Simplicity | Biographies

In June 2008, Becky Bermont assumes the role of Vice President of Media + Partners at the Rhode Island School of Design. Media + Partners is a new organization that will aim to strengthen the ties between RISD and the increasingly interconnected world of commerce, creativity, and culture. Previously, Bermont held a position at the MIT Media Lab, leading the interaction between the Media Lab and its base of industry sponsors, comprised of such corporate leaders as Target, Google, and IBM. In this role, she built on the Media Lab’s pioneering role in forging partnership between industry and academia, and explored new models of collaboration that connect the two. Throughout her career, she has examined how consumers and organizations respond to, ignite, and incorporate technological innovation. Bermont has a background in cognitive psychology, consumer behavior research, and high-tech product marketing. Prior to her work at the Media Lab, she was a product marketer in Yahoo!’s Connected Life group, and helped to define and market Yahoo!’s products for the mobile platform. She also was a consumer research analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, MA and San Francisco, CA, where she analyzed and advised companies on consumer attitudes and behaviors as they evolved through the mainstream introduction of the Internet.

Dorothy Dunn is Director of Visitor Experience and Fellowships at the Philip Johnson Glass House, the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She is responsible for all site interpretation, design programs and strategic partnerships, including “Conversations”, to position the site as a catalyst for promoting innovation and change. Dunn was the recipient of the inaugural Smithsonian Education Achievement Award in 2004 in recognition of her leadership as Education Director for Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. While at the Smithsonian, from 1989 through 2004, she launched and directed the signature programs A City of Neighborhoods: Bridging School and Community, Summer Design Institute, and Design Directions and also planned numerous international conferences including Design on the Ecological Frontier (1994), Designing for the Senses (2002), the invitational study tours Icons of Modernism: LA and Palm Springs (1999), The Architecture of Landscape and Light (2003), Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Milan (2004 and 2005) and the invitational retreat, Craft and Design: Hand, Mind and the Creative Process (2004). Dunn worked with AIGA, the professional association for design, to reposition the International Design Conference at Aspen, the Aspen Design Summit, the world’s oldest forum for business and design leaders. As Program Director for AIGA, Dunn produced the program content for the international conferences Gain: AIGA Design and Business Conference (2006) and Design Conference (2005).

Jason Fried is the co-founder and President of 37signals, a privately-held Chicago-based company committed to building the best web-based software products possible with the least number of features necessary. 37signals’ products do less than the competition — intentionally. Fried believes there’s real value and beauty in the basics. Elegance, respect for people’s desire to simply get stuff done, and honest ease of use are the hallmarks of 37signals products.

Ben Ichinose was born in the Garden Island, Kauai, Hawaii, and although he is not a trained professional in landscaped design, he has an intense interest in landscaped gardens, specifically in the Japanese style. At the age of thirteen, Ichinose won first place in the Home/Garden contest for garden design and his love for the natural world began. While stationed with the U.S. Army in Japan, he and his wife travelled throughout the Japanese countryside and feasted on the natural scenery. In the 1960’s, Ichinose worked with consultant Frank Shinoda on the San Francisco World’s Fair Japanese garden and later, went on to plot and design his own Japanese garden.

Jed Kolko is a Research Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), a non-profit, non-partisan research foundation. At PPIC, Kolko has written numerous reports on the California economy, economic development, and technology policy. Prior to coming to PPIC in 2006, he was Vice President and Research Director at Forrester Research, a technology consultancy, where he managed Forrester’s consumer market research businesses and was the lead researcher on consumer devices and access technologies. Kolko has also worked at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the World Bank, and the Progressive Policy Institute.

