lead into the realm of regenerative thinking.
  
  As a co-founder of Common Object, a design studio aligned with his values for people and the planet, Fernando has forged a path guided by these principles. At the core of his studio's philosophy is a "planet- centered" design approach, empowering companies to take steps toward sustainability while fostering more inclusive connections with people. Their versatile portfolio spans industrial, furniture, medical, and interiors. A notable aspect of their work involves community projects, actively participating in co-design workshops specifically crafted to empower and uplift communities.
  
  Common Object's experience in sustainability has led to the studio's regenerative design experiment, Okaterra—a project that focuses on creating regional supply chains that collaborate with farmers to create materials for furniture. Since its release, Fernando and his design partner, Justin Beitzel, have seamlessly integrated workshops and talks into their studio flow. They are diligently working to share this thinking and posing the question, “Can the future of product design be regenerative?”

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  Ayako Takase

  co-founder / principal, Observatory

  2024 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  Ayako Takase (she/they) is the co-founder/principal of Observatory, an award-winning, multi-disciplinary design studio founded in 2001. Observatory balances innovation and simplicity to foster meaningful connections with people, culture, and audiences. With work spanning creative fields, Observatory relies foremost on an intuitive process that allows a natural interplay of form and function to take place in their designs. The studio has worked for leading companies such as Herman Miller, Google, and Procter & Gamble. Ayako is also an Associate Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design and a director of the graduate program in the Industrial Design Department. They teach hands-on studios focusing on audience-centric, emotive, and iterative design. Ayako lives in Cranston, Rhode Island, with her partner and too many creatures.

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  Sunshine Thacker

  Founder, Sunshine Thacker Studio

  2024 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  After studying Architecture and Land Development at Texas A&M University, Sunshine spent 15 years navigating lawyers, liars and leeches before returning to her first love - clay. Sunshine's background in architecture informs her always curious - artistic and design practice. Sunshine believes in taking risks, in pushing boundaries. She’s always asking, “why?” Or more often, “why not?” Her work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Dwell, Surface, Wallpaper and Elle Decor among others.

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  Tim Hulford

  Director of Industrial Design, Meta

  2024 Gaming Accessories Jury Captain

  Tim Hulford is a design leader with a passion for delivering thoughtful, functional and intentional design. His background is deeply rooted in technology, producing influential designs that have spanned across many industries and categories. Tim is currently Industrial Design Director at Meta, working to bring the audacious dreams of Reality Labs to life as beautifully integrated, compelling consumer products.

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  Benoit Collette

  ID, VALVE

  2024 Gaming Accessories Jury Member

  Following a master degree in Industrial design in France (ISD), Ben had the opportunity to work with numerous talented individuals through dierent design consultancy (design continuum, Teague, Artefact) and is now working for Valve where he focuses on video game hardware equipment such as Steamdeck . For him , Understanding users and targeting issues and opportunities is key to create successful projects , collaborating with complementary skilled people is key to create meaningful and market ready products and experiences.
  
  “After 20 years of strategic innovation and design consulting, I still maintain a strong urge to experiment and explore the frontiers of what comes next with the goal of merging and blurring the boundaries of Industrial Design, User Experience, and Interaction Design.
  I am a strong believer in creating multi-sensorial experiences rather than simply designing hardware products”

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  Norio Fujikawa

  Executive Creative Director, PA Consulting

  2024 Gaming Accessories Jury Member

  Executive Creative Director by day and professional illustrator by night, Norio brings 30 years of design experience to every program he directs at PA Consulting (formerly Astro Studios). Since studying at the Institute of Design, IIT in Chicago, he has collaborated with diverse clients such as Microsoft, Nike, HP, Disney, Samsung, Nissan and Sony, among many others. His passion for emerging technologies has him constantly looking towards the future while his keen awareness of user needs and experiences keeps him focused on the present.

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  Paul Danial

  Industrial Designer, UX-HF Ergonomics Expert III, Noble-Metaphase, Part of Aptar Pharma

  2024 Health & Wellness Jury Captain

  Paul Danial is a creative and technical industrial designer with an interest in product and experience design. Bridging his academic backgrounds in human kinetics and industrial design, he creates human centered designs that empower and optimize user experiences. Paul works with Noble-Metaphase, Part of Aptar Pharma, to consult and design hand-intensive products with a focus on medical devices. He finds passion and motivation in finding solutions to challenges that improve the quality of life of patients and effectiveness of practitioners. Paul has always been curious about how things work and often takes things apart and reimagines them. He could also be found sketching and doodling on any surface available. In his free time, Paul is passionate about aerospace and aviation, motivating him to pursue his private pilot's license. He also loves to travel the world with his wife, and he is excited to be a dad soon.

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  Sunil Achia

  Design Director, Healthcraft Group

  2024 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  Sunil Achia is an award winning industrial designer at HealthCraft Group, a Canadian manufacturer of fall prevention products designed to help people live more independently at home.
  
  During his +20 years with the company, Sunil has become a leader in all aspects of product design and business development. He leads a team of talented designers through product development, manufacturing and creative marketing initiatives. He is also part of the leadership team at HealthCraft, responsible for the strategic direction and culture of the company.
  
  His design approach is smart and curious, never shy to challenge the social stigmas and assumptions surrounding mobility support products. This curiosity led to the development of a new product category: 2- in-1 combination grab bar + bathroom accessories. This category has won HealthCraft several universal design awards at major exhibitions across North America, and most recently a 2023 Red Dot Design Award (a bucket list item for Sunil) for the Plus Series.
  
  In his spare time, Sunil does what he loves - Design! He is the Chapter President of Carleton University's Industrial Design Alumni Association, where he partners students with alumni professionals for one on one mentorship. Sunil is involved in design education, teaching ID courses at Carleton. He also runs a freelance business with his wife (also a successful industrial designer), providing environmental graphics services.
  
  Sunil makes time for his #1 love - music. He can be found playing bass in bands around town, or playing solo acoustic guitar at fancy dinner events.
  
  Life motto: Do what you love.

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  Praveen Prabhakar KR

  Human Factors Design Engineer, Metaphase-Noble, part of Aptar Pharma

  2024 Health & Wellness Jury Member

  Praveen is a Human Factors Engineer with a Master's in Kinesiology, focusing on Cognitive and Motor Neuroscience and a foundation in I&C Engineering. Praveen's professional passion lies in the intersection of technology and healthcare, using biomechanics, neuromechanics, and a blend of quantitative and qualitative methods to understand people, their strengths and limitations and design user-friendly medical devices. In his role at Aptar Pharma, Praveen is instrumental in consulting on medical device design projects, ensuring they are accessible and effective. His enthusiasm for technology extends to incorporating AI and cutting-edge innovative methods to optimize medical device design, functionality and user experience. As a tech geek, Praveen is always exploring the latest technological advancements and their potential applications in healthcare. Outside of work, he is passionate about outdoor activities and fitness.