Ben Sheppard

Co-founder and Chair, Design for Good

Ben is co-founder and chair of Design for Good: a global non-profit that brings together hundreds of the world’s best designers to develop solutions for the United Nations' sustainable development goals. Members include Airbus Commercial, bp, DBS Bank, General Mills, LIXIL, Logitech, Lloyds Banking Group, Nedbank, Nestlé, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Philips, and Royal College of Art. Together the alliance aims to directly improve millions of lives.

Ben was a longstanding partner at McKinsey & Company, where he led global research on design: convening the quarterly Chief Design Officer roundtable and publishing on the business value of design. He is also senior advisor to the Design Council.

CLIFF KUANG

AUTHOR, USER FRIENDLY; UX DESIGNER AT GOOGLE

Cliff Kuang, a user-experience designer at Google specializing in emerging AI applications, is also the acclaimed author of "User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play." Praised by the New York Times as "a tour de force, an engrossing fusion of scholarly research [and] professional experience”, the book garnered recognition from Amazon and FORTUNE as one of the best books of the year and is taught in several universities worldwide. Previously, Cliff Kuang was the Head of UX and product at Fast Company; the Founder of Fast Company’s design site, Co.Design, and an editor at Wired. Under his leadership, Co.Design won a National Magazine Award within two years of its founding. Throughout his journalism career, Cliff Kuang edited over 7,000 stories focusing on design and technology.

KATRINA ALCORN

FORMER GENERAL MANAGER, DESIGN AT IBM

As the former General Manager of Design at IBM, Katrina Alcorn oversees one of the world's most extensive design practices, guiding a team of over 3,000 designers. This team crafts software, hardware, brand, and web experiences used by millions globally. Under Katrina's leadership, IBM's enterprise design thinking practice has trained around half a million individuals across diverse industries worldwide. Before joining IBM in 2021, she spent two decades spearheading strategic design initiatives in Silicon Valley, catering to Fortune 500 companies, startups, and non-profits in high-tech, energy, and healthcare sectors. She is a seasoned speaker at design conferences and has shared her insights on design at prestigious institutions like Harvard and Stanford. Additionally, Katrina Alcorn is also the acclaimed author of "Maxed Out," an award-winning book delving into the challenges faced by mothers in the workplace.

Clay Chandler

Chair, Brainstorm Design; Executive Editor, Asia FORTUNE

Clay Chandler is Fortune’s Asia editor. Based in Hong Kong, Clay oversees Fortune’s editorial operations throughout the region, contributes feature articles, commentary, and news analysis to the magazine and Fortune.com, and leads the Asia- and China-based conferences. Clay writes Eastworld, a twice-weekly newsletter with analysis of developments in Asian business, finance, and technology. Clay returned to Fortune after a six-year stint at McKinsey & Company. He worked previously for Fortune as Asia Editor in Beijing, and before that covered business, economics, and technology in the U.S. and Asia as senior staff writer for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Clay has lived in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and Tokyo, and reported from every major Asian capital. He speaks Mandarin and Japanese, is a graduate of Harvard University and a former fellow of Harvard’s John King Fairbank program on Chinese studies.