Design Ventura Judging Panel 2016

“This year’s Design Ventura Pitch day is on Monday 12 December. This is when our top 10 shortlisted school teams will come to the Design Museum to present their product ideas to our judging panel of design experts.

This year our judges are:

ALICE BLACK
Alice is Director of the Design Museum. As well as developing audiences, exhibitions and programming over the last eight years, Alice has led the museum’s project to transform the former Commonwealth Institute into the new home for the Design Museum.

Alice began her career in banking in New York and her experience in the UK spans work in the public and private sector, in large, multi-site national museums as well as independent museums.

ASIF KHAN
Asif Khan’s London-based architecture practice was founded in 2007. Works range from cultural buildings and masterplans to houses, temporary pavilions, exhibitions, installations and products.

Asif was a Designer in Residence in 2010 at the Design Museum and was awarded Designer of the Future at Design and has been a Design Museum trustee since 2015.

CHRIS RUSE
Chris is Director of Capital Markets & Treasury Solutions at Deutsche Bank and has supported the project since the first year of Design Ventura, including being on our first judging panel 5 years ago.

Chris’s involvement is part of the Born to Be, Deutsche Bank’s youth engagement programme.

MICHAEL SKAPINKER
Michael Skapinker is an FT associate editor. His column on Business and Society appears on Thursdays. Born in South Africa, he began his journalistic career in Greece and joined the FT in London in 1986. He received the Work Foundation Members’ Award for his contribution to the understanding of working life in 2003.

SEBASTIAN CONRAN
Sebastian studied Industrial Design Engineering at Central St. Martins, where he gave the Sex Pistols their first booking and designed the record sleeves and posters for The Clash. After working at corporate identity consultancy Wolff Olins and leading hard-goods development at Mothercare, he founded Sebastian Conran Associates design studio in 1986, which he continues to lead.

Sebastian has taught furniture design at the Royal College of Art, lectures frequently and judges many international design awards.”