Manuhuia Barcham
Managing Director, Archetekt
Seattle, WA

Manuhuia Barcham, PhD is the Managing Director of Archetekt—a Strategic Design & Futuring firm based in Seattle Washington. Barcham has over twenty years experience working across the Asia-Pacific and North America for a wide range of clients across the public and private sectors including the United Nations, the Australian Federal Government, and Snap Inc. After graduate education studying at Oriel College, Oxford University in England and receiving his PhD from the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, Barcham has founded and run two design studios. He grew up on a marae (traditional Maori village) on the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand. Growing up in a bi-racial household directly impacted on his later work connecting people and ideas across boundaries—organizational, cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, and national—in order to help us come together to design and (re)craft value in the world in a sustainable manner with a specific focus on promoting the involvement of under-represented and marginalized communities in our design practice and as designers.

Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
Global Lead for Responsible AI, Accenture
San Francisco, CA
 
Rumman Chowdhury’s passion lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and humanity. She holds degrees in quantitative social science and has been a practicing data scientist and AI developer since 2013. She is currently the Global Lead for Responsible AI at Accenture Applied Intelligence, where she works with C-suite clients to create cutting-edge technical solutions for ethical, explainable and transparent AI.

Chowdhury has been featured in international media. She is a member of BrainTrust, a community of experts for Protocol, a tech magazine by Politico. Chowdhury is a TedX speaker, a Forbes Tech contributing author, and has been named by Information Week as one of 10 influential AI and machine learning experts to follow on Twitter. She was also named one of BBC’s 100 Women for 2017, recognized as one of the Bay Area’s top 40 under 40, and honored to be inducted to the British Royal Society of the Arts (RSA). She has also been named by Forbes as one of Five Who are Shaping AI.

Dr. Chowdhury holds two undergraduate degrees from MIT, a master's degree in Quantitative Methods of the Social Sciences from Columbia University, and a doctorate in political science from the University of California, San Diego.

Lorenzo Gonzalez (Treasurer Elect)
Senior Manager - Financial Planning & Analysis, United Airlines
Chicago, IL

Lorenzo Gonzalez is a Senior Manager for Financial Planning and Analysis at United Airlines. The teams he has led have worked across a range of investments across the company’s commercial and operations portfolios.

Gonzales’ passion for art and design originates out of his early career as an environmental designer, brand design consultant and design educator.

Gonzales holds a B.E.D from Texas A&M University and an M.B.A. from Emory University. He is elated to join the AIGA National Board and help promote a more diverse and equitable professional work environment for emerging designers.

Maribeth Kradel-Weitzel
Assistant Provost, Associate Professor and Program Director of MS Health Communication Design, Thomas Jefferson University
Jenkintown, PA

Maribeth Kradel-Weitzel is an assistant provost, associate professor and founding director of the Master of Science in Health Communication Design program at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. The program’s mission is to empower future leaders to create a healthier world through clear, accessible and actionable communication design strategies. As assistant provost, she directs Jefferson’s Creativity Core Curriculum which serves students across the university by cultivating a confident and flexible student mindset through learning opportunities that explore individual and collaborative creative aptitude and equip students to yield novel and valuable results.

Kradel-Weitzel’s passion is giving voice to vulnerable and under-represented populations through design activism. As president of AIGA Philadelphia (2009-11), she led the development of the chapter’s “Paid Internship Pledge” which urges compliance with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Fair Labor Standards Act. As principal of Kradel Design, she led the initiative “Posters Against Ebola” to raise awareness and resources for Doctors Without Borders during the most recent Ebola epidemic. Most recently, she collaborated with a group of design and healthcare practitioners to launch Kindness Wednesday, which promotes acts of kindness to inspire others to follow suit, in response to the COVID-19 epidemic.

Kradel-Weitzel is a “Sappi Ideas That Matter” grant recipient, has lectured internationally and the work of her practice, Kradel Design, has been recognized with numerous awards. Kradel-Weitzel has a Certificate in Creative Leadership from the Yale School of Management, an MFA from Tyler School of Art and a BA from The Pennsylvania State University.

Ann Marie Puente
Attorney; Consultant; Adjunct Faculty, Parsons School of Design
Aventura, FL

Ann Marie Puente is a T-shaped attorney whose creative journey represents a synthesis of interdisciplinary knowledge and experience for leading and managing in today’s world of multilevel interdependencies. With a perspective informed by litigation practice, social justice, strategic design, and public policy, Puente brings vision and expertise for the development of policies and practices addressing the complex and interrelated issues of our time.

