Jury

Director Jefa Greenaway of Greenaway Architects is a nationally recognised architect, academic (University of Melbourne), design advocate and a regular design commentator on ABC Radio Melbourne. As a registered architect in private practice in both NSW and Victoria, he seeks to reveal layers of history and memory through connections to place, demonstrating the value of people centred design which interrogates one’s own philosophical or ethical underpinning and design responsibilities.

Over two decades he’s also championed Indigenous led design thinking, particularly through the International Indigenous Design Charter, as Regional Ambassador (Oceania) of INDIGO (International Indigenous Design Alliance) and sits on numerous boards that intersect with art, architecture and cultural heritage.

Jennifer is the CEO at Studio THI, a not-for-profit urban change studio who focus on amplifying the positive impacts of urban development to create a more equitable and resilient future for all.

She is a systems thinker and an urban strategist, with over 15 years experience in using design thinking and co-creation processes to define city-shaping propositions for urban change projects globally.

Her portfolio of projects includes large-scale urban regeneration such as Howard Smith Wharves and Kelvin Grove Urban Village, major infrastructure projects such as Brisbane’s Cross River Rail and sector innovations such as mixed tenure build to rent propositions in Melbourne.

Jennifer is leading Studio THI’s new strategic ambition to create a portfolio of sector leading tools, programs and events that support communities and practitioners to navigate the challenges of sustainable urban change and realise its benefits. She is driving the formation of cross-system partnership to develop new products and programs to address shared sector challenges.

She loves cities and believes that with every urban change we have the opportunity and responsibility to create something extraordinary for today and future generations.

Tomek Archer is an Architect and principal of Archer Office, a practice that demonstrates Tomek’s commitment to the application of design thinking at scales ranging from furniture to buildings and masterplans. The practice is currently working on a variety of commissions including musical, sporting and cultural venues, as well as social housing.

The work of Archer Office has received awards for Architecture, Heritage/adaptive reuse, and Interiors. Furniture products designed by Tomek are produced in Australia and Europe, and his Campfire Table is held in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia. In 2017 Tomek was awarded the Emerging Architect Prize awarded by the Australian Institute of Architects NSW Chapter.

Vanessa is an Architect and co-founder of Bird de la Coeur Architects. Vanessa specialises in housing, including multi-residential housing, and social housing for government and community housing providers. After more than 20 years in practice, their work has been widely published and received numerous industry awards, including the Dulux Colour Awards Grand Prix for the Atherton Garden Social Housing in Fitzroy, and the Victorian Coastal Award for Excellence, the State Government’s Highest Award.

Vanessa is on the Board of Architecture Media, a member of City of Melbourne’s Design Review Panel and a member of the Boyd Circle. She has held roles as a Board Director of the Australian Institute of Architects, President of the Victorian Chapter and Nationally Elected Councillor of the Australian Institute of Architects. She was made a Fellow in 2008. Vanessa was the only architect finalist in Good Design Australia’s inaugural 2019 Women in Design Award.

Kate is a Creative Director at Ascender; a consultancy specialising in design for financial and professional services. With an affinity for finance, Kate has worked with clients like Zurich, Aware Super, the ASX and ANZ to create meaningful brand experiences. With 15 years of industry experience, Kate approaches each project with a design thinking mindset and a passion for collaborative problem solving that’s not daunted by complex propositions.

Art Director with experience across both Art Direction and Design within New Zealand and New York City. Bringing forth transferable skills and creativity to effectively work as a motivating team leader and collaborative team member, ensuring a consistently high level of client satisfaction.

Richard Henderson has a long-standing reputation as one of Australia’s pre-eminent brand design experts, in a distinguished and high-profile career spanning over 30 years.

During the course of his career he has led some of the nation’s most significant brand identity projects for a myriad of iconic organisations and businesses across a diverse range of industry sectors.

Richard’s name is synonymous with premium design.

