Meet the people that make it happen
CreativeMornings is powered by a troupe of über talented folks. Each and every month, hosts, videographers, photographers, and helpers come together, in their respective cities, to make our events happen. Meet the driving forces behind CreativeMornings.
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Founder
Tina started CreativeMornings in September of 2009 in NYC, wanting to create an accessible, inspiring morning event for people to meet. Some have called it "TED for the rest of us".
Chair
Craig Shapiro joined CreativeMornings in May 2011 as Chairman. Craig is a founder and investor at Collaborative Fund. Previously, he was President of GOOD magazine and an investor in several new media and technology companies including Kickstarter, Skillshare and Massive Health.
Breakfast Lecture Series Specialist
Kevin joined up with CreativeMornings as Breakfast Lecture Series Specialist in July 2011. Apart from feeding his intense passion for both breakfast and lectures, he's a strategist at Lovely Day, serves as editor for TBD goes to battle as an organizer for The Feast Social Innovation Conference, and produces a variety of shiny creative projects.
Chief Curator Of CM Goodness
Sophia joined CreativeMornings as Curator in January 2012. She is an editor at TBD, loves collecting photos of beautiful doors, and is studying Economics and Urban Planning at Berkeley.
Team New York, USA
Launched 09/2009
Tina has been running the main CreativeMornings chapter since September of 2009. What initially started in her design studio has now grown into a monthly 300+ people breakfast lecture series. Nothing makes Tina happier than seeing an engaged crowd of creative types on an early Friday morning. Tina believes that meeting up, meeting people in person, is more important than ever.
Besides running and growing CreativeMornings, Tina is the editor of swiss-miss.com, inventor of TeuxDeux, founder of Studiomates and creator of Tattly. She is also a mother of two.
Sy is an NYU film student and all-around media-enthusiast. She loves cupcakes and egalitarianism.
Emily is an interior photographer in NYC. If she weren't a photographer, she'd be a chef or an animal behaviorist.
Yoko spends a lot of time creeping about the Internet looking for things to read and ways to contribute.
Tory is a photographer of many things, she especially likes Portraits and Weddings.
Team Zurich, Switzerland
Launched 09/2010
Daniel Frei is a CreativeMornings pioneer. Not only was he the first to run a CreativeMornings chapter, he approached Tina with the idea of making different branches in general. When he's not wrangling Zurich's most creative folks to speak, Daniel runs a Zurich based PR and marketing consulting firm. He's a true networking ninja and greatest, first-ever chapter host.
Sandro Barbieri is an entrepreneur, software engineer and filmmaker. And the amazing force behind all the taped Zurich talks! Find out more about his companies over at about.me/sandro.
Dragica finally found out where to use that physics masters and the years of coding to make something that connects with people. She now works on exploring and performing electronic music. Incurably curious, Facebook, Twitter and the net in general are ideal places to fuel her quest for knowledge and interaction.
Rolf is co-founder of redsmoke.ch, the force behind all the taped Zurich talks. For some years, he was involved in distributing films from South America, Africa and Asia at trigon-film.org. As a hobby, he works as a projectionist at a local cinema orientkino.ch.
Team Los Angeles, USA
Launched 10/2010
Jon Setzen spends his days (and often nights) working as Creative Director at Something Massive in Venice, California. He's new to LA, having just moved here after a decade of living and working in Brooklyn, NYC. He's best known for the hundreds of rock posters he's made over the years and his work has been shown in NYC, LA, Japan, Denmark and the UK. He's had the pleasure of working with the likes of Yahoo!, Target, Alicia Keys, Sony Pictures, 826LA, MOMA and countless world-renowned photographers. He'll never turn off a Smiths song, never turn down a good taco and daydreams about Narragansett, Rhode Island. He lives in Silverlake with his wife, son and Siamese cat.
This hard as nails and sweet as sugar film producer users her "getting it done" attitude to make sure the chairs, the coffee, the donuts (the best in LA) and everything else in place for the LA chapter.
Nick Carranza is an L.A. based designer, and photographer. He sleeps with swatch books under his pillow, drinks pantone shakes to stay in shape, uses UV coating as sunblock and is cat lady crazy about animals."
Don't let this soft spoken kid fool you. He's got the skills. A talented designer and videographer who makes death metal when he's not working.
