Paola Antonelli is senior curator of architecture and design at The Museum of Modern Art, as well as MoMA’s founding director of research and development. Her goal is to promote design’s understanding, until its mighty influence on the world is universally acknowledged. Her work considers design’s various practices within a multidisciplinary framework, highlighting its connections with technology, society, and the environment. Besides curating exhibitions, she also produces a renowned public series, the MoMA R&D Salons, that demonstrates the potential of museums as R&D departments for society. The Instagram platform, book, and podcast 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.

Yves founded Fuseproject in 1999, an award-winning, international multidisciplinary design studio. As CEO and Creative Lead, Behar works with brands like Herman Miller, Samsung, L'Oreal, Puma, SodaStream and Prada and has also co-founded start-ups including August Home, Canopy Space and FORME Life. Behar's works are included in permanent museum collections worldwide, and he speaks frequently on topics including design, technology and sustainability.

Alice Rawsthorn is an award-winning design critic and author, whose books include Design as an Attitude, Hello World: Where Design Meets Life and Design Emergency: Building a Better Future, co-written with Paola Antonelli, senior curator of design at MoMA, New York. Alice’s weekly design column for The New York Times was syndicated worldwide for over a decade. In all her work, she champions design’s potential as a social, political and ecological tool.

Born in Manchester and based in London, Alice is a founding member of the Writers for Liberty campaign for human rights and the global advisory council of the DemocracyNext research and action institute. She has been chair of trustees at Chisenhale Gallery, Hepworth Wakefield and Michael Clark Company, and a trustee of Whitechapel Gallery and Arts Council England. Alice is a co-founder, with Paola, of the Design Emergency podcast, YouTube channel and research platform, which investigates design’s role in forging a fairer future.

Joshua Ichor is a 2023 Young Climate Prize Fellow, celebrated for his groundbreaking work in sustainable water innovation across Sub-Saharan Africa. A trained hydrologist and the founder of Geotek Water Solutions, Joshua has led the development of solar-powered water kiosks, real-time monitoring systems, and data-driven borehole exploration to combat water poverty in conflict-affected and underserved communities.

Since launching Geotek in 2021, Joshua’s efforts have restored water access to over 100,000 people across Nigeria and the Sahel. His mission is deeply personal driven by early experiences with waterborne illness and he now uses technology and local engagement to build resilient, community-owned systems.

In 2025, he won the Global Citizen Waislitz Award and continues to be recognized globally for his leadership in climate resilience, youth empowerment, and water equity. Joshua is a passionate advocate for youth-led innovation and the belief that water access is a human right not a privilege.

Shohei Shigematsu is a Partner at OMA, based out of the New York office. He has been a driving force behind many of OMA’s projects, leading the firm’s diverse portfolio in the Americas for the past decade. With an emphasis on maximum specificity and process-oriented design, Sho provides design leadership and direction across the company for projects from their conceptual onset to completed construction.

Sho is responsible for delivering a number of cultural projects across North America, including Milstein Hall, an extension to the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University; a new museum for the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec; the Faena Forum, a multi-purpose venue in Miami Beach and the renovation and reimagination of Sotheby’s New York Headquarters. His cultural projects currently in progress include a museum expansion for the New Museum in New York City; an extension to the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York and an event space for the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. Sho has also designed exhibitions for Prada, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Park Avenue Armory, Dior’s first US retrospective at Denver Art Museum and at the Dallas Museum of Art. He has collaborated with multiple artists – including Cai Guo-Qiang, Marina Abramović, Kanye West and Taryn Simon.

Sho’s urban and public space designs around the world include the Willow Campus masterplan, an integrated mixed-use village for Facebook in Menlo Park, California; a mixed-use development in Santa Monica; a new civic center in Bogota, Colombia; a post-Hurricane Sandy urban water strategy for New Jersey; and in Toronto, the largest transit-oriented development currently underway in North America.

Sho has built a number of innovative workspaces including–the China Central Television Headquarters in Beijing (2012), and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange Headquarters (2013). He is currently designing a new business center in Fukuoka (2020) and OMA’s first tower in Tokyo for Mori Building Co, Ltd. (2022). Sho’s designs for three residential projects are under construction across the country–from New York to San Francisco and Miami.

A design critic at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Sho has lectured at TED and Wired Japan conference, and at universities throughout the world.