Tony is a co-founder of Melbourne based branding company Coowhi. For over 30 years, Tony has worked on branding projects catering primarily to government, education, health and corporate sectors. His work is characterised by a creative and results driven approach informed by research and underpinned by sound strategy. A commitment to continuous improvement has seen Coowhi assimilate and contribute to design driven business methodologies and co-design practices. Tony has applied this expertise to projects as diverse as branding for international trade missions, sustainability campaigns and large facility launches. He is particularly interested in the ability of communication design to drive the narrative towards environmental sustainability.

A designer, strategic planner and researcher, with a focus on working environments. Using global workplace experience to facilitate workshops and stakeholder collaborations to determine a strategic path to a reimaged working environment that supports alignment and connection to organisational vision and values. Specialising in agile workstyles and creating “place” for connection and aligned purpose.

Resulting in functional and inspiring environments where participants are engaged and thrive. Cassandra has over 20 years’ experience on a wide range of global workplace, commercial, industrial, retail, luxury residential and government projects.

Clare Firth cut her teeth in the advertising industry, working as a brand and communications strategist in agencies in Sydney and Amsterdam for six years. She completed her MBA in Design Strategy at CCA, San Francisco in 2019, during which she founded a small early-stage incubator.

Clare has followed that passion for venture building to BCGDV in Sydney, where she is now a Lead Strategic Designer heading up design teams navigating the innovation process for large corporate partners.

Most excited by insight and strategic foresight-driven design and harnessing the power of human centred design methodologies, she believes in the power of great design to change the world.

Grant is Managing Director of one of Australia’s leading branding agencies, Davidson Branding and former principal for the successful Victorian Government’s Design2Thrive Program.

Named in Australia’s top 20 Business Leaders of 2021, he’s worked with more than 200 Australian and international organisations, including 30 of Australia’s top FMCG brands and nine Fortune 500 companies.

Grant is the proud recipient of over 100 industry awards and ranked as ‘one of the world’s most busy savvy designers’ by Business Graphics New York.

He contributes to industry publications and journals, has served as Vice President and President of peak design and advertising bodies, and sat on numerous industry boards.

Grant is a three-time Harvard Business School participant, completing studies in Sustainable Competitive Advantage; Leading a business through its life cycle; and Driving Digital and Social Strategy.

Daniel is a multi-award winning Principal, National Creative Director with over two decades of international agency experience. He has worked with some of the world’s most recognised brands across Europe and Australia.

Over the last decade, he has lead and grown Deloitte Digital’s creative team to over 50+ nationally, and currently oversees the direction and quality across Australia’s Visual & Interaction design team (Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, and Canberra).

Daniel has lead the design of digital experiences and products across a range of platforms including websites, mobile apps, immersive experiences, VR, AR, IoT and digital twin interfaces. His work has led to the acquisition and growth of Deloitte Digital’s new Emerging Technology division.

His has been acknowledged at over 50+ international awards including: Webby Awards, AGDA Pinnacle, ADMA, FWA, Awwwards, Spikes Asia, Australian Good Design Awards  and Victorian Premier’s Design Awards. He is also an active supporter of the design industry including being a judge, industry & start-up advisor, lecturer, studio partner, mentor and coach to a range of design bodies and universities.

Rachel de Sain is an internationally regarded digital strategist and thought leader on the future of health and social care delivery in a connected world, with over twenty years of global experience having worked with governments, Fortune 500 companies, and leading academic institutions.

Rachel has led a range of health and social services projects and is passionate about the opportunity for design-led innovation to deliver measurable improvements for patients, providers, funders and the broader community. Understanding how new technologies can be woven into the fabric of how we live our lives that enable us to radically shift the health system from a “Find and Fix’ model to a design-led, data-driven “Predict and Prevent” system of care.

Simon Goodrich is Co-Founder of Portable, a purpose-driven digital design agency with a mission to address social need and policy failure using human-centred design and technology. Since 2006, Portable has delivered over 850 projects around the world.

Simon is an Honorary Senior Fellow at both Melbourne Law School and Melbourne School of Government. He is the Australian Ambassador for the New York-based International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, dubbed the Oscars for Online and is a past National President of AIMIA, at the time the peak digital body in Australia.

Timothy is a designer and co-founder of Sons & Co. The studio is based in the port town of Lyttleton in New Zealand’s South Island, they have quietly built an international reputation for making websites that are “stunning – both aesthetically and technically,” or so says Daniel Howells of Siteinspire.

