2022 SoGood Judges
Elizabeth Bawol
Senior Creative Director at Planned Parenthood Washington, DC
Elizabeth is a creative director with a strong passion for strategic, purpose-driven creative. She has helped shape brand stories for a broad range of companies and nonprofits including Amnesty International, Citi, Comcast, First Step, The International Youth Foundation, Peace Corps. Her creative work has spanned political, advocacy and brand marketing efforts for audiences in Belgium, France, Germany, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Honduras, Vietnam, China and the US. She holds both a BFA and Master's from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She and her teams have won awards from the American Advertising Association, The Webbys, Ad Forum, Telly and HOW.
Category: Health, Well-being & Safety
Andrew Boardman RGD
Principal at Manoverboard, Winnipeg, MB
Andrew is a designer, studio founder, artist and educator. He manages Manoverboard, a purpose-driven studio in Winnipeg with the mission of creating a better world by design. Manoverboard is a Certified B Corporation — the first in Manitoba. Andrew also teaches design, theory and visual research methods at the School of Art at the University of Manitoba. His research interests include the history of visual culture, the language of social change and the nature of mind. His new newsletter about design and consciousness is called Gornisht. Andrew holds a BA from Brown and a MFA from SUNY Albany. He received Fulbright and NYFA fellowships.
Category: Human & Civil Rights
Valerie Elliott
Managing Director, iD2 Communication, Victoria, BC
Valerie is a sustainable communication designer and engagement strategist with a passion for connecting people to environments. She helps business, non-profits and students understand the value of sustainable communication solutions in helping us evolve. She is the Creative Director for iD2 Communications; founder of the GDC’s Sustainability Committee; co-founder of the Sustainable Design Standard; developed and coordinated the DesignCares Travelling Forum and Exhibit; and is a professional member of the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2). Valerie loves a good dialogue on how we can change behaviours.
Category: Sustainability, Ecology & Climate
Wendy Gray RGD
Founder & Creative Director of Gravity Inc, Toronto, ON
Wendy founded Gravity Inc. in 1997, and today it's a leading Toronto communication agency specializing in the support of the nonprofit sector. She and her team are proud to be multi-year recipients of the RGD's So(Good) Awards. Wendy is an active contributor and past board member with the RGD, taught Design at both York University and George Brown College and has mentored countless young designers. She is immensely proud of her team who break new ground, surpass client expectations and make creative and meaningful differences every single day.
Category: Humanitarian Action & Services
Pinar Guvenc
Partner at SOUR, New York, NY
Pinar is a partner at SOUR, an international, award-winning hybrid design studio with the mission to address social and urban problems through sustainable, adaptive and inclusive methodologies. Pinar is also part-time faculty at Parsons, School of Design Strategies and serves on the Board of Open Style Lab, a non-profit organization initiated at MIT to make style accessible to people of all abilities. She created and teaches a strategic collaborations workshop series for Pratt Center for Community Development and Made in NYC initiative. She has a BSc in Industrial Engineering and MSc in Economics & Finance.
Category: Sustainability, Ecology, & Climate
Gillian Hickie RGD & Chris Wharton RGD
Co-Principals / Creative Directors of GOOD Company, Calgary, AB
Gillian holds a B.Des from Alberta University of the Arts and has 18 years experience in the design industry. Before co-founding GOOD Company, she worked at small and mid-sized design firms serving local and national clients. At GOOD Company, she has worked for clients such as Clean Energy Canada, Canadian Commission for UNESCO and Children First Canada. Gillian has advises and designed for arts and grassroots projects, such as co-creating VoteKit and acting as marketing director for Land’s End Chamber Ensemble. After graduating from Alberta University of the Arts, Chris continued his studies at the School of Visual Arts. For more than 22 years, he has worked in agencies in NY, Vancouver and Calgary. Chris is passionate about opportunities at the intersection of design and socio-cultural growth.
