Hosted by DTC professor Tor de Vries via Zoom, the DTC Expert Series featured industry professionals and researchers in graphic design, web design, UX design, social media, data visualization, communications, video gaming, animation, systems design, music, and more visiting by Zoom to discuss their fields and share thoughts with students who attended.
Sessions took place in 2021 and 2022. The sessions sessions were recorded and posted to WSU’s Panopto platform, a video service which requires an active WSU account. Some are also publicly available on YouTube in the Digital Technology and Culture Expert Series playlist.
Below, guest speakers, their then-current bios, and video links have been organized by last name.
Lissette Bernal-Cruz
Lissette Bernal-Cruz is a highly-skilled information professional with expertise in knowledge management and project management. She has worked with a wide range of domestic and international organizations, focusing on resolving organizational ‘pain points’ resulting from the absence of processes and controls to effectively manage corporate information. Currently, she is Director of Organizational System and Performance for the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery in New York, helping the state recover from past hurricanes and become more resilient to future extreme weather events. In this role, she collaborates with colleagues across state government on information governance strategies that facilitate day-to-day operations while ensuring compliance with Federal and State regulations.
Watch the recording on WSU/Panopto (login required).
Rebecca Cook
Rebecca Cook is an active member of the Washington arts community who has worked as an actress, director, costumer, make-up artist, accountant, producer, and director in film and theater throughout the region. For the last several years, she has worked on over 20 feature films, several commercial productions, and all 5 seasons of Syfy Channel’s Z Nation; directed several award-winning short films; and founded her own company, Thundering Kitten Productions. In her passion for the film industry, she serves as Vice President for IATSE Local 488, is on the board of directors of Washington Filmworks, and is the President of the Spokane Film Project. She has narrated commercial and documentary voice overs, as well as brought to life over 100 audiobooks. Keeping to her theater roots, she’s produced several original works for Spokane Stage Left Theater and has been a living history actress at The Campbell House for over 10 years.
Watch the recording on WSU/Panopto (login required) or YouTube.
Ritwik Dey
Ritwik Dey is a longtime designer with experience in UX, product design, and graphic design. Currently a Design Director at Medium, he has previously worked at Spotify and the design agency R/GA, where clients included Nike, HBO, and Johnson & Johnson.
Watch the recording on WSU/Panopto (login required) or YouTube.
Kate Greene
With 20+ years of experience in design and communications, Kate Greene is an award-winning expert in branding, art direction, management, and team leadership. Her boutique creative agency, Owl’s Head Solutions, offer full-scale design and technology solutions to any communications challenge, with particular expertise in healthcare.
Watch the recording on WSU/Panopto (login required).
Masha Ioveva
Masha Ioveva manages the Growth product design team at Instagram, building user experiences that empathize with the broadest set of global users across continents, languages, and platforms. She has over 15 years of experience designing digital experiences and leading product teams at Instagram, Apple, and R/GA, where her work has won her 10 US patents.
Watch the recording on WSU/Panopto (login required) or YouTube.
Dave Kanter
Dave Kanter is a web and mobile designer and developer with considerable industry experience for leading companies and brands, including Adobe, Lucas Arts Digital (Star Wars), Autodesk, Publicis Sapient, and more.
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Rob Kershaw
Robert Kershaw is a photographer, designer, writer, and film editor who discovered digital storytelling while working with remote communities in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Before joining StoryCenter in 2007, Rob worked on offshore oil platforms around the world, published an independent rural newspaper, and operated his own communications and graphic design business. He is the author, co-editor, and designer of four books about the history and ecology of regions and communities in northern and western Canada. As a digital storytelling facilitator and Director of Public Workshops for StoryCenter, Rob has assisted hundreds of individuals telling their own stories.
Watch the recording on WSU/Panopto (login required) or YouTube.
David Lennon
David Lennon is a longtime software architect and engineer in the video game industry. Currently he works at Proletariat, Inc., as the Engineering Lead for the highly-rated battle royale game Spellbreak (available on Xbox One, Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC through Epic and Steam), and has previously worked on Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Infinite Crisis, and more.
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Manuel Lima
Manuel Lima has 15+ years of experience designing digital experiences and leading product teams at companies like Microsoft, Nokia, and Google, where he is currently a Design Lead and Startup Mentor. His specialties are design management and digital strategy; UX and product development; IA, interaction and interface design; and more. Manuel was named “one of the 50 most creative and influential minds” by Creativity magazine; his TED Talk on data visualization has millions of views; and he has authored three highly-acclaimed books on data visualization.
