As the Dean of Academic Affairs at Santa Monica College, Dr. Patricia Ramos assists the college by developing partnerships with business, industry, labor, NGO, and other educational institutions, in an effort to align SMC’s career technical education programs to the current and projected workforce needs of the Los Angeles region and the State of California. Her civic engagement spans over two decades. Dr. Ramos has served as an appointed official as a member of the Woman’s Commission and the L.A. County Workforce Development Board. She serves on educational and workforce committees at local, state, and national levels. Dr. Ramos holds a doctorate from the University of Southern California.

Nicole Rife Chan is invested in accessible design education as a medium for positive community impact. She serves as Faculty Lead of the Interaction Design B.S. and Graphic Design Program at Santa Monica College. Nicole held non-profit and corporate design roles involving media, print, and digital before earning her MFA in Media Design Practices at ArtCenter College of Design.

Maxim is a creative technologist and a design educator with experience in multimedia-rich Web applications, interactive installations, and generative computer graphics. He comes with a background in linguistics and audio-video design. His current work centers on new forms of media and emerging interfaces for human-computer interaction. Maxim holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design in New York.

Luke Johnson is an employee engagement strategist and design educator whose portfolio includes work for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Nokia, and Riot Games. He collaborates with HR, internal comms, and executives to develop customized products to solve unique, internal problems. Luke holds an MFA in Media Design Practices from ArtCenter College of Design. He currently works as a professor in Graphic Design and Interaction Design at Santa Monica College.

Nicola Vruwink, MFA, is an artist, educator, and designer who is committed to mentoring future creatives. With an extensive background in private postsecondary education, Nicola is committed to making high-quality education more accessible and equitable. She has found her home in the California community college system. Her passion for design and design education fuels her teaching practice; currently, Nicola is full-time faculty in the Graphic Design program at Santa Monica College and maintains her own design studio Poni.

As a former community college transfer student and first-generation college graduate, Amanda Garcia is dedicated to advocating for a more equitable and inclusive learning environment that serves all students. Her primary goal as the CMD Counselor is to empower students by highlighting existing strengths, so they can feel confident entering the industry as their authentic selves. Amanda is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Educational Leadership at California Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Ann Marie came to SMC’s Career Services Center with a background in marketing project management. With several years’ experience hiring artists and designers to execute corporate visions, Ann Marie brings and shares her knowledge on how to stand out and get hired to the IxD Program Students.

Jeff Gordon comes to IxD with twenty-plus years of experience at Santa Monica College. He was a highly involved student leader at SMC before transferring to Cal State Northridge for his bachelor's degree in radio and television production. He later continued his studies at Loyola Marymount University for his master's degree in counseling. While at SMC he has served in a myriad of areas including classified staff in student services and as counseling faculty in Associated Students, Scholars, General Counseling and Transfer Services, Welcome Center, and Outreach and Recruitment. In his role as IxD project manager Jeff Gordon is focused on increasing the pool of talented applicants with students that come from a multitude of diverse backgrounds. At the center of his approach in working with IxD is a warm and welcoming environment that is inclusive and equitable for our students, faculty, and staff.

Dr. Julia G. Raz is a faculty member in the Communication and Media Studies Department at Santa Monica College. She earned a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in communication from UC San Diego, and her area of expertise is women in gaming culture. Dr. Raz has been teaching in higher education for the past decade. In 2017, she created the Media 4: Introduction to Video Game Studies course for SMC.

Dee Foster, an alumna of Santa Monica College's Interaction Design program, is the founder of Wheeler Dempsey Studio and Meadow co-working space. Leveraging her degree, Foster has built a career around helping others. At Wheeler Dempsey, she offers research and design services to kickstart businesses and secure funding for startups. At Meadow, she has created a work space that cultivates community and creativity. Her central mission is to foster innovation and empower individuals, providing the essential tools and guidance to bring their ideas to fruition.

Dr. Lea Hald is a professor in the Psychology Department at SMC. She has a doctorate in Psychology with a focus in Cognitive Science, a master’s degree, and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology. Her undergraduate teaching experience includes courses in research methods, statistics, cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, and introduction to psychology. Her recent research focuses on applying embodied pedagogy to improve learning.

Alisa Olinova is a freelance creative consultant, art director, graphic designer, and illustrator— a professional creative person based in LA. She loves making things come alive through design. Formerly very nice, she has held every role from Design Intern to Design Director; working with 100+ organizations, many of them nonprofits, as well as teaching and speaking about design and social impact.

Richard Schuler is a Los Angeles-based product designer focused primarily on architectural lighting. His experience also includes work in furniture and consumer products. He has also had his hand in several creative efforts, including collaborating as an illustrator on the internet’s first hypertext novel, Sunshine 69, and the comic novella Dead in Desemboque, as well as a drummer for the post-rock swamp-boogie band, King Kong. Richard holds a Masters of Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design.

Brooklyn Brown is a digital product design leader, currently working for GitHub on tools that help open source maintainers have conversations with their developer communities. She holds a BFA in graphic design from Otis College of Art and Design and began her career at a small design studio working on brand identity and print publication projects. She transitioned to product design after finishing her MFA at ArtCenter College of Design’s Media Design Practices program. She has worked for a variety of tech companies in the last several years, from design consultancies to startups to Microsoft and now GitHub.

Shannon Herbert is a writer and professor in the English Department at SMC. Her dissertation research at The University of Chicago examined the relationship between fiction and the late Twentieth-century fetish for technologically-enhanced objectivity. Both her research and teaching employ feminist and decolonial practices to center the experiences of historically marginalized communities and perspectives.

A Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary Creative Director & Designer with an award-winning track record of delivering creative strategies and executing design solutions with the most iconic brands in the world: Nike, Adidas, YouTube, Warner Bros., Ford, and more. David is currently the Director of Product Design at Red Bull, responsible for leading a global creative design and research team creating the next evolution of consumer-facing digital products.

Guild Copeland is the Co-Founder of Sisu, an award-winning digital design studio based in LA. Guild handles all business development efforts and also serves as the strategic lead for Sisu’s clients, including Disney, DC Comics, American Express, Western Union, and the Grammys. He began his career in Washington, D.C., navigating the high seas of politics after graduating from Yale.

Santa Monica College alumna, Jill DaSilva, is the CEO and Founder of the UX Design agency, Digital Karma. Jill began programming when she was 8 years old and has been designing digital experiences since the early 2000s. Beyond her consulting work, Jill teaches and speaks globally about User Experience Design, is a mentor for UX Designers, is an official Adobe XD Instructor.

Sam is a graphic designer and information architect with 18 years of direct hands-on experience in graphic and mobile/web design practice. Sam has an MFA in Graphic Design from OTIS College of Art and Design and a bachelor of science in Biomedical Engineering. Crossing over to Graphic Design with a Mathematics and Engineering background has given Sam the ability to look at communication challenges from a unique perspective. Sam views graphic design as a multidisciplinary practice between “Art” and “System Engineering” plus “Linguistics” with the goal to establish a clear and universally understandable dialogue.