Team San Francisco, USA
Launched 02/2011
Erika Hall is co-founder and Director of Strategy at Mule Design Studio. Mule is an interactive design studio completing their first decade. In addition to helping run the show over there, Erika speaks about the importance of language to an effective user interface at various conferences and tries to make the business world speak more clearly through Unsuck It.
Shawna Seth is Mule Design's highly attentive project manager as well as an ardent lifelong learner. Dancer. Knitter. Lover of tiny greyhounds.
Caleb is an A/V wizard in the very best sense. He recently founded Youbiquicast to lend his skills to those with something to say.
Team Chicago, USA
Launched 06/2011
Mig is a designer hailing from the Windy City, creating within the confines of t-shirt awesome best known as Threadless. Aside from designing the internets and modeling tees, Mig asks influential folks to share advice in a project called Humble Pied and teaches at The Chicago Portfolio School. Mig has been recognized with the likes of HOW, CMYK, Print, Rockport Publishers, UnderConsideration and of course, Swiss Miss. You can find him speaking about design and general awesome at schools, companies and conferences, most recently including The School of Visual Arts, Zappos and The HOW Conference.
Craig loves to experiment with video and photography. He is also very tall.
Charlie Curran is a filmmaker, producer, and new media something-or-other. Born in Chicago, he is currently pursuing a degree in Film and Television at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Chris Gallevo loves photography, illustration, art directing, Chicago and talented funny people.
Team London, UK
Launched 07/2011
Drew: dandy, boulevardier and auto obsessive. His natural home seems to be somewhere 'twixt the cafe life of Soho and the East End yet he spent a lot of his childhood on an Australian sheep farm. Really. While having a laugh working with the likes of Lexus, Audi and Kia and writing for DownsideUpDesign and Car Design News, he became a magnet for car designers and the students he continues to work with. They lap up his articles and lectures about automotive and strategic design, and pester him with so many questions he'll never finish the PhD thesis he was writing on the subject. Today he's Sense Worldwide's guru to anyone who wants to know the future of transformation and transportation. Or about Grace Jones.
Raj is here to lend moral support, dispense design advice, get excited and clap at the end.
Charlotte comes from a small Island south of England called the Isle of Wight. She too is small, but her presence and relentless effervescence as Sense Worldwide's Studio Manager are big time.
Team Berlin, Germany
Launched 08/2011
Jürgen Siebert was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of PAGE magazine (Hamburg, 1986 – 1991)
before he joined FontShop in Berlin 1991. After establishing the FontFont typeface library,
the FontBook and the FUSE project for FSI FontShop International he became marketing director
of FontShop Germany in mid 90th and CMO of FontShop AG from 2002. Since November 2010 he is
the managing director of FontShop AG.
Some of his tasks: member of the FontFont type board, program director of TYPO Berlin
and TYPO London, co-publisher of FontBook (print & app), curator of Create Berlin,
permanent jury member of Design made in Germany and since Aug 2011 responsible for Creative Mornings Berlin.
Loves great parties and weddings, illustration, typography, loud music, art & photography. Graphic designer and screenprinting hero for Le Carrousel. Likes lists too.
Team Stockholm, Sweden
Launched 09/2011
Richard works with Smart Phones and innovate new services to users. He loves to be where mobile and social meet. His aim with Creative Mornings in Stockholm is to make people meet, talk and be inspired to act. now.
Jesper Siö̈berg spends his days as Creative Director at Salt Nordic. a retail agency with focus on in-store experience and campaigns. He used to work for the Saatchi network in Stockholm and Copenhagen as Art Director. If he didn't work with communication he would sail his multihull every day.
Nisse is a filmmaker and graphic designer from northern Sweden. Currently working as a motion designer at Å̊kestam Holst, an ad agency in Stockholm. He loves creating music and always has a new project up his sleeve.
Oskar works as a videoeditor. He also likes to fish.
Sofia studies Interactive Communication at Berghs School of Communication and her interests include: forest animals, yoga, The West Wing and brunch.
Robert, mostly full-time photographer, part-time slave and has now turned pro-bono. Spends most of the time either in front of a camera or a computer, and addicted to most things creative.
Team Vancouver, BC, Canada
Launched 09/2011
Busse is a co-founder and Design Director at Industrial Brand in Vancouver, BC where for the last 15 years he has successfully lead clients to their business objectives through brand strategy, identity, communication and interactive design solutions. He invests time in his creative community as a teacher, advisor, mentor and host of Likemind Vancouver, Interesting Vancouver and as an executive board member of the BC chapter of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada. Busse is also a passionate cook and food lover and co-founder of the popular food blog, Foodists.ca. He lives with his wife Andrea and blind dog Charlie in the Commercial Drive area of East Van.
