Jury Alumni

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  Sabiha Basrai

  Co-Owner, Design Action Collective

  2024 Design for Social Impact Jury Captain

  Sabiha Basrai is a co-owner of Design Action Collective — a worker-owned cooperative dedicated to serving social justice movements with art, graphic design, and web development. She is co-coordinator of the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, where she works with racial justice organizers on international solidarity campaigns. Sabiha is also part of the Center for Political Education advisory board, an affiliate trainer with Race Forward, and a faculty member in the University of San Francisco's Department of Art and Architecture.

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  Noopur Agarwal

  Associate Professor + Program Director, Design, University of San Francisco

  2024 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Noopur Agarwal is a visual communication designer and educator dedicated to increasing critical public engagement with issues of global and local concern. Her practice is based both on service: working collaboratively and interdisciplinarily to make a strategic difference within an organization; and authorship: producing exploratory works. Her creative output often takes the form of “experiential graphic design” (physical and digital interactive environmental graphics) and includes brand identity concepts for events, organizations, exhibitions, publications, and advertisements.
  Agarwal is currently is an Associate Professor and Design Program Director in the Art + Architecture department at the University of San Francisco. She maintains an active consultancy practice in addition to her teaching, where her client list has included nonprofit, publishing, and technology organizations.

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  Sarah Dunham

  Partner, MTWTF

  2024 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Sarah is a Partner at MTWTF, where she has been shaping design processes, managing interdisciplinary design teams, and facilitating community engagement since joining the studio in 2014. MTWTF is a communication design studio that believes that good design has the power to help individuals, organizations, and businesses clarify what they do and manifest their ideas to make change happen. The studio situates itself within the broadest discipline of design — the shaping of our shared physical and electronic environment — and creates communication tools that foster discussion and facilitate change.
  
  Acting as project manager and art director, Sarah develops design strategies for projects that are drawn from a rigorous engagement with their content. This approach has driven exhibitions including ‘Utopia— Dystopia’ a multimedia exhibition at the Audi Design Incubator in Brooklyn; ‘Seeing Equal Rights in New York State’ an interactive exhibition at the Equal Rights Heritage Center; ‘Climates of Inequality’ an interactive exhibition of student work on environmental justice by the Humanities Action Lab; and 'Maneuvers at Millers River' a case study exhibition currently in development for the National Pubic Housing Museum in Chicago.

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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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  Christine Gaspar

  Community-Engaged Designer & Nonprofit Leader

  2023 Design for Social Impact Jury Captain

  Christine Gaspar is a designer and planner with over fifteen years of experience in community-engaged design practice. She was the Executive Director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) from 2009 to 2022. CUP is a New York-based nonprofit whose mission is to use the power of design and art to increase meaningful civic engagement in partnership with historically marginalized communities. Prior to that, she was Assistant Director of the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio in Biloxi, Mississippi, where she provided architectural design and community planning services to low-income communities of color recovering from Hurricane Katrina. She is a founding member of the Design Futures Student Leadership Forum Advisory Board, and holds Masters in Architecture and in Urban Planning from MIT, and Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from Brown University. Her work is driven by a belief that design can be a powerful tool, particularly when it’s used to support community-led visions for change.

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  George Aye

  Co-founder, Greater Good Studio

  2023 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  George co-founded Greater Good Studio to use design to heal, to be just, to be restorative, Previously, he spent seven years at a global innovation firm before being hired as the first human-centered designer at the Chicago Transit Authority. Since founding Greater Good he guides clients and teams through complex projects that honor reality, create ownership, and build power. He speaks frequently across the US and internationally. George holds the position of Full Professor (Adj) at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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  Mari Nakano

  Social Designer, Systems Strategist & Educator

  2023 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

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  Pickett Slater Harrington

  Faculty, Masters of Arts in Social Design, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)

  2022 Design for Social Impact Jury Captain

  Pickett has spent his career igniting social change. He is the founder and managing principal at Joltage, a social change design firm that champions innovative solutions to social challenges, and serves as full-time faculty in the Master of Arts in Social Design (MASD) at the Maryland Institute of Art (MICA).
  
