Meet the Jury for the 2025 Service Design Award

The Service Design Award 2025 is proud to introduce this year’s outstanding international jury. These industry leaders, innovators, and changemakers are ready to review the world’s best service design work. Meet the experts who will help spotlight the projects making real impact globally.

Meet the Jury for the 2025 Service Design Award

The Service Design Award is the ultimate global recognition for excellence in service design. It celebrates the work shaping businesses, public services, and communities worldwide — from commercial breakthroughs to public sector transformations and student-led innovation.

Finalists and winners will be showcased at the Service Design Global Conference 2025 in Dallas, Texas, this October 15–17, where the spotlight will be on those setting new standards for our industry.

Behind the scenes, an extraordinary panel of global leaders is ready to review your work. These are designers, strategists, innovators, and changemakers with decades of experience — and a shared passion for recognising work that makes a real impact.

Your Moment to Shine

These are the experts who will be reviewing your work — and they can’t wait to discover the next standout projects in service design.

Get global recognition. Inspire change. Join the world’s most influential service design community.

Submit your project now and be a winner!

 

The Jury

Brian Gilespie - Head of Jury

Brian Gilespie - Head of Jury

Brian has been a member of the Service Design Network Leadership Team since 2017 focusing on aspects of the member experience. Brian leads the case study library editorial team and co-hosts the Global Café member meetup and has been a passionate member the Awards jury since 2023. This year Brian takes on the role of head of jury.
 
Based in the Greater Boston area for many years, his career trajectory has encompassed the evolution of User Experience and Service Design. With an MBA in Design Management Brian guides clients and partners in the USA and Europe to lead and manage the diverse activities associated with driving business success by design. Brian also partners with PARK, a design leadership and design management consultancy, to provide service design management coaching and education through the PARK Academy.

Born in Ireland and living in the US, I strive as much as possible to live a trans-Atlantic life, spending time in Cape Cod, Portugal and Ireland. 

Eliisa Sarkkinen - Siili Solutions

Eliisa Sarkkinen - Siili Solutions

Eliisa is a passionate advocate for the power of design to drive meaningful change. She leads the SDN chapter in Finland and hosted the global service design conference SDGC24 in Helsinki—an unforgettable gathering that welcomed 1,350 participants from 55 countries. Eliisa has also served as head judge for Finland’s most respected digital design competition, Grand One, reviewing work across all categories, including Best Use of AI and Data, Service Design, User Experience, and Best Accessibility.

In her daily work, Eliisa leads the Business and Service Design team at Siili Solutions as a Lead Service Designer. Siili Solutions is a Finnish AI-powered digital design consultancy company. One of the projects closest to her heart has been leading the Virtual Port Arrival project, chosen as a flagship initiative at the UN COP27 Climate Conference. The solution has the potential to reduce more than 24% of maritime CO₂ emissions. It is designed to be part of Nemo (Maritime Single Window), which earned Siili Solutions the 2023 Service Design Award in the Professional Commercial category.

With a multidisciplinary background, Eliisa has also worked as a lecturer, speaker, trainer, and coach. Her expertise lies in leading complex international transformation projects and exploring the opportunities of AI and data-driven design, guided by systemic and strategic design thinking.

Simone Carier - Digital Agentur Brandenburg

Simone Carier - Digital Agentur Brandenburg

Simone Carrier is a service designer and public sector enthusiast. She has been working with government organisations in Germany and abroad for over 15 years. Her focus lies on designing better digital service and transforming the organisations behind.


Simone is co-founder of the Public Service Lab, an initiative to bring human-centred design and public administration closer together in Germany, as well as the Good Administration Award. 

Today, Simone is heading up the team for digital administration at Digital Agentur Brandenburg.

Cathy Huang - CBi China Bridge

Cathy Huang - CBi China Bridge

Cathy founded CBi China Bridge in 2003, the first insight-based innovation consulting firm in China.  Most recently, she co-founded Successful Design, a social enterprise aiming to amplify the value of design.
 
Having broad influence both socially and in the global design industry, Cathy is frequently invited to conferences in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. She enjoys adventures - from crossing the Gobi desert in Dunhuang to bungee jumping in New Zealand. Her continued dedication to challenging the limits fuels her creativity for both business and design.
 
Cathy has won many professional design awards, while also accruing honors for her leadership as an entrepreneur and a woman in business, such as the Innovation Category of the Women Leadership Awards presented by IPWS (International Professional Women’s Society), "China’s Women to Watch” award by Advertising Age, and "Female Hero Honor of Shanghai". She promotes the image of Chinese design and aims to leverage her role as a female mentor to inspire a new generation of start-ups in China.  

Mauricio Manhaes - SCAD University

Mauricio Manhaes - SCAD University

Mauricio Manhaes, Ph.D. is an experienced professional with a genuine passion for service and design. Focused on delivering disruptive products—both innovative services and tangible goods—he consistently translates complex ideas into practical, sustainable solutions.

Notably, Mauricio grew a service design graduate program tenfold and established five dynamic service design teams for one of the largest banks in the USA.

As a dedicated author and creative strategist, he remains committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusivity throughout his work, ensuring that innovation benefits a wide spectrum of communities.

Jamin Hegeman - Harmonic

Jamin Hegeman - Harmonic

Jamin Hegeman is a seasoned design executive and consultant with over 20 years of experience pushing the boundaries of design. A rare blend of poet, designer, and strategist—he delivers from vision to execution with clarity and care.

As Executive Partner at Harmonic, he leads business transformation, journey management, and customer-centered culture across industries.

From designing a social networking app for HIV patients at Nokia to shaping service design at Adaptive Path—leading work for Bonnier, Booz Allen, REI, SK Telecom, USAA, and Wells Fargo—Jamin has consistently transformed customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and people-centered culture at top brands.

As VP of Design at Capital One, he led design across Auto Lending, Home Loans, Experience Strategy, Design Operations, and Enterprise Data & Machine Learning—growing the discipline and helping transform the organization into a more experience-led enterprise.

Committed to the craft, he spent 15 years as a leader within the Service Design Network, directing conferences across Europe and North America. He’s spoken at IxDA, Productized, SDGC, UX London, and UX Tokyo; taught at SMU and Carnegie Mellon; and contributed to the foundational books This is Service Design Thinking and This is Service Design Doing.

Jamin holds a master’s degree in design from Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor’s degree in poetry writing from the University of Pittsburgh. He’s also a husband, dog owner, artist, soccer player, and home brewer.

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