Paola Antonelli is Senior Curator of Architecture & Design at The Museum of Modern Art, as well as MoMA’s founding Director of Research & Development. Her goal is to promote design’s understanding, until its positive influence on the world is universally acknowledged. Her work investigates design’s impact on everyday experience, often including overlooked objects and practices, and combining design, architecture, art, science, and technology.

Among her most recent exhibitions are the XXII Triennale di Milano Broken Nature, and MoMA’s Material Ecology – on the work of architect Neri Oxman – and Never Alone, on video games and interactive design. The Instagram platform and book Design Emergency, which she co-founded with design critic Alice Rawsthorn, is an ongoing investigation on design's power to envision a better future for all.
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Liza Chong is CEO of The Index Project, a non-profit organisation whose mission is to promote and mobilize design to improve life worldwide. The organisation is behind the biennial Index Award, the world's biggest design award.

Chong has led fundraising and global partnership initiatives that have taken The Index Project overseas to the Nordics, Asia, Latin America and the US. Originally from London, she has a blended background in strategy, policy, business development and implementation.

Chong is a regular speaker and panelist for public, corporate and educational audiences ranging from the Royal College of Arts, the V&A, Bloomberg, Chr. Hansen, IKEA, Fritz Hansen to name a few.
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Caterina Fake is an investor at Yes VC and is the host of the #1 Tech Podcast Should This Exist? addressing the question of our times: how is technology impacting our humanity? And how can we build things that help us flourish as human beings? Yes VC invests in scalable social systems, brands that embody cultural movements, and founders who recognize the opportunity in the rising power and affluence of women.

Fake was co-founder at Founder Collective, and served for nearly 10 years as a Founder Partner. She was Director and Chairman of Etsy, serving on the board for nearly 10 years. She is the co-founder of Flickr, the photo sharing site and online community. Fake has received Honorary Doctorates from the Rhode Island School of Design and The New School. Time Magazine named her one of the Most Influential People in the world and she was awarded the Aenne Burda award for Creative Leadership. In 2018, she was given the Silicon Valley Visionaries award.

Caterina is an early creator of, and participant in, online communities and a long time advocate of the responsibility of entrepreneurs for the outcomes of their technologies. In her work she addresses the cultural impact of new technologies, how products can be developed for the best human outcomes and how to create environments for human interactions online. Caterina works to create cultures of innovation, creativity and civility, and believes we can all make the internet a kinder, more human place.

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Eva Franch i Gilabert is an architect, curator, and critic specialized in curatorial activism, alternative pedagogies and planetary practices. Franch is founder and co-curator of MODEL, a new annual experimental architecture festival organized by the city of Barcelona, the first event leading up to the Barcelona Architecture World Capital events and UIA congress in 2026. She is also the Head of the Future Architectures Platform at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design at UMPRUM in Prague.

Franch is the former Director of the AA Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and the Storefront for Art & Architecture in New York. Franch has taught at Princeton University, Columbia University GSAPP, The Cooper Union, Rice University School of Architecture, IUAV University of Venice, and SUNY Buffalo and has received numerous honours, research grants and awards. In 2014 she was the commissioner and co-curator of the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale with the project for collective practice OfficeUS.

Franch is currently working on the project Picasso: Without Title, an exhibition of 50 paintings from the late period of Pablo Picasso renamed by 50 contemporary artists to be presented in La Casa Encendida in Madrid in 2023 as part of the 50 year celebration of the death of Pablo Picasso.

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Indy Johar is focused on the strategic design of new super scale civic assets for transition – specifically at the intersection of financing, contracting and governance for deeply democratic futures. Johar is co-founder of darkmatterlabs.org and of the RIBA award winning architecture and urban practice Architecture00, a founding director of open systems lab (digitising planning), seeded WikiHouse (open source housing), and Open Desk (open source furniture company).

Johar is a non-executive international Director of the BloxHub, the Nordic Hub for sustainable urbanization in Copenhagen. He held Graham Willis Visiting Professorship at Sheffield University 2016–17. Johar was also Studio Master at the Architectural Association 2019–2020, UNDP Innovation Facility Advisory Board Member 2016–20, and RIBA Trustee 2017–20. He has taught and lectured at various institutions such as the University of Bath, TU-Berlin, University College London, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and New School.

Most recently, Johar was awarded the London Design Medal for Innovation in 2022.

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Nimco Kulmive Hussein (they/them) is a curator and writer working at the intersection of research, culture, and art. Their praxis draws from postcolonial and queer-feminist perspectives, focusing actively on participatory practices that bring people together through critical, timely and meaningful narratives.

Exploring the site of new media and digital visual culture, Kulmiye Hussein facilitates innovative operational modalities and practices together with artists, creative practitioners, and arts institutions.

Graduate of Aalto University and Central Saint Martins, Kulmiye Hussein is based in London.

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Ervin Latimer is a fashion and print designer and founder of ready-to-wear label Latimmier. He was awarded Young Designer of the Year in 2020 in Finland, and he also writes and lectures on the intersections of queer culture, anti-racist practices and fashion.

