Christina has a background in art, design, and creative technology with an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design. She has a passion for making, with a human-centered design approach and works at the intersection of physical and digital media. As an experience designer, she has designed and fabricated unique experiences for television, film, and stage, created a series of hands-on digital STEAM-based learning kits, and worked on various apps and websites. Currently, she is the Design Lab Manager at the NYU Tandon MakerSpace.
Christina Lafontaine
Design Lab Manager, NYU Tandon MakerSpace
Kathleen is a Design Strategist who is very active in community building and design education. She is the Co-Founder of Service Design Network’s NYC Chapter, an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s TMI department, and a Mentor at NYU’s DFA studio. In her 9-to-5 job, she specializes in large scale enterprise design where she leads various initiatives on innovating client, vendor, and employee experiences across different touch points. After her regular work hours, she loves connecting, sharing, and building collective learning experiences with design enthusiasts around the world. She received her master’s degree from NYU’s Integrated Digital Media program and is certainly a proud alumna of Design for America. During her time at DFA as a student, she led the winning team of OpenIDEO’s financial longevity challenge as well as serving as the chapter’s President.
Since Spring 2020, Kathleen has been a mentor-at-large for DFA NYU.
Kathleen Chao
VP, Technology Product Management @ BNY Mellon
Natalie Kuhn currently leads the Capital One Commercial Bank Operations design team – responsible for creating and refining services and systems used by associates to serve Commercial Bank customers. She regularly teaches design education courses as well as coaches teams through research, synthesis, strategy, creative concepting, prototyping and product testing. Before Capital One, Natalie worked as a Service Design consultant at FJORD and has spent her career as a designer working with startups, agencies and service providers to strategically improve their offerings. Natalie is also a Service Design Network (SDN) accredited Service Design Master and co-founder of the SDN New York Chapter–they host monthly events open to anyone. You can see more about her and her work here:
Website http://nataliekuhn.com/
Portfolio password protected http://www.nataliekuhn.com/portfolio/
Natalie Kuhn
senior manager @ capital one
Wayne is a Design Thinking leader with extensive experience in applying design methods to complex challenges—from physical to digital, to brand, corporate strategy and organizational design. He has worked in design consulting for over a decade with firms such as SYPartners, R/GA and most recently Fjord-Design & Innovation by Accenture Interactive where he led global transformation efforts for both Fjord and Accenture by applying a human-centered lens to the way consulting is done worldwide. Most recently, Wayne joined the Unreasonable Group as their Managing Director of Product and Experience where he will be leveraging his experience to help the community of growth-stage entrepreneurs solve the world’s biggest problems.
Outside of his day to day job, Wayne is an adjunct professor at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering and has guest lectured courses at both MIT and St. John’s University. In addition, he sits on the board of directors for Dreamyard, a Bronx-based non-profit that collaborates with Bronx youth, families and schools to build pathways to equity and opportunity through the arts.
Wayne has his BS in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the University of California at San Diego and his MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business. He was born in Costa Rica, raised in San Diego and currently resides in the South Bronx with his wife Myra and unruly dachshund Gustavo Antonio.
Wayne Suiter Matamoros
MANAGING DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT
Antonio is an Italian, NYC-based human-centered designer, researcher and educator that investigates how the interplay of space, objects and collaboration create fulfilling individual and collective experiences. He founded Studio Wé in 2015, a strategy and design practice that co-design work environments able to host product-service innovation.
His areas of research are the Future of Work, Social Innovation and Coworking.
Antonio is also a co-founder and organizer of the Service Design Network New York Chapter–they host monthly events open to anyone.
You can see more about his work here:
Antonio
DESIGNER, RESEARCHER AND EDUCATOR
Graham Dove is a postdoctoral design researcher at NYU, currently working on SONYC (Sounds of New York). He gained his PhD in Human-Computer Interaction Design from the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice at City University London. Prior to working at NYU, Graham spent two years working as a postdoc in the Center for Participatory IT at Aarhus University in Denmark. He studies creativity in collaborative interaction design and service design processes, exploring methods for using visualized data as a source of inspiration for ideation and human creativity as tool for contextualizing quantitative data. He also investigates the challenges technologies such as machine learning pose for user experience designers.
