Board of Directors Biographies
Russ Unger, President
West Chicago, Illinois, USA
Russ Unger is the Director of Experience Planning for Draftfcb, the largest advertising/marketing agency in the Midwest and currently serves on the board of directors of the Information Architecture Institute as president. Russ has been working on websites since 1993—when there was only Notepad to code with and Mosaic was the only browser around. That was when he found his interest in User Experience Design and Information Architecture began to flourish.
Since then, he has worked with a number of major brands, including Sharpie, Kraft, Kmart, Gatorade, Propel, Quaker and Celebrity Cruise Lines, as well as on large scale Intranet and Extranet applications for such companies as Volkswagen Credit, Audi Financial Services, Information Resources, Inc. and Marsh. He has been involved in the Information Architecture for large scale public-facing sites for such companies as Metromix, Oprah.com, United Airlines and Hewlett-Packard. He has also worked off-line, creating unique biometric (fingerprint reader) applications and has worked as the Design Lead for Motorola’s Connectivity domain where he was responsible for creating user interfaces for mobile applications in Motorola's Consumer Experience Design group.
In addition, Russ is co-author of the book "A Project Guide to UX Design" for Peachpit Press (Voices That Matter) and is co-authoring a book on research methods due out in 2010.
For more on Russ, visit userglue.com.
Jonell Gades, Treasurer
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Jonell has over 9 years of experience architecting and directing complex interactive projects. She is currently a Design Lead and IA at Fidelity Investments, working out of the Raleigh, NC office. At Fidelity, Jonell has been involved in next-generation vision projects for Fidelity.com, myPlanSM initiatives for Fidelity’s Employer Services, and implementation of the online messaging infrastructure, as well as other projects. She was appointed by Fidelity’s senior leadership in Design to co-chair a process innovation team, tasked with providing recommendations to improve internal processes and morale within the Design group. She has also been providing mentorship to young IA’s and Design Leads within the Fidelity Web Design group.
Prior to joining Fidelity, Jonell served as Web Consultant at MIT in Cambridge, MA, providing communication and information architecture strategy to departments, organization and special groups within the Institute. Jonell also served as Sr. Interactive Producer and IA at Cramer Productions in Norwood, MA, working with clients such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Gillette, and Serono Reproductive Health. Her maiden voyage as a lead IA at Cramer produced 2 national Medical Marketing and Media awards for Serono Reproductive Health.
People who have worked with Jonell recommend her for her sharp eye for creating exceptional user experiences, excellent project management skills, and ability to create solid, trusting relationships among team members. No matter what the environment, Jonell brings an empathic heart, a "let’s do it" attitude, and a Midwestern farmer’s daughter work ethic.
Jonell in a native of Minnesota, but prefers the winters of North Carolina. She has a Bachelor of Music in Percussion Performance from Kent State University and is also a Certified Mediator.
Visit Jonell's LinkedIn page at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jonellgades
Livia Labate, Secretary
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Livia has been designing shared information systems my entire professional life. I consulted for small, medium and large enterprises across several countries for several years, where she learned that observation and adaptability are IA’s best friends. As the owner of her own business, she learned how to apply IA to business situations as successfully as to design problems. Finally, as the one responsible for developing the practice inside a large organization, she's learned that competence, self-confidence and bravery take you very far, but it’s in caring for and understanding the goals, interests and needs of others that you deliver meaningful results.
She was lucky to come across the IA community and subsequently the IA Institute, where she jumped to the opportunity to participate in the Translations Initiative, Mentoring Initiative and as a member of the Board of Directors in 2003-2005. She has also been part of the organizing committee for the IA Summit for the past 5 years where she's been involved with pre-conference seminars, organizing Bird-of-a-Feather sessions and more recently, the very successful Wall of Deliverables.
The quality and energy of the IA community was a key influencer in her decision to pursue Information Architecture as a career. More than a professional relationship, it’s in the IA community that she connects with people with like minds and interests, and continues to expand her horizons and contribute to something bigger than herself.
For more on Livia, see livlab.com.
Christian Crumlish
Oakland, California, USA
Christian Crumlish has been developing and writing about shared information spaces since 1994. He is the curator of the Yahoo! design pattern library. He is the author of, most recently, Designing Social Interfaces, (O'Reilly, 2009), with Erin Malone, as well as The Power of Many: How the Living Web is Transforming Politics, Business, and Everday Life (Wiley, 2004).
Christian is most intrigued these days by the challenges inherent in emerging interfaces and the design of social experiences.
For more on Christian, see http://christiancrumlish.com.
Will Evans
Washington, D.C., USA
Will Evans is Director, User Experience Practice Lead for Twin Technologies with 14 years industry experience in presentation layer and user experience design. His experiences includes directing UX for AIR Worldwide, UX Architect for social media site Gather.com, and UX Architect responsible for the interaction design of Kayak.com. He worked at Lotus/IBM where he was the senior information architect, and for Curl - a DARPA-funded MIT project when he was at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. Prior to Curl, Will was an interaction designer working on various search and knowledge management related product suites including Northern Light, KM Suite II and QueryServer.
Will holds masters degrees in business administration, human-computer interaction and cognitive science. His interests and studies have focused on design, information architecture, human factors and information visualization. He earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics and philosophy.
For more on Will, visit http://semanticfoundry.com.
Andrew Hinton
Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, USA
For 18 years now Andrew has worked as a designer, instructor, writer or consultant of various stripes. But he didn't discover the nascent IA community until 1999, and it was a revelation: people figuring out what happens "between the pages" of the Web, and who understood that a new kind of space needed a new kind of architecture. Since then, he's been fortunate to continue being a part of the community, and seeing IA mature and grow as a community of practice.
In the past, his clients have been small and large, including Fortune 500s such as American Express, Shaw, Wachovia and Kimberly-Clark. For the past 5 years, his day job has been as a Senior IA in Vanguard's User Experience Group.
From my pre-Web education, Andrew holds a BA in Philosophy, an MA in Literature and an MFA in Writing. He is a regular speaker at conferences like the IA Summit, and sometimes writes for publications like Boxes & Arrows. His current obsessions include Communities of Practice, social design factors, what games teach us about design, and the meaning of context in digital spaces.
As a co-founder of the Institute, Andrew was honored to serve on the 2008 IAI Board of Advisors.
You can find out more via Andrew's home on the Web at inkblurt.com.
Andrea Resmini
Jönköping, Sweden
Andrea is an Information architect. He has a formal background in Architecture and Industrial Design and a long-standing experience of System and Network Administration. He has been practicing information architecture since 1999 and is currently pursuing a PhD degree focused on IA and UX for large complex online juridical and historical collections.
Andrea is on the Board of Advisors of the Information Architecture Institute, chairs the Italian Information Architecture Summit, is a founding member of the European IA Network, and coordinates REG-IA, the Research and Education Group in Information Architecture.
Andrea co-founded the Journal of Information Architecture and acts now as Associate Editor in charge of 'keeping it going'.
Read about Andrea at http://andrearesmini.com.
This page was last modified on September 30, 2009 09:10 PM.