Meet our Jury Members!
2023 Judges
Ricky Weaver
Photographer and Artist Associate, Art Center College of Design (Film)
Ricky Weaver's is an image-based Artist whose object-oriented practice allows space for theorizing images in a way that extends beyond the photograph. Her practice interrogates how body, hymn, scripture, and the everyday appear as image and how that image functions as both archive and vessel. Weaver has exhibited her work in the U.S. and abroad including fairs such as ParisPhoto, EXPO Chicago, and Art Miami, among others. Her work has been acquired by institutions including the Black Studies Gallery at UT Austin, The Detroit Institute of Art, and The Wedge Collection. In addition to her artistic practice, Ricky serves as Association of Independent College of Art and Design (AICAD) Fellow at ArtCenter College of Design and a Co-Director for The Institute for Black Girls in Film and Media.
Virj Kan
Designer, Engineer and Entrepreneur Alumni, Art Center College of Design (Product Design)
Virj Kan is a designer, engineer, and entrepreneur. Her work investigates new paradigms for design, through transdisciplinary research and technology development. Whether it is in the domain of business, technology or art, her work centers on reshaping human relationships with the environment and each other by elucidating the abstract information landscapes we exist in. Currently, she is based in Berkeley, California and leads a sustainable materials company called Primitives Biodesign. Primitives produces furniture, interior surfaces, and product designs from custom engineered biomaterials using a range of biological materials to combat environmental issues in ocean conservation, plastics pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and food waste. Kan’s work has been recognized by numerous awards, including the SXSW Interactive Innovation Award, Golden Mouse Award at the ACM SIGCHI, Information is Beautiful Award, Green Award from the Greentech Festival, and Fast Company Innovation by Design. Her work has been featured in Ars Electronica, TED, Forbes, Dezeen, Vice, SXSW, Biocoder, Popular Mechanics, Design Boom, Gizmodo, Fast Company, and Museum of Fine Arts Boston. She holds a Master of Science from the MIT Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science from Art Center College of Design.
Tracy Enayah
Designer Alumni, Art Center College of Design
Tracy started her career at Nike creating brand experiences that bring the consumer and culture together through storytelling moments and continued this journey leading a creative team at the Walt Disney Company. She values unfiltered and genuine perspectives and realities where she often finds moments of inspiration. She has always been drawn to brands, projects, and people that are trying to move the world beyond the status quo of everyday design. She believes in the human aspect of design where legacy and representation of those special souls should be recognized and lived on. She most recently consults for global agencies building strong creative teams with fresh perspectives for clients such as Nike, Adidas, Disney, Google, Netflix, and Jordan.
Cora Neil
Environmental Designer Founder of Trellis Plant + Design
Cora Neil is founder of Trellis Plant + Design, an environmental design studio that focuses on product and landscape design that supports outdoor living. Cora is certified in Horticulture and her work emphasizes harmonious interaction with nature and native ecosystems.
Mia Ferrera Wiesenthal
Industrial Designer Associate Professor, Art Center College of Design (Product Design)
Mia Ferrera Wiesenthal is an Industrial Designer and Educator from New York City. She developed her passion for three-dimensional object design while studying fine arts and furniture design at SUNY Purchase College. Mia went on to work at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, which led her to pursue a Master's in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute, where she specialized in home goods and ceramic manufacturing. Mia's love for ceramics led her to Los Angeles, where she has designed for major brands such as Starbucks and TJ Maxx, earning international recognition and multiple patents for her tableware designs. Alongside her manufacturing and materials expertise, she collaborates with various companies, including multinational corporations and startups. Mia is also a full-time Associate Professor at ArtCenter College of Design, where she passionately supports her students' growth and advocates for their success in school and the design field.