Category: Humanitarian Action & Services
Mike Lovas
Director of Design & Innovation at Smart Cancer Care, Toronto, ON
In addition to being Director of Design & Innovation at Smart Cancer Care, the innovation program at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, he is Design Director at Healthcare Human Factors, a healthcare design, strategy and usability consultancy based at UHN. Blending methods from service design, biomedical engineering and tech entrepreneurship, he drives innovation in a historically slow, traditional, risk-averse bureaucracy. Mike also lectures and advises students at OCAD U’s Design for Health Master's program and U of Toronto’s Master's of Health Informatics program.
Category: Health, Well-being & Safety
MB
Creative Director at Landor & Fitch, San Francisco, CA
MB (yes, just the letters) has more than 14 years of experience as a senior creative, culturalist and brand consultant. MB has worked with founders and communications and marketing executives of some of the most disruptive companies, helping to craft their brand strategy and visual identity. Previously, she was founding designer at OutCast, San Francisco, and formed outlier, a creative studio within the company. With deep expertise in digital-first brands, her clients have included Airbnb, Nest, Intuit, Facebook, Lyft, HBO, Spotify, Amazon and Cisco. MB has worked on end-to-end brand creative, brand systems, social-digital experiences, brand campaigns, activations, launches and events for high-tech, digital brands.
Category: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Emma McDonald
Global Head of Creative at Purpose, Brooklyn, NY
At Purpose, Emma is focused on creative leadership to support movements that advance the fight for an open, just and habitable world. She’s passionate about creating thoughtful design and communications for impact, and has been lucky enough to work with fantastic partners like Everytown for Gun Safety, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, March of Dimes, KABOOM, United Way, the NYC Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and Bloomberg Philanthropies. At Purpose, she leads a multidisciplinary creative team across NYC, New Delhi, Sydney, London and São Paulo.
Category: Humanitarian Action & Services
Matthew Manos
Founder & Managing Director of verynice, Los Angeles, CA
Verynice is a design strategy practice that gives half of its work away for free to non-profit organizations. verynice's clientele includes Apple, the United Nations, Google and the American Heart Association. Matthew is the author of over 30 books and toolkits on the intersection of creativity, social impact and strategy. He is also an Assistant Professor of Design at the University of Southern California, and is currently Chair of Los Angeles Mayor, Eric Garcetti's Creative Advisory Board.
Category: Human & Civil Rights
Guto Novelli
Head of Design at PlayKids, São Paulo, Brazil
Guto is a Brazilian, Advertising graduate and owner of a somewhat-restless-creative mind. He started his professional journey as a Studio Advertising Photography Assistant and has been a Professional Photographer, Photography Teacher, Art Director, UI/UX Designer, Creative Director, Advertising Agency Owner and other positions not related to advertising or design. Today, he is Head of Design at PlayKids, an award-winning platform that promotes child development for children all over the world. He is also Founder (and all other possible positions) at Electric Bend, sound and music production studio; Founder and Artist at Goddamn Electric, an art collective dedicated to socially and socially provocative projects; Founder and Creative at Fucking Electric, a creative studio dedicated to interactive entertainment; Co-Founder and creative at FiGu, a fast-branding company; as well as a Freelancer.
Category: Education
Christina Rüegg Grässli
Creative Director at The New Division, Zurich, Switzerland
Christina is an award-winning Creative Director and designer with over 25 years of experience in design. She holds a MFA in Design+Technology from the Parsons School of Design. She is Creative Director at the Stockholm-based studio The New Division – Agents of Sustainability, a consultancy striving to accelerate the transformation to a sustainable future. Christina was the lead designer on the design system for the 17 Global Goals – the UN Sustainable Development Goals – and the 169 targets. A multi-disciplinary creative, she is comfortable working at the intersection of design, branding and experience. She aims for simple, considered, compelling and emotive solutions to solve complex challenges.