Timothy is a Fellow of the Designers Institute of New Zealand and has judged numerous awards programmes including Best Design Awards and AGDA.

John Condilis, Chairman and Co-founder of Nobody denim and board member of the Australian Fashion Council, is passionate about growing and re-establishing the clothing manufacturing industry in Australia. The Nobody story began with a small, family-built denim laundry in the back streets of Melbourne, Australian in 1999. Founded on the belief that, making jeans could be imbued with integrity and creativity, Nobody Denim has continued to go from strength to strength. From fabric sourcing to fit and finish, the Nobody team show a dedication to their craft, a commitment to quality and a genuine understanding of their customer needs.

John is committed to maintaining an ethical and sustainable operational facility, with transparency at the core of Nobody’s business activities. The label is accredited with Ethical Clothing Australia, ensuring everyone involved in making their designs receive fair wages and are provided with safe working conditions.

Stephanie Devine created the world’s first zero, post-production waste bra in the world via a Kickstarter campaign in 2018. From a corporate background, Stephanie became obsessed with creating non-wired bras made with natural fibres following a breast cancer diagnosis in 2006 and launched her first wire-free bra business in 2015.

Learning more about the enormous impact the textile industry had on the environment caused her to stop and pivot in 2016. The simultaneous events in late 2016 of women burning their bras in the US following Donald Trump’s election, and hearing that the poor of India were dying in their dozens from burning toxic waste to keep warm in Delhi, made her determined to create bras that were botanically circular, and that left no impact at the end of their life.

The Very Good Bra is 100% compostable and has been devoured in 8 weeks in a worm farm.

In September 2020, Stephanie was awarded the prestigious Best in Class Good Design Award for Fashion Impact and in 2021 won the inaugural Circle Award for Fashion. She was a speaker at Sustainable Brands in Detroit in 2019, a semi-finalist in 2019 SheEO competition and a panellist on a UN Global Compact Webinar in 2020.

Virginia Dowzer is a leader in Victorias creative industries whose expertise covers major projects and campaigns with the State Government of Victoria; City of Melbourne; Melbourne Fashion Week; Melbourne Fashion Festival; the NGV; Business of Design Week Hong Kong; Melbourne Design Week and the award-winning MPavilion. She has a passion for grass-roots creativity, emerging artists and designers and is a champion of ‘bricks and mortar’ retail, art and design experiences.

Her cultural intelligence was honed during her time working in the Textile and Dress Department at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. Virginia is a collaborator and connector between government, corporate and creative industries and who brings ideas to life that offer social, economic and creative value. She has been a guest judge on numerous creative and design award panels nationally and has held the position of creative consultant on local, national and international projects. Virginia works and lives between Melbourne and Hobart in Australia.

A fashion entrepreneur and proud Wiradjuri woman with over 25 years’ experience in the industry; Denni has created two unique clothing business models that have made an impact not only to the industry, but to society at large.

After having worked in design and directorship roles for notable fashion houses in Australia and the USA, Denni created her first venture: Billiecart Clothing. In what would quickly turn into an icon of children’s fashion

Billiecart also pioneered an innovative supply chain model; where all the fabrics and garments were designed and manufactured here in Australia, keeping jobs here and reducing waste.

Her latest endeavour, Ngali, brings the artwork of talented Indigenous Australians to the world through premium-quality clothing and collectibles. She works with remote artists to expand their reach and help promote understanding between First Nation communities and others. As a First Nation Australian, Denni strives to live and work, guided by Blak Ethics – a way of being founded in cultural principles, that as a First Nations’ business, Ngali holds itself accountable.

As founder of Savic Motorcycles, Dennis Savic is widely regarded as Australia’s leading developer of electric motorcycles for the high-performance market. Since debuting the 60kW C-Series prototype at the 2018 Melbourne Moto Expo, Dennis has built Savic Motorcycles into a thriving start-up, with three successful rounds of capital raising, multiple working prototypes and imminent commercial production.