Christy MacLear is the Executive Director of the Philip Johnson Glass House. She was brought to the National Trust for Historic Preservation to develop the strategy, hire all staff and prepare the site and Visitor Center to open to the public this past June 2007. With the goal to “reshape the historic house museum model”, Christy and the staff team of the Glass House have sold out tours through 2008, launched a survey of 90+ modern homes in New Canaan, structured a “center for Modernism” to co-lead the National Trust’s investment in Modernist preservation, managed the NTHP board approval to purchase adjacent properties to preserve the Glass House view in perpetuity, and developed the “conversations” series to continue the legacy of new ideas through diverse leaders on-site. Christy is known for her ability to conceive of and lead large scale projects through opening and on-going operations. She was the Manager of Strategy for the Walt Disney Company’s new town project called Celebration, was the Director of the Museum Campus in Chicago where she represented 3 museum boards through the movement of Lake Shore Drive and the creation of a lakefront park, and was an independent consultant in Strategy & Visitor Experience to such clients as the Field Museum, the Cleveland Clinic and the leaders of the UAE. She has a degree in Urban Design from Stanford University and an MBA from Wharton in Real Estate Finance where she received a Barnes fellowship. She has been a professor in the graduate program of Arts Administration for the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and has served on the boards of Chicago’s Three Arts Club, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and Steppingstones Museum for Children.

John Maeda is a world-renowned graphic designer, visual artist, and computer scientist at the MIT Media Lab, and is a founding voice for “simplicity” in the digital age. Named by Esquire magazine as one of the 21 most important people for the twenty-first century, Maeda first made his mark by redefining the use of electronic media as a tool for expression for people of all ages and skills. He is the recipient of the highest career honors for design in the United States, Japan, and Germany and serves on the board of trustees for the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. A faculty member at the Media Lab since 1996, Maeda holds the E. Rudge and Nancy Allen Professorship of Media Arts and Sciences, and is the Lab’s Associate Director of Research. He has had major exhibits of his work in Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo, and has written several books on his philosophy of “humanizing technology” through his perspective on the digital arts including The Laws of Simplicity (MIT Press) published in 14 languages.

Michelle McMurry, MD, PhD is the director of the Health, Biomedical Science, and Society Policy Program of the Aspen Institute. She is also an adjunct assistant professor of health policy at George Washington University. She was formerly a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco and an adjunct MacArthur Fellow in Global Health at the Council for Foreign Relations. Her work has focused on the intersection of biomedical research funding policies and healthcare disparities and global health inequities. She formerly oversaw health and social policy issues for Senator Joseph Lieberman and was the senior health policy advisor for the Lieberman for President Campaign. In both contexts she constructed policies to stimulate translational research in the public and private sectors and to promote health care quality. Prior to this, McMurry was the Hospital Preparedness Coordinator for the Department of Health and Human Services, where she worked on preparing our Nation’s hospitals for public health emergencies. McMurry completed a bioterrorism policy fellowship in the office of Senator Joseph Lieberman, funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and participated in a joint pediatric-medical genetics training program at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. and the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is a former recipient of an American Association for the Advancement of Science Policy fellowship during which she worked to improve diversity in graduate science education in the Office of the Director of the National Science Foundation.

Ambra Medda is a freelance curator and dealer in fine art and design, launching the global forum Design Miami in December 2005 in Miami’s design District during Art Basel Miami Beach. Design Miami’s annual shows can be found in Basel, Switzerland (June) and Miami, USA (December) bringing together the most influential designers, collectors, dealers, curators and critics from around the world. In less than two years, Medda has positioned Design Miami as the most prominent and substantive forum for international design, providing powerful, stimulating and highly selective design-related cultural content. Design Miami presents the world’s preeminent galleries, cutting-edge satellite exhibitions and design performances, a series of design talks engaging dignitaries of the industry, and both the designer of the Future and Designer of the Year Awards in a dynamic environment that explores both the commercial and creative sides of design. Medda has formed strong partnerships with the worlds most respected cultural organizations, educational institutions, and designers including the Vitra design Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, ECAL (University of Art and Design Lausanne), Marc Newson, Yves Behar, Tokujin Yoshioka and Zaha Hadid. Prior to founding the design Miami, Medda organized exhibitions as an independent curator and worked at her mother’s esteemed London gallery, Themes & Variations. She organized shows with the cutting-edge contemporary art collective Stareleene, and co-curated a group exhibition for the Lower East Side Girl’s Club, with works by Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, and Swoon.