Amanda connects people with ideas and hosts conversations that matter by designing learning experiences and large group conversation processes.
Shawn is an experienced web designer and creative director and the founder of Interlink Conference in Vancouver.
Kathleen helps creative and tech enterprises develop their brands through public relations.
Hilary is passionate about hyperlocal living and empowering individuals to make positive choices that benefit themselves, their communities and the planet.
Ryan is a photographer, graphic designer and letterpress enthusiast all in one.
Mahyar is a graphic designer and influencer extraordinaire.
Johnathon is a designer, photographer, educator, and foodist.
Trevor takes photos for fashion & editorial clients, blogs about Vancouver culture and loves his bike.
Mike is a design army of one, a lone wolf, a solitary man ... but not in a weird, misanthropic way.
Pauline is a Communication Designer - brand strategy, web development, marketing communication and Web Communication Chair for GDC in Vancouver.
Jason is an interactive designer, dreamer and father.
Phil is an interactive designer and an all-round design geek.
Team Auckland, New Zealand
Launched 10/2011
Jade Tang is a passionate, innovative, creative entrepreneur – She endeavours to utilise her professional skills, experience and networks to create social change in the community, through digital media and design. Loves "coffee" and often lives by the rule "you can sleep when you're dead". Some creative projects Jade has recently dedicated sleepless nights to is; yMedia, The Big Idea, We Can Create and now CreativeMornings/Auckland.
Elise brings a background in arts policy research and a passion for seeing Auckland become a world class creative city to her work with CMakl. Towards this goal, she works with a network of local arts leaders called Creative Coalition, which seeks to advocate on behalf of the local creative sector to council. Elise's personal creative outlet is her events fun-firm Vibracorp, known for the unusual and theatrical happenings it puts on.
Photographer, Graphic Designer & Aspiring Dandy, Kaan will be around to document, converse, offer moral support and a dubious sense of humour. You have been warned.
Sean runs an edgy little production company called Eyeball Moving Image and is wellknown for the smooth vids he puts together for his fixie bike friends in his spare time.
Davian has a long history of camera work in the local industry and has recently launched Rooftops Media, his one-man production powerhouse. He's always got a social or political cause on the go and devotes a lot of his time to documentary passion projects.
Team Milan, Italy
Launched 10/2011
Nik loves mozzarella but he is lactose intolerant. Unable to find a career in the diary industry, he changed his plans and decided to co-found The Hub Milan, the first italian center for social innovation and part of the international Hub network. He also co-founded Creonomy, a project management web-app for designer, awarded by Google in 2010 as one of the most promising Italian startups. He's personal website is nicolo.me
Daniela is the founder and business developer at Neue Big, an indipendent creative studio in Milano.She is actually exploring and experimenting a new collective creative process that connects talents through the web. She loves cooking italian risotto and she is obsessed by everything is made by paper and cardboard.
Cecilia is an indipendent Graphic Designer and Art Director, specialised in corporate identity and brand strategy. Born in Milan, lived in Los Angeles for a while, she currently works across Italy. Loves typography, chinese food and riding her bicycle.
Team Portland, USA
Launched 10/2011
Tsilli was born in Israel, raised in Berkeley, and trained in New York. She landed in Portland in 2006 to eat and create with the best. She loves the independent spirit of the Pacific Northwest, and feels lucky to be surrounded by so many creative people doing amazing things.
She has been co-conspiring with Fine Design Group for nearly a decade, both in the trenches, and for a time as Design Director. She has designed award-winning projects for Francis Ford Coppola and David Bowie. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, HOW, and Print. She taught at the Parsons Design & Technology MFA program before heading back west.
She is also the creator of New Ketubah and Alef Betty, and she enjoys making things for the pure love of it.
Matt enjoys shooting pics, brewing, diving, cooking, and eating.
Emily developed her independent, creative personality through living in contrasting landscapes. During the summer she built sandcastles on the Oregon Coast; in the winter she explored her creative mind in the arctic landscape of the northernmost city in the United States, Barrow, Alaska.
Team Seattle, USA
Launched 10/2011
As a Founding Partner and Studio Director at Design Commission, David works clients of all shapes and sizes to create the interactive products and services. He loves connecting business, design and technology in order to create meaningful experiences. David also teaches design at the School of Visual Concepts, mentors for The Designer Fund, and drives an environmentally sensible car.
