Cheryl Heller is the founding chair of the first MFA program in Design for Social Innovation at SVA, founder of the design lab CommonWise and winner of the prestigious AIGA Medal for her contribution to the field of design. She created the Ideas That Matter program for Sappi Paper in 1999, which has since given almost $13 million to designers working for the public good.

Karin is co-founder and principal of : : CRONAN : :, a strategic identity design consultancy working with change-makers looking for innovative answers, from startups to Amazon, Apple, Estée Lauder / Origins, Levi Strauss & Co., SFMOMA, TiVo and the White House. Her firm is renowned for naming Kindle and TiVo.

Marc is a designer, design strategist, and creative facilitator who has been in the social design space since 2009. He’s an active member of Project M, lead strategist behind The Social Good Guides, creator of Hey! What’s good in _?, GOOD SF local leader, and is currently developing Secret Project at California College of the Arts. His work focuses on social innovation, human-centered design, and purpose-driven initiatives that create positive change in the world.

Sarah comes from the startup world, leading design and development at consumer companies like TaskRabbit and True&Co. She became a design educator in 2015, mentoring aspiring UX designers through General Assembly, Bloc, and Whitespace, and became a trainer at the Prototype Thinking Academy, helping entrepreneurs prototype and test their ideas. She focuses on efficient strategies, collaborative and agile team workflows, and working hard on problems that matter.

Matt is a partnerships and community designer at IDEO, where he designs ways to grow and scale OpenIDEO’s global impact.  Through the Open Innovation platform, he is building partnerships and collaborative capacity to take on of the planet’s biggest challenges, like food waste and environmental issues.

Vinod is a Fellow at the Ottawa-based Social Innovation Generation, where he leads Social R&D: a multi-stakeholder initiative to advance an innovation-savvy social impact sector. He is a Global Shaper selected by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Banff Forum community, and a recipient of The Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his contribution to Canada.

Kathryn leads the online team at Chronicle Books, where she invents way to celebrate and further book culture on the web.  She has a background in museums and community art, and is one of the organizers of CreativeMornings SF. She is devoted to connecting people and ideas by any medium necessary.

Rachel Beth is an artist, designer, writer, and professor of design at USF, where her work is focused on sustainability and systems thinking as related to interaction design and behavior change. She is editor of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Design.

Ann Badillo is a proponent of new practices that demonstrate the power of participatory leadership, group genius, and the creative process. She is co-author of the book Narrative Generation, the product of a two-day "book swarm," and an expert in the use of acceleration frameworks to guide entrepreneurs and groups.

Casey was co-founder of Couchsurfing, where thousands of people enthusiastically collaborated to build and manage the site so millions of travellers across the globe could find a place to stay. Since then, he has launched several startups, serving as CEO.

Frank Schulenburg is executive director of the Wiki Education Foundation, a longtime Wikipedian and former member of the executive management team of the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia. His work is focused on broadening participation and developing public understanding of Wikipedia, especially among subject matter experts.

Named one of seven millennials changing the world by The Huffington Post, Matt is an educator, essayist, and design strategist based in L.A. He is the founder and managing director of verynice, and author of How to Give Half of Your Work Away for Free and Toward a Preemptive Social Enterprise. 

What is the purpose of AIGA SF? Our organization celebrates design and provides unparalleled opportunities for networking within the local design community and a variety of resources to advance professionalism and broaden knowledge. Our events stimulate discourse and enrich our collective experience of design.

Preview Events offers clients the opportunity to build their brand and audience through helping produce events and live activations. Together they design a platform for outreach and expand clients' businesses with data insights and demographic knowledge. Preview Events has assisted in creating multi-platform activations for companies and organizations including: Adobe, Samsung, Yahoo, Unilever, SquareSpace, The New York Times & Talkspace.