Since leaving the University of Western Australia with an engineering degree and an electric motorcycle chassis design (final-year thesis), Dennis has worked tirelessly to build a world-class electric motorcycle from the ground up. After three years with Legeneering and Woodside in the oil and gas industry, he moved to Melbourne to work in the automotive sector and secured a job at Ford as a weight attribute engineer.

Despite the ongoing challenges of COVID, Savic Motorcycles has hired a full-time engineering team, completed our pre-production prototype, fitted out a new workshop and launched a sustainable fashion label.

In late 2022, Australia will receive its first C-Series Alpha: a stunning 60kW road bike that combines sleek café racer styling with a whopping 200Nm of torque – capable of catapulting it from zero to 100kph in 3.5 seconds.

Senior Vice-President, Design, Innovation & Creative Services, Denys Lapointe has been revolutionizing the world of motorsports since joining BRP in 1985.

Denys shares a long history with the company. Born in Quebec City, he spent part of his childhood in Valcourt, home of BRP’s global centre of expertise. He was quickly immersed in the world of motorsports, going on to become the excellent rider we know.

A passionate and truly creative force, Denys carved out a prominent position for himself within the BRP company, quickly assuming the role of vice-president. He’s the mastermind behind the design and innovation philosophy at BRP – a philosophy that sets our products apart in the market.

Now at the head of a multidisciplinary design and innovation team whose members hail from the four corners of the globe, Denys continues to push the boundaries and imagine the future. He’s received scores of international design awards and lives by the mantra that races are won by looking forward.

Denys holds a Bachelor of Arts in Design from the Université du Québec à Montréal. He is a board member of the Centre de technologies avancées (CTA) BRP – Université de Sherbrooke and part of the following design associations: World Design Organization (WDO), Industrial Designers Society of America, Association of Canadian Industrial Designers, and Association des designers industriels du Québec. In 2017, Denys was inducted into the National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA) Canada Hall of Fame for his impressive contribution to the marine industry

Sue is an award-winning product developer working at the intersection of health, design, technology, research and marketing with over 20 years’ experience with end-to-end medical device product development across start-ups and large businesses.

She has developed and launched many innovative medical devices intended for use in the hospital and home including CPAP machines, masks, ventilators, humidifiers, smartphone and web applications, digital adherence solutions, health wearables and surgical navigation products to assist acetabular cup alignment in hip arthroplasty.

In her career Sue has worked in many diverse roles spanning industrial design, user interface design, team leadership, systems engineering, marketing and program management.

She is an accomplished human factors specialist who has managed, designed and executed human factors analyses, evaluations, validation studies, user interface design and optimisation.

Sue is passionate about simplicity, designing healthcare experiences and products that make it easier for healthcare workers to deliver care, improve outcomes and for people to use and be adherent to medical treatment.

Tony Parker is described as having a refined sense of form development and aesthetic judgment and that he can articulate design in a way people can understand. Tony has an expert understanding of the way ergonomics, form, product architecture and customer engagement work together.

His extraordinary visual acuity ranges from his incredible drawing skills, his digital illustration skills to his appreciation of visual communication design. He is thoughtful and passionate about design and his horizon is international. Tony’s passion for design education has nurtured several generations of product designers, many of whom are scattered across the globe, much to their teacher’s delight. People such as Matt Holmes, Head Designer at Nike, and Danny Coster, who is in the inner sanctum of the design team at Apple.

As Head of Industrial Design at Massey for over ten years, he has mentored young industrial designers and matched graduates with his incredible international networks. He has a Masters degree from the Royal College of Art. He walks the talk by continuing to practice design at the highest level through his work with Gallagher. He is the creative brains behind a slew of innovative designs, from petrol pumps to the Hulme Supercar. Professor Tony Parker is a past president (2007-2013) and a Fellow of the Designers Institute. He has been the convenor of the product judges at the Best Design Awards since 2007. He is currently Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor as Research Director for the Massey University College of Creative Arts and, and a member of the Industrial Design Society of America

Steve Baty is a highly experienced and seasoned leader in the design space. He has over 25 years of varied hands-on experience as a business founder, designer, keynote speaker, awards judge, IxDA president, conference organiser and speaker, and UX Bookclub founder.