Team Toronto, ON, Canada
Launched 11/2011
Behrouz is a designer, aspiring to bring design thinking to individuals and organizations with human centered ambitions.
Fascinated by the power of group thinking, Behrouz designs and facilitates group thinking sessions and visioning workshops. He ponders endlessly about processes and cultures that support innovation and documents them in barely decipherable diagrams.
Behrouz sits on the advisory board of Project Wildfire and works alongside talented folks in the Toronto based digital agency Jet Cooper. He writes and speaks when he can and get's a kick out of gathering porous brains under one roof.
Jacklyn's work has been published in the Globe & Mail and on the cover of Eye Weekly. She has contributes to local publications, artists, and independent businesses. Her clients include Ryerson University and the University of Toronto. She enjoys working on inspirational and intriguing projects. Jacklyn is dedicated continually learning and growing as an artist, and is always looking for exciting, new projects.
Behzad is a composer and sound engineer. He works with musicians, motion designers and other creatives to bring their vision to life. His work is often inspired by observing nature and experimenting with found sound. Behzad works with a wide array of digital composing and motion tools. As the Sound Man extraordinaire for the Toronto chapter of Creative Mornings, he makes sure creative ideas get recorded and broadcasted at their best.
Bio: Jordan is a freelance designer & motion graphics artist. He dabbles in all things visual and technological.
Team Budapest, Hungary
Launched 12/2011
Dániel is an art historian. Right after graduating he began to work for hg.hu, a popular architecture and design webzine and in 2009 eventually became chief editor. Besides, he is a member of Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Center, and inexplicably infatuated with post-war concrete buildings.
Team Aarhus, Denmark
Launched 2/2012
René is a project leader, graphic recorder, Illustrator, designer, but first and foremost a maker. He is the co-founder of and project leader in the creative playground Sideprojects. When He is not working in sideprojects or drawing strange drawings he works as a illustrator for the kaospilots. when he's not working.... actually he's always working on something.
Kristian Schwarz is co-founder of the notorious playground company Sideprojects in Aarhus - Denmark. He is a deep spiritual human being who doesn't care too much about the way things are supposed to be. He uses most of his time thinking, talking with people, writing and doing stuff.
He hails for the south and always says his a native of the sun. An artist using photography, partner in SideProjects, mad about graphic recording, manic collaborator. lets do something
Anders Svanborg has worked with filmmaking most of his life. A year ago he joined the playground called Sideprojects. He is using his skills in film production to help out document all the exiting projects Sideprojects throw themselves at. He is a calm and organized person who seeks to learn and do.
Team Utrecht, Netherlands
Launched 2/2012
After having worked at several design agencies for 15 years Michael became a freelancer in january of 2011. Setting up a dutch chapter of Creative Mornings seemed like the perfect way to do something other than pushing pixels all day. When he's not getting up to his elbows in html and css, you're likely to find him in the pool, on a bike or on a run training for an upcoming triathlon.
Marjolein works as an online projectmanager and is always curious about new things. She enjoys music, festivals, reading, smart design and having dinner with friends.
Karlijn worked at design agencies, in retail and currently as an internet project manager. She is always searching the internet and the streets for the latest trends and hippest gadgets. The results of this search can be found on her blog www.carlio75.com. When she is not working, trend spotting of surfing the web she tries to train for a triathlon or makes goodies with her button machine.
Team Cape Town, South Africa
Launched 2/2012
Most of the day Cat spends working on various #thinkdo design and display projects. She keeps a blog, she walks her dogs ... and the magical part of the day is spent with her two little girls and her fairytale husband.
Desmond Louw is a Cape Town based photographer, specializing in location, car and wedding photography. His wife, dog, camera and skateboard makes him happy. He loves good design and the weather.
Bronwyn Morris is a film student at SAE Institute Cape Town. Make her laugh, and she'll be your friend forever.
Kerryn Longueira is a solo designer /slash coder and cheerleader. She would love to change the world.. if only she could find the right source code.
Antonia is a journalist and photographer, a thinker and networker, passionate about sharing inspiration. "Don't keep it to yourself", she says.
Copyright 2010–2011 by CreativeMornings, unless otherwise noted.
Are you interested in starting a chapter in your city? Email us a video application to creativemornings@gmail.com.
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