Tom Kelley practices innovation every day. His ability to foster a culture of creativity in the companies he works with has made him one of the most beloved figures in innovation.
Under his management, IDEO has won more admiration and awards than any other design firm in the last decade. At the heart of IDEO’s success is the Creative Confidence philosophy: everyone can contribute creatively to a project if innovation is part of an organization’s way of life.

Jim Kalbach is a noted author, speaker, and instructor in user experience design, information architecture, and strategy. He is currently Head of Customer Experience at MURAL, the leading online whiteboard. Jim has worked with large companies, such as eBay, Audi, SONY, Elsevier Science, Lexis Nexis, and Citrix.

Kate Rutter is a designer, design educator and entrepreneur. With 20 years building digital products, she's helped hundreds of practitioners bring customer empathy and collaborative design practices to their work. Kate is an adjunct professor of interaction design at California College of the Arts and co-hosts the NSFW podcast What Is Wrong With UX with Laura Klein. Kate believes in the power of communicating in pictures, that sharpie pens smell like ideas, and that collaborative and optimistic people have the power to change the world...so long as they have a pack of sticky notes.

Nathan co-founded EightShapes with Dan Brown in 2006. He's passionate about information architecture, UX, front-end dev, and leads design systems consulting at EightShapes. He wrote Modular Web Design in 2009, blogs frequently on Medium.com today, and speaks regularly at events worldwide.

Claire’s mission in life is to help people become happier at work. She speaks internationally on how to create more open, honest workplace environments, and has been published in Harvard Business Review, CNBC, Inc, Fortune, among others. Claire is also an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at her alma mater, Northwestern University. Say hello to Claire on Twitter at @clairejlew.

Jessica Outlaw, M.S., is a culture and behavior researcher in immersive tech and the Founder of The Extended Mind. She uses behavioral science to help XR companies build and test experiences. She does research in digital worlds, app design, and gives trainings to new and experienced designers. She is a 2017 winner of Oculus Launch Pad and you can download her debiasing training app created with Clorama Dorvilias here.

Farai Madzima is a UX Lead at Shopify in Ottawa. He’s an interaction designer and organiser of Pixel Up! meetups and conferences. In South Africa, Farai designed banking apps used by many across the continent. He grappled with unique design challenges because most internet users have never used a laptop or desktop. And some buy data by the megabyte. Farai likes words in all languages, township jazz, nerdy hip-hop, and the number 127.

Kristin Skinner is an author and design management leader. She is currently Head of Design Management at Chase, a new executive leadership role. Her mandate is to define and enable the core operating rhythm for design while managing the operational needs of the organisation. Kristin is co-author of "Org Design for Design Orgs: Building and Managing In-House Design Teams", the first book dedicated to the organization, management, and operations of in-house design teams.

Stephen P. Anderson is a noted speaker, educator, and design leader, based out of Dallas, Texas. For more than two decades, Stephen has worked in most areas of product strategy & design, both on the frontlines and leading teams to create great experiences. A former high school teacher, what Stephen really loves is to challenge and inspire teams through onsite coaching and training, which he currently does as a design educator at Capital One. His personal mission: To make learning the hard stuff fun, by creating ‘things to think with’ and ‘spaces’ for generative play.

Pamela Pavliscak studies the future of feelings. Obsessed by our conflicted emotional relationship with technology, her work is part deep dive research, part data science, part design. As a researcher, she creates experiments that challenge us to see technology—and ourselves—in new ways. Whether documenting new internet emotions or asking people to confront their digital alter egos, Pamela’s research is aimed at understanding how technology can help us be human.

Marc Rettig’s career spans nearly 40 years. His work as designer, researcher, and educator has put him on the frontier where design meets social and strategic questions. His firm, Fit Associates, equips people and teams with the fundamentals of social pattern-shifting and collaboration across differences. Marc is a founding faculty member of the MFA in Design for Social Innovation program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Practice at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Design.

Annina is a service designer, design coach, and a co-creator of the Intelligence Augmentation design toolkit. Her roots lie both in art and experience design. For the past twenty years, she has worked with customers from start-ups to multinational companies. With a diverse background in art, service design, UI and UX design, branding, marketing and product design, Annina describes herself as a fusionist. Her aim is to stretch boundaries by connecting the fields of design and technology. In recent years Annina has focused on training and coaching designers and non-tech experts on future smart service creation.

Daryl is a senior data scientist at Futurice and a co-creator of the Intelligence Augmentation design toolkit. A consultant with an academic research background, he is interested in the intersection of machine learning, design, and human-computer interaction. He works with clients to build their AI strategies as well as to implement concrete data-driven services. He is passionate about helping others to understand the emerging field of AI, and believes firmly in the power of a multidisciplinary approach in creating great experiences with this technology. 

Brittney Dunkins is a senior associate and content editor at JP Morgan Chase. She spends her days working to find “best fit” content solutions and catching up on the latest trends in inbound marketing—from software to strategies. She previously worked at Converge Consulting and as a writer/editor for the George Washington University Division of External Relations. Brittney believes that innovative content starts with a great story.

I am someone who loves being part of a creative, supportive and collaborative design team that builds engaging experiences for digital products at a company that fosters a culture that values design thinking and makes it a priority in how the company runs and solves problems. I currently get to do all of the above in the Experience Design (XD) Group at EY. The Group is divided into Strategy, Creative, and Technology disciplines. The XD Group collaborates heavily with leadership and stakeholders to align with business goals and strategy.

Over the past fifteen years, Christine has been a design leader, strategist, and author, though not all at the same time. Working with companies including Intel, Microsoft, Samsung and Nike, she has created experiences for millions of people around the world. These products have made their way onto wrists and screens, and into pockets, living rooms and public spaces. Her book about physical interfaces, Designing Across the Senses: A Multimodal Approach to Product Design, was published by O’Reilly Media in April 2018.

Becki Hyde is a designer and product manager whose specialty is navigating enterprise complexity using lean product management and human-centered design. She loves talking about the intersection of design and technology, and she believes in the power of both to provide access and solutions that give people the freedom to do what they love most.

Kåre is Managing Partner in Trivium - a global leader in executing the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methodology. Prior to that he was founder and principal of KaareLBK. He focuses on change/development within strategy, business development and strategic relations. He has served as an executive adviser on strategy, organizational development and stakeholder management. Kåre is a certified facilitator in LEGO SERIOUS PLAY and a very experienced moderator at conferences and events.

Michael has designed mobile apps, conversational AI products, multi-site web platforms, technical software, and more. With a background in journalism, he frequently finds himself talking about the critical role words play in designing useful, usable experiences. He has given talks and taught workshops on the topic at industry conferences around the world. He’s also writing a book about it.

Kate Edgar is a Sr. Manager of Design at Adaptive Path at Capital One, where she has applied service design and systems thinking to launch new coaching-based customer interaction models, develop predictive risk management platforms, and deploy new credit card experience offerings.

Gabi is a Product designer at Ginger Labs, a playground for building digital products. With Adaptive Path and Capital One in her rearview mirror, she's worn the hat of service designer, UX designer, researcher, and amateur illustrator. Her mission, regardless if she’s designing financial coaching services or running ethnography in the desert, is to champion people and what best serves their needs.