Sandeep Ahuja

Sandeep Ahuja, co-founder of cove.tool, brings her experience of working on over 200 high performance projects. Most recently, Sandeep presented at the UN environment assembly, with 1500 global delegates, on the impact of buildings on climate change, showcased at the Tedx Atlanta and won the Forbes 30 under 30 for developing cove.tool, the automated sustainability consultant. With her desire to bring automation into the AEC world, she is pioneering the integration of data driven thinking into the design and construction process by developing and intelligent software.

Stephen Burks

Stephen Burks is one of the most recognized American industrial designers of his generation. He and his studio Stephen Burks Man Made have been commissioned by many of the world’s leading design-driven brands to develop collections that engage hand production as a strategy for innovation including BD Barcelona, Dedon, Luceplan, Missoni, & Roche Bobois. His work has been exhibited internationally and he is the only African-American to win the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Product Design. He is currently adjunct assistant professor of architecture at Columbia University’s GSAPP and co-host of the Friedman Benda gallery conversation series Design In Dialogue.

Odile Hainaut

Brand Director

ICFF

Born in Paris, Odile Hainaut has an educational background combining French Literature (Sorbonne Nouvelle Censier University), Performing Art (Cours Perimony) and Musicology (Paris Sorbonne University).

Passionate and curious about creativity and the Arts at large, Odile traces her love of Design to 1992, when she began working at Raison Pure, a French international Design and Branding agency, handling PR and Special Events. As Director of Communications, Odile undertook major marketing, Design and Communication projects, building its reputation as a major player in the Branding and Design world. For 2 years, she managed the communication for the International launch of the fragrance collection Eau de Murano and led the creation of limited editions with renowned Murano artists.

When she moved to New York with her family in 1999, Odile pursued the work that she started in Paris, successfully building the communication and PR strategy of the US operations of Raison Pure USA, now named forceMAJEURE. Her immersion in the world of Design deepened in 2007 when she created New York’s Gallery R’Pure, an experimental Gallery space dedicated to contemporary collectable design. Odile became more and more involved in the New York design scene and decided to extend her curatorial skills to a larger scale design exhibition in New York. She met Claire Pijoulat in November 2010 and the two decided to combine their vision, expertise and passion to launch WantedDesign in May 2011. WantedDesign became the premiere annual international exhibition during New York’s design week.

In October 2019, WantedDesign Manhattan was acquired by Emerald Expo. Since 2023, Claire and Odile took a new role as Brand Directors for ICFF. The Manhattan fair, renamed WANTED is a central feature of the ry Furniture Fair (ICFF) at the Javits Center.

Sammy Medina

Samuel Medina is the executive editor of The Architect’s Newspaper. He was previously the editorial director of Metropolis magazine. As a writer, his work has been published in art and architecture magazines such as Artforum, the Art Newspaper, and Domus, among others. He recently edited a monograph on the architect Eric Owen Moss, due out this year.

Christiana Moss

Christiana Moss, FAIA, NCARB, is a founding principal of Studio Ma, an internationally recognized architecture firm that designs inspiring environments for all. She studied architecture at Cornell and with the Pritzker award winner, Sverre Fehn, and founded Studio Ma in 2003 with Chris Alt, winning numerous awards including AIA and SCUP national design honor awards, Architect 50 Firms rankings, Design Vanguard, and 2016 AIA Arizona Firm of the Year.

Chris O’Hara

Chris O’Hara, PE, SECB is a Founding Principal of Studio NYL a Colorado Based Structural Engineering and Facade Design studio. Chris balances his work holistically with both the structural and facade design aspects of the studio and leads the company’s efforts in research and development of advanced materials and not traditional systems.

Claire Pijoulat

Claire earned a Master’s Degree in International Business from the University of Turin in Italy. After many years of study and collaborations in Europe, she moved to New York City after being hired as Marketing Director for the U.S. by French design house Roche Bobois. Claire began to develop innovative communication and web-strategy projects for various international design brands, agencies, and foreign cultural offices. In this environment, she was able to apply her diverse market knowledge and design industry expertise to lay the foundations of what would become WantedDesign. WantedDesign is a year-long international creative platform that brings together the global design community to showcase, discuss and share exciting, inspiring, and innovative projects and designers.

Ken Smith

“Ken Smith is a landscape architect, urbanist and artist, based in New York City. His practice, Ken Smith Workshop, explores the relationship between art, contemporary culture, and the environment. He is committed to creating landscapes and public spaces that improve the quality of urban life. He holds professional degrees from Iowa State University and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Smith has served as an adjunct professor, principally at City College of New York and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He has been widely published in both the popular and academic press.
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Margaret Sullivan

Margaret Sullivan is a leader in visioning, programming, and designing innovative cultural centers with a focus on public libraries, theaters, and museums. Collaborating with community leaders and national experts, Margaret positions public institutions to lead the social justice agenda for their communities. She skillfully collaborates with stakeholders and the design team to represent a holistic understanding of the institution’s service model and is a leader in translating community goals into physical spaces.

Jonathan Tate

Jonathan Tate is the founder and principal of OJT, an architecture and urban design studio based in New Orleans. Since its founding in 2011, OJT’s work has received recognition and awards, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award and several AIA National Honor awards.

Thomas Phifer

Since founding Thomas Phifer and Partners in 1997, Thomas Phifer has completed projects in Maryland, New York, Utah, North Carolina, Texas, and the Hudson River Valley of New York State. Thomas Phifer received the prestigious Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome in 1995 and was awarded the Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2004. He was elected as an Academician of the National Academy of Design in 2011. In 2013, Thomas Phifer received the Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2016, he was honored by the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects with the President’s Award and by the Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation. He also gave the 2016 keynote lecture at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. In 2019, he was awarded the National Design Award in Architectural Design from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Thomas Phifer is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and serves on the boards of the Architectural League of New York and the Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation.

Tom Wiscombe

Tom Wiscombe, born in 1970, is Principal and Founder of Tom Wiscombe Architecture (TWA) in Los Angeles. His work is known for its powerful massing, alluring graphic qualities, and tectonic inventiveness, all underwritten by contemporary ecological thinking. Tom combines his renowned design expertise with a deep knowledge of construction and project delivery– gleaned from a thirty year professional career– to create projects with the highest level of care and craft. His recently released monograph Objects Models Worlds, captures the breadth of his practice and ideas. Tom is also Chair of the Undergraduate Program at SCI-Arc, where he has taught for over 15 years.