He co-founded Meld Studios in 2009, the same year he co-founded and became conference director at UX Australia. Rising to be president of IxDA Global 2012 to 2014, he still managed to fit in dozens of conference presentations across Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas, including a keynote slot at Interaction South America in Brazil in 2017.

A key contributor to UX design excellence, Steve has loaned his expertise multiple times as an awards judge at the Interaction Awards, Australian Good Design Awards, Superannuation Excellence Awards and the Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards.  Steve has a passion for improving our society and the services we interact with on a daily basis, whether that be our financial services and payment systems; the train you take to work; or our tax system. He wants to ensure everything we use is designed with care and consideration for - and with - the people who use them every day

Jon Christensen is the Co-Founder of Future Friendly, ;a multi-disciplinary design studio working across product, organisational, and policy design.

Future Friendly mission is to improve lives through the strategic design & development of everyday services.

A strong sense of social purpose is at the core of their ambition to create an equitable and inclusive future. This is reflected in the organisations they work with, the projects they undertake, and the individuals and teams they bring together.

Across all of these partnerships, Future Friendly has helped their clients put people and customers at the centre of everything they do and solve their biggest problems.

Dewi Cooke is the CEO of The Social Studio, a not-for-profit social enterprise providing education and work opportunities in fashion and the creative industries to people from refugee and new migrant backgrounds. Here, she oversees an RMIT-accredited training program, an Ethical Clothing Australia-accredited manufacturing studio and a socially-conscious retail venture as well as numerous creative and community projects.

She's passionate about the intersection of creativity, community and opportunity, about dismantling barriers to participation for those from non-traditional education backgrounds, as well as the potential for revitalisation within the Australian textiles manufacturing industry.

Prior to joining The Social Studio she was a journalist with 15 years experience working across the arts, social affairs and podcasting, much of it spent at The Age in Melbourne. She has a master's from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in New York, was a Knight-News21 fellow and has three hair-raisingly energetic children.

Nina is enthusiastic about change and making our future a great place to live, work and play. To get there Nina believes we need to improve the way we do things. With the tools and technology already available and continuously emerging we need to build capability and mindset in our organisations to adapt.

With a background across a variety of industries, corporate and startups, Nina now has her own business, Three6, and develops not only strategies but robust plans to embed emerging technologies into businesses and building the capabilities in their people for success, making her an industry expert in simplifying the way we work

Arthur de Bono is an Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture, Monash University. During his three decades of service to design education and research at Monash, he has held the positions of Head of Design, Associate Dean Graduate Research, Associate Dean Research and Deputy Dean.

Arthur’s focus has been on building a highly engaged design culture, integrating practice-based researchers and Higher Degree candidates.

His grants and awards include two Australia Research Council Grants. In 2014 he was inducted into the Monash Honour Roll and, in 2018, the Hall of Fame, Design Institute of Australia

Jeff Malone has over twenty years global market experience in business and export market development, product design, commercialisation and manufacturing.  He has worked in Australia since 2010 and has established strong networks across the high-tech manufacturing, industrial design, research and commercialisation sectors, with particular expertise in the medical and health tech industry and defence sectors. Jeff is well known and respected professionally both domestically and overseas. He works as a mentor and advisor to global innovation ecosystems and accelerator programs. He has a reputation for bringing stakeholders together to build commercial networks and for brokering innovation.

Jeff joined BioMelbourne Network as the CEO in July 2020. Prior to joining the BioMelbourne Network Jeff served as the in a senior leadership role with Design and Industry for two years, building new markets for Australian product development across the U.S. and South East Asia.   He also served as the COO for Grey Innovation. He also served for five years as General Manager Australia with SRXGlobal, Australia’s largest medical and defence contract electronics manufacturer where, in 2014, they were awarded Large Manufacturer of the year in Victoria.

Jeff spent the prior 20 years working in product design, market development, commercialisation and manufacturing in Mexico and South America, Thailand, China and Indonesia.

Stephanie is Service Design Lead at CityLab, City of Melbourne. She has over 25 years of design experience across strategic and service design, visual design and design education, collaborating with others to deliver impactful transformation for both commercial and government organisations.