Chef Nils Norén is the Vice President of Culinary Arts of The French Culinary Institute (The FCI) and The Italian Culinary Academy (The ICA), at New York City’s International Culinary Center. An embodiment of the new international chef, disciplined in the classic sensibilities and driven by immense creativity, Norén was appointed in 2006 to lead the schools’ culinary, pastry, bread and Italian programs. For the previous 10 years, he had been at Aquavit, where Marcus Samuelsson appointed Chef Nils to be Executive Chef in 2003. At Aquavit, under Marcus Samuelsson’s exemplary leadership, Chef Nils strove to solidify the restaurant’s place on the culinary map and to show the world what Swedish food and cooking techniques are all about. Prior to joining Aquavit, Chef Nils worked in Stockholm as Executive Chef at Restaurant Riche, which features a fine dining room, tapas bar and bistro; and as Chef de Cuisine at Restaurant KB, one of the country’s classic Swedish restaurants in the center of town. He also coordinated cooking classes for Restaurant Akademin. Chef Nils is a graduate of Culinary School in Gävle, Sweden.

Diego Rodriguez is a partner at IDEO and leads its Palo Alto office. He also co-leads its Global Business Factors group, where he works with clients on issues involving venture design, organizational processes, and marketing. He is also an associate consulting professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (aka: the d.school). He is a member of the school’s board of directors. Rodriguez is the voice behind Metacool, an influential blog covering design thinking, technology, and business. Fast Company magazine calls Metacool “…a must-read for anyone who wants to incorporate design thinking into their work.” Prior to IDEO he held operating positions at Nissan, Hewlett-Packard, and Intuit. Rodriguez is the recipient of a Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award and holds multiple patents.

Christel Sorin joined France Telecom Research and Development (FTR&D, now Orange Labs) in 1975. As head of FTR&D’s Speech Lab for 10 years, she contributed to the development of France Telecom’s proprietary speech technologies (speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis). She was then in charge of industrial and international relations at the FTR&D Human Interaction division and launched the spin-off of Telisma (French Voice Technology start-up). From 2000 - 2004, she was vice-president research & development at France Telecom North America in New York, coordinating France Telecom Group R&D activities in the United States. In 2004, Sorin returned to Paris where she was appointed Deputy Research Director at France Telecom R&D, in charge of re-launching Long-term Research within France Telecom Group. Since January 2007, on leave from France Telecom, she is an Associate Researcher at Paris5 University (Experimental Psychology Lab), investigating various questions around Percept Naming (in particular Perfect Pitch) within a Multi-Modal framework. Sorin is one of the founders of the co-working space “La Cantine,” which opened in Paris in January 2008 ( www.lacantine.org). Sorin is the author of more than 90 scientific publications in psychophysics and human & automatic speech processing and co-author of two patents. She was Editor in Chief of the international Journal “Speech Communication,” a member of the Technological Committee of the Whitney Museum, a member of the Scientific Board of INRIA (French National Research Institute in Computer Sciences) and of the French National Executive Council for Science & Technology (CSRT : Conseil Superieur de la Recherche et de la Technologie). She received the Philips medal of the French Acoustic Society in 1983 for her work in Psychoacoustics and the France Telecom Innovation prize in 1993 (with C. Gagnoulet) for the achievements of her laboratory in Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech technology and applications. In July 2001, she was awarded the France Telecom prize of the French Academy of Sciences.

Linda Tischler is a senior writer at Fast Company, where she writes about the intersection of business and design. For the past several years, she has overseen the magazine’s October “Master’s of Design” issue, which celebrates the people in the forefront of design thinking. She also writes on design for Fast Company’s blog, Design of the Times. Prior to joining Fast Company, Tischler was an editor at Boston Magazine, where she initiated the New England Design Awards, and launched the magazine’s special “Boston Home” section. She has also written on art and design for Metropolitan Home, Better Homes and Gardens, and Maybourne Style. She’s also held editing and writing jobs at the Boston Herald and Microsoft’s sidewalk.com. In 2006, Tischler won the Society of Professional Journalists top award for feature writing, and this year was a finalist for the 2007 “Mirror Awards” for best single story.