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Eric Limburg
Eric Limburg is the Creative Director for Washington State University, where he sets the creative vision for all of WSU’s marketing and communications campaigns, overseeing the visual design and development that brings WSU’s brand and communications to life. Among other projects, he spearheaded the recent WSU rebranding that launched over the summer of 2021. Eric leads the Visual Design team in the University Marketing and Communications unit, and collaborates with staff across the university to conceptualize, develop and prepare original designs, graphic layouts and images for WSU’s wide range of platforms and publications. Previously he served as the Creative Director for WSU Athletics.
Watch the recording on WSU/Panopto (login required) or YouTube.
Sadie Red Wing
Sadie Red Wing is a Lakota graphic designer and advocate from the Spirit Lake Nation of North Dakota. Her research on cultural revitalization and visual sovereignty has sparked new and long-overdue interest in indigenous perspectives for visual design and communication. Red Wing’s work has been featured in AIGA’s Eye on Design (“Why Can’t the U.S. Decolonize Its Design Education?”) and in Communication Arts (“Decolonizing Native American Design”). She holds an MFA in Graphic Design from North Carolina State University.
Watch the recording on WSU/Panopto (login required) or YouTube.
Dr. Vincent E. Rone
Vincent E. Rone earned a PhD in musicology from UC Santa Barbara and has taught at universities in New Jersey, Virginia, and Ohio, where he currently teaches music history and theory at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Vincent’s research on the music of religious resistance and protest in 1960s Catholic France has been published by The Journal of Musicological Research and elsewhere. His more recent research focuses on musical traditions that depict the natural and supernatural within film and videogames; his work on The Lord of the Rings films appears in The Journal of Music and the Moving Image, while his work on the Legend of Zelda videogames has appeared on the Ludomusicology Research Group and the Journal of Sound and Music in Games. Vincent co-edited and contributed to Mythopoeic Narrative in The Legend of Zelda, an anthology recently published by Routledge, and currently leads a collaborative project of scholarly essays dedicated to nostalgia and videogame music, forthcoming by Intellect Books.
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Kailee Scales
Kailee Scales is a global strategist, founder of ThinkFree Global Strategies, and the former Managing Director of Black Lives Matter Global Network. Kailee works at the intersection of global development and social justice, and helps create effective solutions towards eradicating racial injustice, education gaps, global health care inequality, economic and educational disenfranchisement, and climate change.
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Beth Schäfermann
Beth Schäfermann is a Senior Manager of Product Management at Publicis Sapient, owning the UX for internal methods and tools (M&T): the intranet, internal communications, and more. Her award-winning portfolio includes a wide range of UX research, strategy, and design in the financial, automotive, energy, and healthcare industries for Fortune 100 clients, including MetLife, UBS, General Motors, and more. She has worked on the design of the second largest intranet in the world, and two intranets that she designed have made the Nielsen Norman Group‘s annual lists of 10 Best Intranets.
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Chris Stauch
Currently a Managing Director at Deloitte Digital in Seattle, Chris Stauch is a longtime creative director with years of experience leading design teams for brands like Verizon, Xbox, New Balance, Chipotle, Intel, Amazon, and more.
* This session was not recorded.
Joshua Thomas
Joshua Thomas is the owner and operator of Lejit Designs, a graphic design studio specializing in branding, illustration, murals, and ultimately dedicated to the creation and development of meaningful stories through design. In addition to a BA in Visual Communication Design, Josh also holds an MBA from Eastern Washington University and has worked as a UX designer. Josh loves basketball, video games, anime, and reading.
Watch the recording on WSU/Panopto (login required) or YouTube.
Kenneth Tsai
Kenneth Tsai has more than 20 years of design experience in broadcast television, augmented reality (AR) events, and virtual sets, and is one of the top experts in TV rebranding. He has worked for CNN (International and US); ABC; Fox; Bloomberg; 60 Minutes; Hunan TV (China); CBC (Canada); TV2 (Norway); Singapore Mediacorp; MRTV (Myanmar); and many more. He currently leads Dot Connector, a highly-sought-after creative video production studio and Vizrt partner based in Taiwan.
Watch the recording on WSU/Panopto (login required) or YouTube.
Note: Due to technical issues, Zoom did not properly record the video of the speakers. As a result, neither Kenneth Tsai (the guest speaker) or Tor de Vries (the DTC host) are visible in this video. However, Kenneth’s presentation and the verbal discussion are presented here, and remain illuminating.
Cliff Washington
Cliff Washington is a brand strategist, designer, and creative consultant with more than a decade of experience working with Disney, Nissan, Ann Taylor LOFT, AT&T, and other major brands. He has been a senior digital designer at ViacomCBS, designing for MTV, BET, and the Paramount Network; and at Essence Communications, the media, technology and commerce company dedicated to Black women, with partner-clients including Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, and more. Today, he is the founder and chief brand officer of Duke & Jo, a boutique branding and design consultancy in New York City. He recently hosted a talk on Hidden History: Black Americans In Graphic Design.
Watch the recording on WSU/Panopto (login required) or YouTube.