Young Designers Circle 2019-2021

A current WDO Regional Advisor (Europe) and the Électricité de France (EDF) Research and Development Division team. Gilles coaches cross-functional teams to help them design their projects, programmes and management methods. This means mixing design thinking and social trends analysis to open innovation and partnerships that drive sustainable change. Gilles has served as a WDO Executive Treasurer Board member for the 2017 -2019 term and also contributes to promote design as lecturer, teacher and consultant.

Christopher is the co-founder and managing partner of Department of Unusual Certainties (DoUC). A designer and educator with a background in urban design, he is a strong advocate that design and design methods have an important role to play in helping shape the future of society. Chris also teaches in the Interaction Design department at George Brown College in Toronto, advises the Interdisciplinary Design Strategies MA program at IADT in Dublin, and is always looking to learn more about new ways to communicate information.

Marine Catel is an innovation designer at Richemont International, where she works in liaision with all the Group’s Maisons (Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Montblanc…) to oversee program development to ensure design collaboration, innovation and sustainability. Marine also has experience in the healthcare sector, specifically in contributing to developing new digital tools to support the autonomy and integration of people with mental disabilities. She also works as a global design freelancer for start-ups on projects related to solidarity.

Ralitsa Diana Debrah is a designer, educator and researcher at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana and Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) in South Africa. She is a member of several Design and Technology organisations including: the Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability Network (DESIS), Design Research and Activity Workgroup (DRAWn), DesignGhana and Pan Afrikan Design Institute (PADI). She serves as the Afrikan Ambassador to the Open Design Afrika (ODA) organization and a member of e/Merge Africa (CILT) in South Africa. Ralitsa’s research interests include designing for social innovation and sustainability, educational technology for social transformation, informatics and design within trans-disciplinary settings.

Dishi Gautam is a Singapore based Product Designer with a keen interest in user experience and user research. Her skills lie in the intersection of user-centric design and mechanical engineering. Dishi has a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Product Development and has been working as an Industrial Designer for the past two and a half years. She is currently designing commercial aircraft seats and other aircraft interior solutions.

Sonia is a Tunisian design and fashion entrepreneur with 10 years of experience. Worked in major European design capitals Milan, Paris and Barcelona. She has a bachelor degree in both accounting and product design. Sonia is currently the President of Tunisia Design Organization an NPO that aim to empower Tunisian designers. Co-founder and creative director of Tunisia Design week an Art fair dedicated to Design and architecture. Sonia’s philosophy is to implant sustainability into the creative process to better align it with our environment and planet’s needs. She was nominated in 2020 by the US embassy to represent Tunisia for the programme exchange « US department of state global women’s mentoring partenership ».

Guilherme Hobi is a Brazilian designer based in São Paulo who is passionate about the design process and ecosystems aligned with a sustainable mindset. He has been working at Kyvo design-driven innovation as a senior service designer and researcher. He is responsible for planning and executing service design projects, and managing teams by helping them to understand and connect the perspectives of service design to methods of research. He has worked at Centro Brasil Design, Duco design intelligence and has also organized some Global Service Jams.

Sahil Jain is currently pursuing his undergraduate degree in Design, where he is specializing in User Experience. He co- founded PLAYVETO, a card-based game that received seed funding and allows users to learn and engage with academic concepts in a gamified way and improve their critical thinking skills. Sahil is interested in understanding how individual habits and behaviours shape one’s craft. 

Carson Kan is a Hong Kong designer with a 12+ years of experience working in design and marketing. He has a Bachelor’s Degree of Marketing Management and Master Degree of Product Design. Carson is currently the Head of Design at Neusoft Medical, one of the biggest medical device manufacturer in China, where he is in charge of ID, UX and UI. Since 2012, he has been designing 30+ medical products, ranging from hospital/home application to military application, from humans to animals, from imaging to surgical, from pharmacy to emergency room.

Inho Lee studied visual design at Seoul National University of Science and Technology and is now pursuing a Ph.D. program related to design convergence. He is currently a manager at the Korea Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP), a national design organization established by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE). At KIDP, Inho has a key role in developing international cooperation, connecting stakeholders from all sectors of the design industry to expand their market. 