Stella Hernandez
Interior Designer Professor, Art Center College of Design (ENV Design)
Stella Hernandez is a designer and educator from Bogota, Colombia. Stella has been teaching in the Spatial Experience Design (formerly Environmental Design), ACX and Designmatters departments at ArtCenter College of Design since 2014. After receiving her first Bachelor of Industrial Design from Xavier University in Bogota, Colombia, Stella worked for several companies within the furniture and hospitality design fields in South America. Pursuing her interest for spatial design, she moved to California and received her second bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design from ArtCenter College of Design. In Los Angeles, Stella worked as a designer for a prominent interior design firm, contributing to many high-profile luxury residential projects, from interior architecture design to furniture, lighting, and finishing details, with many projects featured in interior design magazines. Stella established her own studio in 2015, working with interior design studios, manufacturers, and private clients. Her lighting and furniture pieces have been featured in leading interior design markets around the country as well as residential projects in Los Angeles, New York and Texas. Stella collaborates with Nimble Studio, developing branded commercial spaces for well-known companies In Latin America and around the world. Recently her personal work has been focused on developing projects that promote her own cultural identity through the study and creation of designs that celebrate Pre Colombian cultures Iconography. Her most recent designs are focused on celebrating tradition, materiality and hand crafted techniques from her native Colombia.
2022 Judges
Yo Oshima
Environmental Designer Professor, Art Center College of Design (ENV Design)
Yo Oshima is a designer/entrepreneur/educator from Tokyo, Japan. After receiving a master of architecture degree from SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) in 2006, he worked on residential and institutional architecture projects at deegay day design in Los Angeles. In 2015, Yo established a multi-disciplinary design studio, Amisoy, LLC in Los Angeles. Amisoy's philosophy is "We only design cool stuff." In other words, Amisoy will design anything that is cool, including architecture, interior, furniture, products, motion graphics and graphic design. Since 2010, Yo has been teaching at Environmental Design department of ArtCenter College of Design.
Elyse Marks
Experiential Creative Director Alumni, Art Center College of Design (ENV Design)
Elyse Marks is an experiential creative director and designer specializing in branded architecture and immersive storytelling for live events. She has created award winning experiences around the globe for clients including Disney, Google, Salesforce Toyota, Mazda, Heineken and more. In her personal creative practice, she explores the power of healing through nature, science and tech. Elyse was born and raised in Los Angeles and studied Product Design at Rhode Island School of Design and received her degree in Environmental Design from Art Center College of Design.
Fernando Olmedo
Entertainment Designer Professor, Art Center College of Design (ENT Design)
Fernando Olmedo is an LA based entertainment designer and instructor working in themed entertainment, mobile and tabletop game industries. He's worked for clients such as Disney Interactive and Fantasy Flight games. When he's not working he spends his time playing dungeons and dragons and reading speculative fiction. He is currently an instructor at ArtCenter college of design teaching in the Entertainment Design department.
Jeffrey "Jeff" Higashi
Product Designer Professor, Art Center College of Design (Product Design)
Jeff Higashi is an associate professor in the Product Design and Interaction Design departments at ArtCenter College of Design. His courses look at designing for health and wellness. He is an excellent resource on designing for disabilities, creating wearable devices to improve health and wellness, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, smart clothing and IOT. He has a decade of experience in developing consumer electronics and he is also a pioneer on football injury sensor technology.
Aaron Smith
Illustrator, Artist Professor, Art Center College of Design (Illustration)
Aaron Smith is a graduate of ArtCenter. His paintings have been featured in solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York and in group shows at galleries and museums nationwide including Laguna Art Museum, Frye Art Museum and Museum of South Texas. He was the first Artist in Residence at the J Paul Getty Museum.
2021 Judges
Chris Adamick
Environmental Designer Alumni + Former Professor, Art Center College of Design (ENV Design)
Chris Adamick designs environments, furniture, and products. He is principal of Chris Adamick Design LLC and is a partner at Big Production, an environmental graphic design studio. He has worked with leading commercial furniture brands including Allsteel, Bernhardt Design, Corral, Haworth, Martin Brattrud and Stylex. His work has been exhibited internationally and received several prestigious design awards including the Architizer A+ Award, Best of NeoCon Editors’ Choice Award, the Good Design Award from the Chicago Athenaeum, the Best of Year Award from Interior Design Magazine, and recognition from the Type Directors Club of New York (TDC) and the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD).
In addition to holding design leadership roles with independent consultancies Pentagram in New York City and Rios in Los Angeles, Chris has been an instructor at Art Center College of Design and has worked in-house with the iconic American clothing brand, Gap to lead the creation of new store environments.