  Pickett has deep experience connecting and working with communities, for profit businesses, nonprofit institutions and government partners to address complex, systemic social issues.
  
  Pickett holds a Master in Social Work, with a concentration in organizations and communities, from the University of South Carolina. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife and two kids and enjoys woodworking, sailing and sci-fi.

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  Brian C. Rubin

  Senior Education Designer, Education Design Lab

  2022 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

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  Sloan Leo

  Founder/CEO, Flox Studio

  2021 Design for Social Impact Jury Captain

  Sloan Leo (they/them) is an artist and the Founder/CEO of FLOX Studio Inc. FLOX Studio is a community design and strategy studio that works with curious optimists who are committed to getting things done. FLOX is on a mission to increase the community design capacity of mission-driven enterprises so that the entire ecosystem is more brave, creative and resilient. Prior to founding FLOX Studio, Sloan Leo spent 15 years leading non-profit staff and volunteer teams at the Environmental Defense Fund, The Trust for Public Land, and other organizations at the intersection of community, justice, and design.

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  Lora Appleton

  Founder, kinder MODERN & Female Design Council

  2021 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Lora Appleton is a thought leader, celebrated designer, curator, gallerist and founder of kinder MODERN and Female Design Council. Leading the charge for womxn in design, she is working to shift the narrative away from “traditional” gender roles and family structures and towards womxn’s technical skills, artistry and professional merits.
  
  Appleton formed the Female Design Council as a direct response to the long history of imbalanced representation of gender in the design industry. FDC is dedicated to engaging equity and tangible gender parity in design. Appleton continues to focus her furniture and rug design efforts on thoughtful, practical and sustainable design in the family home. She serves on the NYCxDESIGN Steering Committee and is a Board Trustee at the Blue School in Manhattan.

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  Wesley Hall

  Senior Designer, Douglas Elliman

  2021 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Wesley Hall, a Senior Designer at Douglas Elliman is a skilled graphic designer, illustrator, and creative consultant with 20 years of experience working with clients to generate design-driven solutions for marketing collateral, instructional design, print, and project management needs. He is the Co-Operator of FLOX Studio.

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  Stacey Panousopoulos

  Executive Director, AIGA NY

  2021 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Stacey Panousopoulos has extensive management and customer service experience in the creative sector. Stacey earned a BA in creative writing and classical studies at Hunter College in NYC. At AIGA NY, she builds relationships with the existing 3,000 members, the board of directors, sponsoring corporations and a range of external partners.

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  Alvin Schexnider

  Chief People Officer , Service + Equity Designer, Illustrator, IL Department of Human Services

  2021 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Alvin Schexnider (he/him) is a BizOps Lead, Service Designer, Equity Designer, and an Illustrator. He endeavors to help civic institutions become more effective, citizen-centered, innovative, and equitable. He is currently the Chief People Officer for the Illinois Department of Human Services. Previously, he worked as their Operations Program Manager (BizOps & Service Design), where he drove strategy, operations, design, and community-focused projects deemed critical by the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of Operations. He’s also Adjunct Professor of Social Design at Loyola University Chicago, and outside of work his projects include Distributive Designers Project (schex.design) and the Racial DeckEquity Cardset found on his Etsy shop schexdesign. Alvin lives in Chicago.

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  Julius Tapper

  Human-Centered Design and Innovation Consultant

  2021 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Julius Tapper is an innovation strategist working to redesign systems to value equity, inclusion, culture and prosperity. Julius has over a decade of professional experience spanning product and experience innovation, customer strategy, and social impact. Julius has led project teams across strategy and creative, for organizations including the UN, American Express, and UBS.
  
  Julius leads equity-centered design initiatives at Doblin, Deloitte’s human-centered design and innovation consulting practice. Prior to consulting, Julius worked at TD Bank, founding their impact investing and social finance program and issuing TD’s first Green Bond. Julius earned an MBA from MIT, an MPA from Harvard, and a BCom from the University of Toronto.