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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  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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  Hector Silva

  Executive Director, Advanced Design

  2021 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Hector Silva brings over 7 years of teaching experience at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Notre Dame, the Academy of Art University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Rochester Institute of Technology at their nationally-acclaimed industrial design programs. Recognized for his contributions in academia, Hector was awarded the Young Educator of the Year by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). An active professional in the field, Hector works as an industrial design contractor through his own studio, H Design, partnering with Crate & Barrel, DesignLab, Nickelodeon, LeapFrog, Foster Grant, Insight Product Development, Lund & Company Invention, as well as various entrepreneurs. Hector is also the founder of the design nonprofit, Advanced Design (AD), an organization awarded the Special Achievement Award by the IDSA for making design education more accessible and through disrupting the mediums through which design education has been traditionally offered. AD continues to grow today, connecting students and working professionals to foster a community of design excellence. Most recently, Hector founded Offsite, a 12 week pilot program catered towards furthering design education outside of traditional academia space. This program was developed to translate the needs of the industry into course content taught by design industry leaders. The goal is to help students develop the right skill set and mentorship to thrive on the job and support them along the way.

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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.

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  Rose Piccioni

  Associate Provost, Online Education, ArtCenter College of Design

  2019 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Associate Provost: executive leader, strategist, educator
  A natural educator, leader, creative problem solver, and business developer with 25+ years of experience implementing story and new media meaningfully in teaching and learning.

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  Jenny Rodenhouse

  Director of the Immersion Lab, ArtCenter College of Design

  2019 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Jenny Rodenhouse is an artist, designer, and researcher in Los Angeles. She is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Immersion Lab at ArtCenter College of Design, teaching for the Interaction Design Department and Media Design Practices MFA program. Her work explores our increasingly immersive, screen-based lifestyles.

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  Laura Silva

  Vice President, Accessibility Technology UX Design Lead, Bank of America

  2021 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Laura Silva is Bank of America’s Vice President, Accessibility Technology UX Design Lead. Previously, she worked at Amazon in the Global Search team as Accessibility and D&I designer. She’s originally from Bogota, Colombia but calls the U.S. her home. In her work, she focuses on inclusion, diversity and equity for her customers and coworkers.
  Her experiences being “the first and the only one” as a Afro-Latina in tech inspire her to advocate for the business and cultural benefits of highlighting the intersectionality of their customers.

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  Juliette LaMontagne

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

  2018 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

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  Kat Reiser

  Senior Design Strategist, Booz Allen Hamilton

  2021 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Kat Reiser is a strategic thinker, driving innovation by understanding what to make and why it matters. In her time as a designer, Kat has consulted and participated in in-house design teams. She has had the opportunity to work with companies focused on housewares and packaged goods including Pampered Chef, PepsiCo, Chevron, P&G, AB InBev, and Oculus.
  
  Kat is also an instructor at Offsite, where she helps designers build the tools they need to seek employment while guiding the students through understanding and reflecting upon who they are and how they present themselves as designers.

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  Shalini Agrawal

  Associate Professor, Critical Ethnic Studies, California College of the Arts

  2022 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Shalini Agrawal is trained as an architect and brings over 25 years of experience in community-engaged practice. She is Founder & Principal of Public Design for Equity, a practice that re-envisions and activates new systems towards equity-driven outcomes, and Director of Pathways to Equity, a leadership experience for ethical community-engaged design. She is an award-winning educator at California College of the Arts as Associate Professor in Critical Ethnic Studies, Individualized, Interdisciplinary Design Studios and the Decolonial School. Shalini’s research and practice focuses on revealing the historical legacies of colonization in architecture and design and dismantling its lasting impacts.

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  Jennifer Rittner

  Principal, Content Matters

  2020 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Jennifer is a writer, educator and communications strategist. Her consulting firm, Content Matters, helps creative businesses thrive by defining their voice and learning how to communicate effectively with diverse audiences. Prior to consulting, Jennifer worked for Pentagram, Columbia CNMTL and the AIGA. She has been published in The New York Times, Core77, Against the Grain, as well as a variety of trade publications. As an educator Jennifer led Art Access II, an initiative designed to increase museum attendance among under-served communities through education and community outreach. She has taught at Parsons and FIT, and is currently on faculty in the SVA Products of Design program where she teaches design and social impact.

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  Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar

  Acting Director, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum

  2022 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar is the Nerman Family President-select of the Kansas City Art Institute.
  
  Originally from Chennai, India, Ruki draws from her international experiences as a designer to reimagine education and improve access to creative career pathways. Most recently, she has served as the Acting Director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design museum. At the height of the pandemic, Ruki was the Smithsonian’s Acting Under Secretary for education, responsible for leading a Smithsonian-wide team that responded to the distance-learning needs of families that were caught in the digital divide. Ruki has also served as the Smithsonian’s Associate Provost for education and was Director of education at the Cooper Hewitt.
  
  Before joining the Smithsonian in 2017, she was the Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Central Oklahoma, where she had advanced from Professor to Director of graduate programs and Chair of the Department of Design.
  
  Ruki has served in leadership roles at all levels of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), including the AIGA Design Educators Community and local and national boards. She has been recognized by AIGA's Oklahoma Chapter with the Fellow Award in 2015 and her alma mater, Iowa State University with the Design Achievement Award in 2021.

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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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  Timothy Bardlavens

  Product Design Manager, Facebook

  2020 Design Education Initiative Jury Member

  Timothy Bardlavens is a Product Design Manager at Facebook, a Cultural Strategist and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) consultant. At Facebook, Timothy supports Community Experiences within the Facebook App, leading teams focused on new Member Experiences and Ecosystem Growth. As a strategist, he specializes in Organizational Culture through the lens of Human-Centered Design, helping organization leaders develop people-centric strategies with clear, actionable steps to increase diversity, create more inclusive spaces and design more equitable systems. Timothy is also Co-Founder of the &Design Fellowship Program and an international speaker and facilitator.

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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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  Sarah B. Brooks

  IBM Distinguished Designer, Strategic Foresight, IBM

  2022 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain

  Sarah leads a Strategic Foresight practice within IBM design. Her 20+ years of research and practice center on the personal and organizational capabilities individuals and teams need to confidently navigate uncertainty, imagine, and work toward regenerative and equitable futures. She is an intrapreneur who has operationalized design education and practice across enterprise, startup, non-profit, Federal Government, and community contexts. She lives by the ocean in Montauk, New York with her husband Freddie and their dog, Juno.