“Industrial Design & YOU!”

Jeevak Badve

Principal + Director of Strategic Growth

Sundberg-Ferar

12:00 pm – 12:05 pm

Jeevak brings energy, passion & curiosity to his role at Sundberg-Ferar. With his unique blend of education and experience in industrial design, engineering and business, he is a rallying voice for the alignment and optimal inclusion of the end user’s un-met needs, and unspoken wants in the core value proposition of a company’s products & service portfolio to generate sought-after shareholder value. Jeevak has more than 23 years of professional design experience, first in India for 7 years at Tata Motors, and then in the U.S. for 16 years at GM Design and now Sundberg-Ferar. Beyond his role at SF, Jeevak is a board member of many prominent design associations and think tanks including the Michigan Design Council, Aether Design Group, and Detroit Creative Corridor. He also served on IDSA’s International board for 6 years and chaired IDSA’s 2017 flagship International Design Conference: “Design IS Business”. In his copious amounts of spare time, Jeevak can be found indulging his love of kickboxing, and obstacle course running, or photographing birds in obscure parts of the world.

“Ikigai Philosophy and Design-Led Manufacturing Ikigai Philosophy and Design-Led Manufacturing and Design-Led Manufacturing”

Jacklyn Ady

Director, Product Design & Development

Versteel

12:05pm – 1:00pm

Jacklyn Ady is the Director of Product Design & Development at Versteel, high-quality solutions manufacturer of design-forward, American-made furnishings for working and learning environments.

Ady is an Industrial Designer who has collected several design patents through innovative product design solutions. She has worked in many different areas of design including sporting goods, furniture, children’s toys, and design research.  She teaches part-time at the University of Evansville within the Master of Science in Leadership program.

Ady is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design (Product Design) from the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) and holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (NUCB). She lived in Japan for several years while studying and managing a non-profit organization.  She’s served several different roles in various non-profit organizations and board of directors positions.

Outside of work and volunteering, Jacklyn is married to an automotive engineer. They are extreme sports enthusiasts who enjoy traveling and exploring the world on whatever bike or board the season permits. They met as competitive waterskiers in college and prefer to spend their free time wakesurfing and snowboarding in the Midwest.

“Light Years in the Making”

James Gigrich

Chief Technology & Financial Officer

Shadow Works, LLC

1:00pm – 2:00pm

James Gigrich (Jim) serves as Chief Technology and Financial Officer as a senior/founding partner in Shadow Works, an innovative textile company with the responsibilities of managing research and technology development as well as for planning and managing operations and finance.  He is an accomplished engineer, mathematician and a West Point graduate.

Jim has long been involved in charitable and veteran organizations. Since 2007, Jim has volunteered for Snowball Express, an organization that serves the children of our fallen military heroes. He is instrumental in the execution of a yearly gathering of over 1500 family members and children as the deputy director of the Snowball Express command center. Additionally, Jim is a co-founder of Veterans Independence Corps, formerly called America’s Huey 091 Foundation, helping to restore the freedom and dignity of mobility to our nation’s wounded disabled heroes.

Jim Gigrich is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, the Georgia Institute of Technology with an M.S. in Operations Research and a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from George Washington University.

His hobbies include Amateur Astrophotography, Fly-Fishing, Skiing, and eMTB.

Topic Description: The inspiration of our technology comes from the space program and on May 30, 2020 at 3:22 PM EST, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launched two astronauts onboard the Crew Dragon into space to rendezvous with the International Space Station.  It was quite a sight to see as the rocket rumbled and lifted off toward the heavens.  It was magnificent and sent chills up and down my arms.  The United States Space program is back!

Our SWX technology is inspired by space, the final frontier and all inspiring.  It is amazing what is out there beyond our terra firma that we take for granted.  Most of us look up and see the moon and stars and then look back down.  But there is so much more up there, if you just looked harder and longer.

As an amateur astronomer, I am never disappointed by the amount of deep space objects that a person can see from earth if you only knew where to look.  The very first deep sky object that fascinated and inspired me was Andromeda.  No, it is not the 1971 movie called Andromeda Strain, a scientific movie about an alien organism brought back from space onboard a satellite that crashed into a small desert town on earth.  Andromeda Galaxy is the closest galaxy to earth that can be seen by the naked eye or binoculars.  Let’s take a journey of Deep Space Objects.

“AI & Product Connectivity”

Jonathon Baugh

Customer Strategy & Experience Design – Practice Area Lead

Slalom

2:00pm – 3:00pm

Jonathon has been designing and building meaningful digital experiences for over 20 years. His unique ability to fuse together people, technology, and business has proven critical in crafting digital experiences across companies of all shapes, sizes, and industries. This balance has helped his companies and clients create delightful user interactions and achieve significant company growth. Design Thinking supported by a strong backing of UX principles permeate Jonathon’s approach to solving challenges in a pragmatic and human way. This methodology has proven invaluable in the diverse roles he has taken on, adding value on “everything but writing code.” Jonathon now shares his passion and expertise with others through consulting, mentorship, and organizational growth.

When he is not in the office, you can find Jonathon in the dojo or on his 10-acre homestead of wilderness heaven with his family (furry, feathered, and otherwise).

Orbiting the Big Pivot

Tom Gattis

Dean of Undergraduate Studies

Columbus College of Art & Design

3:00pm – 4:00pm

Tom has spent his career engaging students with Captains of Industry in a collaborative problem-solving model.

Professor Gattis is the current Dean of Undergraduate Studies at CCAD and a former Professor and Chair of the Industrial Design group at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). At both CCAD and SCAD, Professor Gattis was the principal architect for a transformational project-based learning model where students completed work for companies such as Dell, Airstream, JCB, V-tech, Honda, Hobie Cat, Kids2, and Newell Rubbermaid. He has launched multiple innovative degree programs across several Universities and established unique study abroad opportunities to Asia, Europe, and Central and South America.

He is currently spending his spare time during the pandemic restoring a 23’ Airstream travel trailer.

Topic Description: The global pandemic has caused severe disruption in many industries. Many have written about our new “normal.” The big pivot to remote, online, work-from-home is going to be anything but ordinary. The future is about “abnormal.” How can we leverage design to navigate this new abnormal reality?

It’s a war, between us, the human species, and that vicious virus, COVID-19, or Coronavirus. We’ve gone through swine flu, bird flu, and Ebola pretty successfully, and we firmly believe we will make it through COVID-19 too.

As a disclaimer, we’re not experts in Virology and we won’t be speaking on the clinical aspects, what-if’s, or actions to be taken to cure the virus or prevent virus its spread. Nor are we discussing it’s impact on our economy. The news, media, cdc.gov, and who.org are already covering that 24/7.

Our reason for hosting this virtual design conference is to show that puny little virus that it can’t stop us from getting our inventive minds together!

We’ll still share insights, ideas, thoughts and perspectives the same way we “social mammals” have always been doing. Actually, this very act of building off of each other’s strengths and optimism is what makes us all strong. With this virtual conference, we aim to flex that strength over the course of two days to learn and, no-doubt, to have fun along the way. Yes, we will be talking about design, strategy, research, branding, and marketing, but we will also broach other cool topics to add a bit of cheer and levity to our everyday lives.

We all need it. Especially right now, of all times!