She is a versatile and award-winning designer who is driven by a desire to see creative and systems thinking have a positive and sustainable impact on complex problems. Running her own design practice and undertaking further study in business has provided her with the ability to create space for design and business to work hand in glove. She believes that all organisations can impact people's lives and the planet for the better

John is a communications and sustainability practitioner across diverse industries, sectors and portfolios. He is a director of the Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence, and an adjunct professor with the Institute for Sustainable Futures at UTS.

John’s project engagements cover appliances, electronics, office furniture, textiles and plastic products used in the healthcare sector. His early work on circular design and cradle-to-cradle thinking represents a pioneering phase with RMIT’s Centre for Design team. John is also Co-Founder of the Ewaste Watch Institute, and he co-authored Australia’s first report on e-waste recycling titled: Short Circuiting Waste from Electronic Products. He has written and presented widely on sustainable product design, product stewardship, extended producer responsibility and the need for smart policy to drive industry reform. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia

Associate Professor Leah Heiss is the Eva and Marc Besen International Research Chair in Design at Monash University and the recipient of the 2022 Australian Women in Design Award. Through collaborative projects Leah has brought humanity centred design to solutions for hearing loss, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mental health and loneliness. Her design work has been recognised with six Australian Good Design Awards, including the 2018 Australian Good Design Award of the Year, two Premier’s Design Awards and the CSIRO Design Innovation Award. Leah’s design work is part of Australia’s heritage collections at Museums Victoria and the Museum of Arts and Sciences (Powerhouse) and has been exhibited internationally to audiences exceeding 700,000 people.

Leah is committed to the role of design in improving the lived experience of technologies, systems and services. Her Tactile Tools co-design method has been used to evolve new systems of care for low birth weight, cancer care, eating disorders, aged care, voluntary assisted dying and acquired brain injury. She is currently working with the World Health Organisation, using design strategies to improve the uptake and implementation of WHO guidelines. She co-leads Monash University’s ambitious Future Healthcare initiative, leveraging the University’s deep sector expertise, and using interdisciplinary co-design processes to understand and address the challenges of complex health ecosystems.

Read the full profile on Leah Heiss

Celina Clarke is a Melbourne based Industrial Designer who co-founded ISM Objects in 1990.  She has a passion for contemporary design and architecture and has a keen interest in lighting space.

Her folio of design work includes packaging, furniture and homewares but over the past 15 years she has specialised in luminaire design.

Together with Simon Christopher, their designs have won many awards and their work has been exhibited widely including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.  Their design partnership successfully spans more than 20 years.

Celina continues to develop designs for ISM and has a particular interest in materials and manufacturing.  She enjoys the detailed design process of getting products to market and she has particularly enjoyed working with the Sparks designers.

Dr Ken Cato AO (ADIA AGI AIGA ARMIT AWADA FAMI FDIA) is an Australian designer with an international reputation. He is chairman of Cato Brand Partners established in 1970, and has worked in 112 countries on many diversified brand building projects. Having celebrated 52 years, Cato Brand Partners has offices in Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and the United States of America.

Ken’s work has afforded him immense global acclaim and as such he and his team have been recognised with many international awards.

Notable honours include being recognised as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2013 as well as being bestowed Hall of Fame status with ICOGRADA, The Premier's Design Awards, AGDA and The Design Institute of Australia. Ken has received honorary doctorates from Swinburne University and The University of the Sunshine Coast whilst becoming an Honorary Fellow of Monash University. In August of 2022 Ken was appointed Professor of Practice in the Faculty of Business and Management at UIC (Beijing Normal University – Hong Kong Baptist University United International College).

Ken is a long-standing member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and is a past AGI President (1997 - 2000).

Ken’s passion for design extends beyond that of Cato Brand Partners; in 1991 he established the world's largest student design conference. Originating in Melbourne it now has substantial presence in China.

His work encompasses all facets of corporate and brand management and design. His work is represented in museums and galleries throughout the world.

A regular speaker at both design and business conferences, Ken has presented in over 30 countries and is an acclaimed author of over 20 books about design and business. His latest book ‘Recognise Me’ detailing 50 years of brand strategy and management learnings has recently been released internationally.