CHIChicago

Noam is a Product Designer at Adobe. He lead the design of Adobe Post and invented Scroll Effects for Adobe Muse CC. Noam combines his love for prototyping and UX research to create experiences that people love. Outside of the office, you'll find Noam taking pictures of the world. Say cheese!

Nate is the Director of Strategy at Cooper. In his role, he blends the decisiveness and collaborative skills of a Product Manager with the acumen of an Economist to build bridges with people and organizations. Equal parts teacher and student, Nate leads initiatives in content creation, business development, and creative leadership.

Aaron is the founder of the Draplin Design Co., a company that proudly rolls up its sleeves on a number of projects related to the Print, Identity and Illustration categories. Located in the mighty Pacific Northwest, Draplin makes stuff for Field Notes, Coal Headwear, Union Binding Co., Richmond Fontaine, Esquire, Nike, Old 97s, Wired, Timberline, Chunklet, Eaux Claires, Poler, Incase, Giro, Cobra Dogs, Burton Snowboards, Rhett Miller, Dawes, Nixon Watches, Patagonia, Target, Megafaun, Danava, Ford Motor Company, Woolrich and even the Obama Administration, if you can believe that. 

Suzanne EL-Moursi is a trained Interaction Designer with over 15 years of experience as a practitioner applying the methodology of Design Thinking and Human-Centered Design to various projects across industries in healthcare, financial services, automotive, telecommunications and fitness. Suzanne held roles as Chief Marketing Officer at Power2Switch, and as Creative Director at SapientNitro leading a multi-disciplinary design teams tasked with delivering unique digital strategies driving multi-channel brand touch points. Suzanne is Egyptian born and fluent in Arabic.

Tim is the author of media and marketing books that are used for professional development and by higher learning institutions in the U.S. and Europe. He is an avid environmentalist, a cyclist, and owner of Mightybytes, a triple bottom line-friendly B Corp in Chicago that creates rich user experiences to tell client stories, brand their products, and meet business, technology, and marketing needs.

Jason is the co-founder and President of 37signals, the Chicago-based web-application company. He has co-authored all of 37signals' books, including the upcoming, "Rework," as well as the 'minimalist manifesto,' "Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application" He also helps to maintain the company's popular blog, Signal vs. Noise, and is regularly invited to speak around the world on entrepreneurship, design, management, and software.

Antonio is the Portfolio Lead at Northern Lab, Northern Trust's internal innovation startup focused on client and partner experience design. Before that he led gravitytank's interaction design discipline and social innovation practice. Prior to working in innovation, Antonio was strategic director of Firebelly Design, a socially responsible design studio in Chicago.

Timothy is a designer, illustrator & art director based in New York City. His clients include Airbnb, Google, Ford, J.Crew, Target, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Previously, Timothy worked in-house at Apple Inc. where he helped integrate Apple’s visual language, domestically and internationally. Prior to that, he was a senior designer with the experiential design firm Collins, where he worked for clients such as CNN and Microsoft. He has received awards from most major design & illustration publications, including the Art Directors Club Young Guns award, GDUSA’s “People To Watch” and Print magazine’s “New Visual Artist.”

Amélie is a product designer at a small startup who combines her love for user experience and design anthropology to make great products. She made her first foray into design and development making Sailor Moon and DBZ websites. Don't be afraid to say hello (especially if you have food).

Thomas Phinney is President of FontLab, the font software tools company. Previously he was product manager for fonts and global typography at Adobe, and then senior product manager for Extensis. In the 2000s he was instrumental in driving the adoption of OpenType, both within Adobe and in the marketplace. Thomas was the first Adobe employee to have both technology and design patents (four so far), and also has a medal from the Russian Ministry of Culture for contributions to Cyrillic typography. Thomas remains involved in type design as well as writing, teaching, technology/standards, history, and forensics of fonts.

For 20 years, Dan Saffer has been designing everything from apps to wearables and everything in between. Currently he’s VP of Product at Mayfield Robotics, where he’s preparing to launch an adorable home robot. Dan is the author of four acclaimed books on design, including his latest, Microinteractions, which Scott Berkun called “the best design book in years.” 

Nathan was the founder and chair of the ground-breaking Design MBA programs at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, CA. This program prepares the next-generation of innovation leaders for a world that is profitable, sustainable, ethical, and truly meaningful by uniting the perspectives of systems thinking, design thinking, sustainability, and generative leadership into a holistic strategic framework.

Ciara is the Head of Brand Strategy at LIFT Technologies where her secret not so secret mission is to motivate people to love robots as much as she does. Prior to her role at LIFT, she was the Managing Director of Behavior Change Design at Mad*Pow applying her knowledge of games and play to designing experiences that facilitate change and human flourishing in healthcare, financial services and education. Ciara is passionate about ethics in design and technology. When she isn’t advocating for robots, you can find her playing games and gushing over cute animals.

Christian is the guy designers are ambivalent about. He’s not a font guy. He’s the business guy—the one who works the odd hours creating and maintaining relationships with some of the largest companies in the world. Over the past decade, he has led business development efforts for numerous agencies on three continents. Now Christian manages Edenspiekermann Los Angeles, the newest office of the global design agency. Founded by graphic design legend Erik Spiekermann, the agency focuses on creating brand identities and digital products for forward-thinking companies. 

Jessica is a designer & art director working in New York City. She is a partner at the New York based design studio Sagmeister & Walsh. She teaches at the School of Visual Arts & speaks internationally about design and creativity. Her work has won awards from most design competitions including Type Director’s Club, Red Dot, Art Director’s Club, SPD, D&AD, Print, and Graphis. Her work has also been featured in numerous books & magazines & exhibitions.