Latimer is a founding member of anti-racist non-profit organisations Ruskeat Tytöt (Brown Girls) and Nordic Fashion Directory and a board member of the foundation for the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York.

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Linda Liukas is an author, illustrator and educator from Helsinki, Finland. With her Hello Ruby children's picture book series and philosophy, she brings a Nordic playful perspective to the sometimes serious world of computer science.

Translated into nearly 40 languages, Hello Ruby books ask: what else is there to technology education than “Learn to code”? If computer code is the Lego block of our time – a tool of creation – how do we teach curiosity, joy, and wonder to our kids?

Currently Liukas is planning a playground, in Helsinki, where the kids can learn how computers operate – without a single screen.

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Kieran Long is Director of ArkDes, the national museum of architecture and design in Stockholm, Sweden, since 2017. At ArkDes he has overseen an internationally significant and successful programme of exhibitions and events, and developed the museum into a hub of practice-based research contributing to debates about design, architecture and the future of Swedish cities.

Long has been a writer, teacher and curator of architecture and design for more than 20 years. His career began as a journalist, writing for newspapers and magazines, and working as editor in chief of the Architects’ Journal and the Architectural Review. He was the host of television programmes for the BBC on architectural history and the architecture critic for the Evening Standard.

In 2011–12, Long worked with David Chipperfield and led his curatorial team for the Venice Biennale of architecture. After the biennale, he joined the Victoria & Albert Museum as Keeper of Design, Architecture and Digital, the first new collections department at the museum for 50 years. In 2017, he moved to Sweden to become director of ArkDes.

Long has taught architecture at London Metropolitan University, Kingston University, and EPFL Lausanne, and design at the Royal College of Art.

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Joar Nango works with architectural installations that explore the boundary between architecture, design, and visual art. His work relates to questions of Indigenous identity, often through investigating contemporary architecture. Nango has explored modern Sámi spaces through numerous projects.

Nango lives and works in Áltá, Norway. His works have been exhibited internationally in large venues like Documenta (Kassel/Athens), Chicago Architectural Biennale, and National Galleries of Norway and Canada.

Nango is a founding member of the architecture collective FFB. He is currently setting up a network of Sámi architects across Sápmi through the ongoing Indigenous architecture library project Girjegumpi, which is also selected for the Nordic pavilion in the Venice biennale 2023.

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Héctor Noval has been practicing at the intersection of aesthetics and interaction across different countries and cultures for over 18 years. His practice, lectures, and writing have centered on exploring the professional practice of design, the generation of meaning, and the purpose underlying our use of non-verbal languages.

Noval's career spans roles, titles and disciplines across the entire spectrum of the business of design. After his role as Global Head of Futures with Designit, Noval is currently exploring new frames to broader the way we practice; approaching emerging economic shifts, modes of interaction and their potential to shape the cultures we live in.

Noval's academic career includes studies in Humanities and Computer Science and a Master thesis in new narrative structures for multidimensional environments. He enjoys swells and currents as much as a good conversation.

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Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen is a writer, curator and teacher who teaches architectural design and history-theory at the Yale School of Architecture. In her pedagocical practice she facilitates the interplay between verbal and visual knowledge, between thinking and doing with a goal of overcoming the artificial fault line between history-theory and design teaching.

Pelkonen's scholarly interests cover 20th Century European and American art and architecture, aesthetic theory, and history of ideas. She has written and co-edited several prize-winning books, and curated exhibitions on contemporary Austrian architecture, Alvar Aalto, Eero Saarinen, and Kevin Roche. Pelkonen’s most recent book Exhibit A: Exhibitions that Transformed Architecture, 1948–2000 was published by Phaidon in 2018. Her next book Untimely Moderns: How Modern Architecture Discovered Future in the Past will be published in 2023.

Pelkonen's scholarly and curatorial work has been supported by Getty, the Graham Foundation, the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, and the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research. She received Master of Architecture from Tampere University of Technology, Master of Environmental Design from Yale School of Architecture, and PhD from Columbia University.

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Johannes Suikkanen is the co-founder of strategy consultancy Gemic where he works with social scientists, philosophers, futurists, and business strategists on a mission to solve some of the hardest societal and business questions global corporations and countries face in the 21st century.

A native of Finland, Suikkanen has a life-long interest in how global organizations can strike a delicate balance between the economic interests, societal development and the wellbeing of humans. Currently he lives in Berlin.

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Teemu Suviala is an award-winning creative leader, with expertise spanning from the Fortune 500 corporate arena, design and lifestyle brands, and cultural and public institutions in America, Europe, and Asia.

Currently Suviala is Chief Creative Officer at global brand and design consultancy Landor & Fitch. Suviala is responsible for Landor & Fitch’s award-winning creative teams in studios across more than 20 countries worldwide, working with clients such as Apple, Netflix, Coca-Cola, LEGO and the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Before joining Landor & Fitch Suviala worked as the Global Head of Brand Design for Reality Labs at Meta. Suviala has led creative work at brand and design agencies Collins as ECD and Wolff Olins as CD in New York. He is also a co-founder of design agencies Kokoro & Moi and Syrup Helsinki, and a partner at Helsinki-based footwear brand Tarvas.