Graham Dove
post doctoral design researcher
Regine Gilbert is a user experience designer, educator, and international public speaker with over 10 years of experience working in the technology arena. She has a strong belief in making the world a more accessible place—one that starts and ends with the user. Find out more about Ms Gilbert’s work here.
Regine Gilbert
User experience designer and educator
Elana is a researcher at the Center for Children and Technology at the Education Development Center, where she contributes to the design and evaluation of educational media aimed at improving teacher practice and student learning. In her former career as a New York City public elementary school teacher, she watched opportunities for educational play and creative exploration slowly diminish over the years, leaving her with the desire to create learning environments that cultivate a sense of joy and playfulness. More about Elana here.
Elana
RESEARCHER
Michael Edward Knox is an Industry Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (ECE) at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and will be a Faculty Advisor for the project. His technical expertise and current research is in the areas of wireless communications, analog/RF electronics and embedded systems. Mike has been appointed as one of Tandon’s Faculty Engineer in Residence to provide technical and business assistance to NYU Future Labs incubator companies. More about Mike here.
Michael Edward Knox
Industry professor in the ece at nyu tandon
Lee is a transportation engineer/urban planner who believes in the magic of human connection. She specializes in pedestrian and transit modeling and believes that by understanding motivations -the “whys”- we can find better solutions. More about Lee here.
Lee
transportation engineer/urban planner
Lee-Sean Huang is a designer, innovation strategist, and educator. He is a co-founder and creative director of Foossa, a community-centered design consultancy. His recent work includes: advising the United Nations on the creation of an internal innovation team, helping an international labor union think through the future of organizing in the digital age, collaborating with the European Commission to research and design new interfaces for large-scale civic debate, and co-creating new experiences at the Kigali Genocide Memorial with Rwandan genocide survivors.
Lee-Sean Huang
designer
Hannah Berkin-Harper is an industrial designer working in New York City. She is currently a Senior Designer at Karim Rashid studio, managing and working on a variety of projects including furniture, tabletop, products and packaging. She holds an MID from Pratt Institute and an AB in Studio Art from Vassar College.Hannah is associated with Project Avocado, which later became the NYU FREEdge.
Hannah Berkin-Harper
INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER
With over 18 years of experience, Sean Rhodes has helped bring new products to market, execute strategies and re-boot brands for clients including American Express, Bloomberg, BNY Mellon, CA, Chrysler, Comcast, Estée Lauder, GE, Goldman Sachs, IMAX, Logitech, McKinsey, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Qualcomm, SanDisk, Staples, TD Bank, Theorem and TouchTunes. He is currently the Executive Creative Director at frogDesign, a global design and strategy firm. Read more about Sean here.
Sean Rhodes
executive creative director @ frog design
Rajesh Bilimoria currently teaches innovation and human-centered design as an adjunct faculty member at NYU’s Stern School of Business and Parsons School of Design (The New School), and has delivered guest lectures centered on innovation and product development at Harvard Business School, Columbia Business School and Northwestern University. Rajesh’s research areas are focused on corporate innovation strategy and the intersection of innovation and society. Here is more about him.
Rajesh Bilmoria
FACULTY MEMBER
Karine Sarkissian is a Program Strategist at 3×3 Design, a social innovation consultancy working to build successful and scalable programs, services, and strategies for urban and economic development initiatives. Karine focuses on incorporating human-centered design techniques into public sector practice. She conducts creative design research and has executed a variety of community driven projects ranging from place-based activations to communication strategies internationally and across New York’s 5 boroughs. Living in various cities throughout her life, from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon to Baltimore and NYC, Karine is committed to understanding individuals, their needs, and the community they come from. More about Karine here.