Megan Mackay is a post-graduate student from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Aotearoa. She gained her Bachelor degree in Social Innovation Design (DSI) with a minor in Marketing in 2019. She is currently studying towards a Masters in Design, again majoring in Design for Social Innovation. Both her course and thesis studies focus on a critique of Design Thinking, as a ‘universal model for business innovation’ that currently dominates the corporate and organizational space and design thinking as the disciplinary ‘process and practice’. Her study aims to recalibrate the understandings and requirements of design thinking to better align it with the human and planet centric approaches to design that the discipline now demands.

Stephen MacNeil is a postdoctoral student at the University of California San Diego. His research building on theories of community, design and reflective practice to advance the extent to which communities can drive the design process. He designs, builds, and studies technology that can scaffold community-driven design activities and coordinate community design efforts at scale. Stephen is passionate about developing solutions for large, real-world problems through multi-disciplinary teamwork.

Ashton Margarete Moseley is an Industrial designer working full-time as a lecturer in the Department of Industrial Design at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She is passionate about working to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, especially those linked to good health and gender equality. Ashton is also a co-researcher in a cross-national, collaborative research project funded by the GCRF which aims to explore gender diversity, equality and representation across various creative disciplines within Higher Education and Industry. 

Meghan Preiss is a design researcher at D-Ford, a strategic design and qualitative research lab within Ford Motor Company’s World Headquarters in Detroit, Michigan. She explores technology, physical products, and humanity through her design research and strategy lens. She collaborates and leads company-wide teams to design solutions that will impact the transportation and mobility industry for years to come. Meghan has also worked in design consultancy, where she collaborated with companies like LEGO, Boston Scientific, Hamilton Medical, Honda, BMW, Disney and Hewlett Packard. 

Corbin Raymond is a South African Industrial Designer from Cape Town and a full-time lecturer in Visual Communication Design at Stellenbosch University. As a design researcher, he focuses on designing for sustainability by applying and testing design theory with design practice. Corbin has a Masters degree in Design, with a focus on Sustainable Product Service Systems (S.PSS) and Biomimicry. As a design lecturer, he has taught, co-designed and developed course content to design for sustainability at universities in South Africa, Uganda, Kenya and China.

César Rosales is an industrial designer from Mexico. His work is focused on the research of ancestral techniques used by Mexican artisans to fabricate items, with the aim of creating contemporary objects influenced by a syncretic mixture of current design resources and technologies with sustainable ancient methods. César has contributed to several art installations and design projects, most notably “AXKAN Mexico Beyond Time”, which was selected to be displayed at the Franz Mayer Museum during Mexico Design Week in 2018.

Gizem Severoglu is an industrial designer from Turkey who utilizes her skills in project management, content creation and digital marketing to creating sustainable and impactful concepts and strategies for businesses. Gizem has completed project management and design internships at Ozlem Tuna Design, Illusionist Istanbul, Hemzemin Social Good Conference, Adnan Serbest Design, Nurus Inc., Bluechip Creative Events, Kilit Tasi Design. She is passionate about volunteering with different NGOs for social good. Gizem has a MSc in Entrepreneurship from Trinity College Dublin. 

François Verez is a designer with 10 years of experience. He has worked across industries on digital challenges, managing and collaborating with design teams to strategize about future innovations and growth – design research, strategy, creativity facilitation, digital transformation, and service design. François spent nine years working for consulting firm in Paris and London, before embarking on an entrepreneurial challenge in 2020 leading a small design agency in Lille specializing in B2B digital transformation.

Yatharth is a designer, artist and researcher trained in Exhibition Design and Interactive Media Design. His work explores accessible and equitable emergent media technology, both for users and makers. In his practice as a designer and maker, he uses creative-technology and interactive media to express and create new tools. As an artist and researcher, he examines the issues with distribution of technology, power structures and their socio-political impact, through speculative and academic writings.

Nilay Zanbak is a designer based in Istanbul (Turkey) who is passionate about implementing research findings into meaningful experiences through innovative and sustainable solutions. Nilay graduated from the Industrial Design department at Ozyegin University, with a specialization in Design for Interactions and Services, where she learned the importance of accessing products, services, systems within their ecosystems to better design for the future. She currently works as a UX designer at QNB Finansbank, Design Studio, where she and her team utilize human centric design approaches to find effective, innovative solutions to business problems.