Category: Sustainability, Ecology & Climate
Tomomi Sayuda
Experience Design Director & Design Researcher, Tokyo, Japan
Tomomi acquired her MA Design Products at the Royal College of Art. She is a specialist in experience design, workshop facilitation, design realization and community engagement. She has more than 10 years experience in various design fields from exhibition to service design. Currently she works as a Design Researcher at DLX Design Lab at The University of Tokyo, Institute of Industrial Science, where she leads design research and citizen science projects. Her experience design direction experience for public museum projects includes the GSM project Dubai, UAE. She consulted at FJORD London including digital service design and workshop facilitation for world-leading organizations. Her projects have been shown on the BBC, Channel 4, Frieze Art Fair, ICFF New York. She sat on the D&AD Award Jury for the Digital Transformation category in 2021.
Category: Arts & Culture Category
Xandr Sutjiadi RGD
Founder of ArtOverMatter Creative Calgary, AB
Xandr is a QTPOC multi-disciplinary creative director, graphic designer, illustrator, front-end developer and educator who believes in using their creative power for social good. He is a founder of ArtOverMatter Creative, a creative studio who gives a damn, and one of the co-founders of Ripple of Change Magazine. Xandr specializes in projects with a focus on equity, accessibility and social impact. Outside of AOM, you might find Xandr as a guest speaker sharing about their immigrant entrepreneurship journey or talking about designing for diversity, accessibility and inclusion.
Category: Arts & Culture
Hazel Tenefrancia
Strategic Design Lead at Klick Health, Toronto, ON
At Klick Health, Hazel combines strategic and analytical thinking with core design principles to achieve specific communication goals. Over the past 5 years, she has defined the Strategic Design craft at Klick and established an in-house team specializing in communication / presentation design, information design, data visualization and workshop design. Graduating cum laude from the York Sheridan Bachelor of Design program, Hazel has 14 years of creative agency experience, ranging from retail advertising, B2B, market research and brand strategy centred in the healthcare and pharmaceutical space.
Category: Health, Well-being & Safety
Terence Tse
Managing Director at Maple Diversity Communication, Toronto, ON
With 25+ years of branding and design experience, Terence has been fortunate to develop many international brands. He believes that Toronto is the design capital of the world with its inherent empathy for European sensibilities coupled with the pragmatic nature of completing business in the USA. While instilling a sense of trust with clients and a structured and strategic approach to projects, he uses design as a strategic tool to exceed consumer expectations. He has worked with some of the world's largest multinationals and Tier 1 companies including Nike, Materne, Bio-K+, Scotts Miracle-Gro, Aurora Cannabis, ConAgra Foods, Owens Corning Canada, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft Foods, Mars Inc., Schick Wilkinson Sword, Royale, FortisBC, Glentel, HSBC, Remitly, Fruit of the Loom and LifeLabs.
Category: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Willy Wong
Creative Consultant, New York, NY
Willy collaborates with clients ranging in scale from artists and entrepreneurs to industry and community leaders. He launched his consultancy after serving as Chief Creative Officer for the City of New York at NYC & Company under Mayor Bloomberg. Willy's design practice includes his academic appointments at the School of Visual Arts in its MFA Design program and at Pratt Institute’s Design Management graduate program. Willy also serves on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Advisory Committee on Cultural Engagement and as an Advisor to Times Square's public art program. Willy received an MFA from Yale University and BA from Dartmouth College.
Category: Education
Valérie Yobé
Associate Professor and Researcher in Graphic Design at ÉMI, Chelsea, QC
Valérie is a doctor in Semiology and Associate Professor and Researcher in graphic design at l’École multidisciplinaire de l’image (ÉMI) - University of Quebec in Outaouais (UQO). After starting her career in advertising in Paris, she developed a practice in graphic design in Quebec with clients in the social and cultural fields. In 2014, she created the non-profit organization la tribu grafik. Through activities like curating, collaborative initiatives between practitioners, editorial projects, critical thinking, workshops, here and overseas, la tribu grafik conceptualizes and produces researched creative projects allowing us to rethink the uses of design, decompartmentalize practices and innovate socially and culturally. In 2017, she received a three-year grant from Le Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC), Support to research-creation, for the project «Arrêtons de tourner en rond», graphisme citoyen à l'école primaire, which was recognized with a So(cial) Good Design Award in 2020.
Category: Education