Zorine Pooladian
Furniture, Lighting and Product Designer Alumni, Art Center College of Design (ENV Design)
Born in Iran and of Armenian descent, Zorine Pooladian has gravitated towards art and design from her childhood. With a focus in furniture, lighting, and hospitality design, Zorine has worked in exemplary firms led by Marcel Wanders and Theresa Fatino. Her interest in story telling concepts and business has led her to the digital marketing world where she helps companies from product development to marketing and sales. She has also successfully launched her own company named Qtzee and is working on a new one called Bingemaster.
Tyrone Drake
Graphic Designer Professor, Art Center College of Design
As a creative professional and design educator with over 25 years of experience in the Creative Industry, Ty Drake has collaborated on graphic design, branding and visual communications-related projects with many high profile clients in the fields of Architecture, Music, Film, Sports, Health and Beauty and Luxury Hospitality. With over 20 years experience as a design educator at the graduate and undergraduate levels he has also impacted the creative lives of scores of young artists and design students.
Penny Herscovitch
Environmental and Lighting Designer Professor, Art Center College of Design
Penny Herscovitch is a Los Angeles-based designer and design-educator, and co-leads the design studio Padlab. An Associate Professor in the Environmental Design Department at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, USA she has co-taught international collaborations, including the FutureCraft initiatives with Tama Art University in Tokyo, LCCA in Chiang Mai, and Tongji University in Shanghai. She has co-lead ArtCenter Designmatters’ award-winning and innovative collaborations including: Safe Niños with the nonprofit COANIQUEM in Santiago, Chile, serving burned children and their families; Safe Agua, an educational initiative to design innovative, affordable solutions to address water poverty in Latin America, with the NGO Socialab. These international initiatives been exhibited world-wide, including at the United Nations. In 2003, Penny received her B.A. in Architecture, Magna Cum Laude from Yale University. Penny has conducted research and writing for design institutions and firms, including the Pritzker-Prize winning Morphosis Architects. Her publications include the Design Strategy for Social Innovation Toolkit, an online resource that supports educators in applying design principles within their courses and frames a term-long process of design education for social impact. Penny recently spoke at Design China Beijing, Hebei International Design Week, the Cumulus Association Conference in Wuxi, China, as well as LightFair International in NY and the VentureWell Conference in Portland, OR, on “Design Thinking for Social Innovation”, and co-facilitated the LEAP Symposium on social impact in Pasadena, CA.
Esther Pearl Watson
Illustration Artist Alumni and Professor, Art Center College of Design
Esther Pearl Watson has a BFA from Art Center College of Design and an MFA from CalArts and is the author of the comic Unlovable for Bust Magazine and Fantagraphics Books. Watson has lectured extensively including “Teaching Design Responsibility and the Millennium Dream Project,” UNESCO NGO/DPI CONFERENCE, Paris, France. She has taught at Oxbow Artist Residency, The Lexicon of Sexicana at Columbia College in Chicago, and attended Artist-in-Residence through Grafikiens Hus Mariefred, Sweden. Her work has been exhibited in Oakland Museum of Oakland, Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Wroth, Texas. She is represented by Susanne Vielmetter Projects in Los Angeles, Webb Gallery in Texas and Maureen Paley in London. She currently teaches at Art Center College of Design.
Ini Archibong
Environmental Designer Alumni , Art Center College of Design (ENV Design)
Ini Archibong has rapidly accelerated to the forefront his generation of designers. His work ischaracterised by a deep interest in master-craftsmanship and its intrinsic relationship to technology–both modern and ancient. Taking inspiration from the study of architecture, environmental andproduct design, as well as lifelong passions for mathematics, philosophy and world religions, Iniseeks to apply his vision and methods across a wide range of disciplines. He has worked with diverseclients around the globe, including such venerable brands as Hermès, Knoll, de Sede, Bernhardt, Sé,and Vacheron Constantin. Ini is also a strategic consultant for important clients in the luxury, sports,hospitality, music and technology sectors. He has recently signed an important consultancy withLogitech, partnering with a high-level team including the CEO and other C-Suite executives