Pradyumna Vyas is one of India’s most respected voices in design education and promotion, with more than 35 years of professional and academic experience. He currently serves as Senior Advisor for Design Promotion and Innovation at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and as President of World Design Organization (WDO)^®, where he has been actively engaged since 1995 and has served four terms on the Board of Directors.

Prof. Vyas was Director of the National Institute of Design (NID), India’s premier design institution, from 2009 to 2019, following two decades as a faculty member. He also served as the inaugural Member Secretary of the India Design Council, where he led the implementation of the National Design Policy and launched the India Design Mark in collaboration with the Japan Institute of Design Promotion.

He holds a Master’s in Industrial Design from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and has received numerous honours for his contributions to design and education, including an Honourary Master of Arts from the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Times Education Icons. He has also served as a Distinguished Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts and sits on the boards of several global companies.

Analía Cervini is an international researcher, author, and speaker specializing in design, innovation, and futures design, with over two decades of experience leading high-impact teams and projects for companies, institutions, and territories. She is a Senior Design Associate at Total Tool Buenos Aires and directs the Design Achievement platform. She holds a PhD in Design and a degree in Industrial Design from the University of Buenos Aires.

Early in her career, she gained international experience in Italy, joining pioneering teams at Philips Design Milan and the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. Upon returning to Buenos Aires, she became a key institutional driving force, serving as Operations Manager for the Metropolitan Design Center and Creative Industries, founding the Metropolitan Institute of Design and Innovation, and co-creating the city’s Design District.

As an author, she has published thirteen books outlining her strategic vision, including her latest work, El diseño de sentido (Experimenta, Madrid, 2025). She teaches at leading Latin American universities and serves as a jury member in international design contests. Her design work is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires.

Professor Greg Clark CBE FAcSS is a globally recognized authority on cities, urbanization, and place leadership, with over four decades of experience advising city leaders, national governments, multilateral institutions, investors, and civic organizations worldwide. He has advised more than 400 cities, 40 national governments, and 20 multilateral institutions, and has served on international advisory boards for cities including New York, São Paulo, Vienna, Oslo, Toronto, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Johannesburg. He is the author of 10 books and more than 100 reports, co-hosts The DNA of Cities and The Century of Cities, and is Global Cities expert for the BBC World Service series My Perfect City.

Tosin Oshinowo is a Lagos-based Nigerian architect and the founder and principal of Oshinowo Studio, established in 2013. Her practice spans civic, commercial, and residential architecture across West Africa and is distinguished by a socially responsive approach to design and urbanism.

Her key projects include a collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme to design a new settlement in northern Nigeria for a community displaced by Boko Haram, the Maryland Mall in Lagos, and Adidas’ first flagship store in West Africa. Across these works, Oshinowo demonstrates a deep engagement with architectural history while advancing a contemporary vision of African design and innovation.

Alongside her architectural practice, Oshinowo’s curatorial and research work interrogates questions of culture, identity, and urbanism in the global South. She co-curated the second Lagos Biennial in 2019, curated the second Sharjah Architecture Triennial in 2023, and collaborated with Lexus International on a conceptual design exploration for Design Miami 2020. Her ongoing research project, Alternative Urbanism: Self-Organising Lagos Markets, received a Special Mention at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale. She is a 2025 Harvard University Loeb Fellow and a 2025 Open Society Seven Cities Fellow. She received an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Institute of Canadian Architects in 2026.

Carolina Romahn is a cultural manager who studied literature, sociology, and philosophy at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. In December 2024, she was appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the World Design Capital Frankfurt RheinMain 2026 team, guided by the theme “Design for Democracy. Atmospheres for a Better Life.” She sees design as both a tool and a catalyst for improving social, cultural, ecological, and economic quality of life.

Romahn brings extensive experience in cultural promotion and cultural management within the Frankfurt RheinMain region and the state of Hesse. From 2007 to 2017, she served as Director of the Cultural Affairs Office of the City of Frankfurt. She subsequently held the position of Senior Ministerial Advisor at the Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts, where her work focused on cross-disciplinary cultural promotion, literature, cultural education, the cultural and creative industries, visual arts, and international cultural relations.

Throughout her career in cultural administration, Carolina Romahn has been responsible for numerous collaborative initiatives and events within the public cultural sector. She is particularly committed to bringing together people with creative ideas from diverse fields and fostering the development of joint projects. With a broad interdisciplinary network at the regional, state, and federal levels, she is deeply connected to and highly knowledgeable about the creative landscape of the Frankfurt Rhine-Main region.