In addition to her studies in law and political science, Puente holds a Master’s degree in Design Management from Pratt Institute, a program focused on cultivating creative leadership for triple bottom line innovation management. She believes passionately in the strategic value of design, especially during unprecedented times when we require broader and more imaginative perspectives in the redesign of policy, products, and systems.
 
Puente has shared her thought leadership and vision on the convergence of strategic design and law as a graduate instructor with Parsons School of Design, Strategic Design Management Program (Regulatory & Ethical Contexts; New Design Firms), and speaking appearances at legal conferences in San Francisco, California, and Edinburgh, Scotland. 

Her consulting practice based in South Florida involves supporting public policy initiatives, providing general legal counsel, and collaborating with innovators on modernizing conventional, linear thinking and practice for the new reality of work and interconnected systems.

Cesar Rivera
Assistant Professor, Sam Houston State University
Huntsville, TX

A San Antonio native, Cesar developed a passion for design at an early age, earning his first competitive awards during high school. Following service in the United States Army (HOOAH!), he earned two Associate’s degrees from San Antonio College and garnered awards artistically and academically from SAC and external competitions. Cesar completed his BFA in Communication Design from Texas State University in 2007, receiving several more design awards during his undergraduate studies.

Cesar’s work has been published in the several Graphis annuals—soon to appear in Graphic Poster Annual 2021—and has garnered more than 40 awards from top competitions like AIGA, DSVC, and Creative Summit. Cesar ran a small design studio, Chimaera Design, for 7+ years, and in 2010 co-founded the AIGA San Antonio chapter, serving as the first Vice President and its second President (interim). He also served on the San Antonio College Professional Advisory Committee that helps decide course curriculum. After working professionally for 5 years, Cesar was accepted to the MFA COMDES program at Texas State University and earned his MFA in 2015. In 2014 Cesar also was co-founder of a startup green chemical company. In 2016 he was hired at Sam Houston State University at the Assistant Professor rank to teach interactive and UX/UI design. Cesar also serves as the academic advisor to the SHSU AIGA Student Group.

Photo Credit: Richard Hollant at the 2017 AIGA Design Conference

Elise Roy
Accessibility and Inclusion Lead, Google
San Francisco, CA

Elise Roy is an inclusive design leader, speaker and advocate. As the Product Inclusion Lead at Google, she drives initiatives that ensure Google’s Product Teams take advantage of our greatest innovation asset—human diversity. Before Google, Elise founded her own consulting company which led teams from Fortune 500 clients such as Marriott, Fannie Mae and Google in inclusive design.
 
Prior to becoming a designer, Roy was a disability rights lawyer who worked on the Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) at the United Nations, the first human rights treaty to be passed in the 21st century. As an internationally recognized thought leader, Roy is a highly sought-after public speaker, delivering talks all over the world including at Microsoft, Amazon, the United Nations, NASA, and the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. Her TEDx talk, “When We Design for Disability, We All Benefit,” has over 1.3 million views.

H. Art Taylor
President & Chief Executive Officer, BBB Wise Giving Alliance
Arlington, VA
 
Herman “Art” Taylor is president and chief executive officer of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance - Give.org  As head of the Alliance, he oversees all aspects of the organization’s work, which includes: setting standards for soliciting organizations, evaluating charities in relation to these standards, publishing the Wise Giving Guide, assisting local Better Business Bureau charity review programs, promoting charity accountability and providing a variety of materials on informed giving to individual, institutional and business donors and to government. In March 2015, Mr. Taylor launched the #wisegivingwed blog and began hosting the Building Trust Video Series to feature the work of charities and their leaders. This content is served up each week through social media and other online platforms.

Another brainchild is “Advancing Collaboration” a suite of information to encourage greater collaboration by non-profit organizations. The Alliance is beta testing Givesafely.io the first blockchain-based charity donation portal that will incentivize donors to charity.

Taylor is a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College (BA Business Administration 1980) and received an honorary Dr. of Laws in 2002. He acquired a J.D. from Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law and was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1989. Taylor is a Certified Public Accountant. He has served on numerous non-profit boards, and has been a trustee of Franklin & Marshall College since 1993. Taylor lectures on ethics at the School of Professional Studies, Columbia University.