Mentors
Aliya Baptista
Aliya Maria Baptista works as an Interaction Designer at R/GA, New York. She has worked with clients such as Walmart, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson. Prior to this, she graduated from the Interaction Design Masters program at Carnegie Mellon University. In her professional past, she has also been a television producer, a writer and an online content manager. Her interests lie in the intersection of interaction design and architecture, technology in public spaces, designing cities and environments, play, designing for happiness, designing for social impact and service design.
Samantha Berg
Samantha graduated as a DEA major from Human Ecology in 2009. Eager to pursue a career in user experience, she moved across the country to San Francisco, where she’s been working ever since at HP/Palm as an interaction designer. Moving to California didn’t lessen Samantha’s ties to Cornell- she volunteers with the Cornell Alumni Admissions Ambassador Network (CAAAN) and is Reunion Chair for the Class of 2009. Outside of work and Cornell, Samantha likes cooking, traveling, trivia nights, and exploring San Francisco.
Patricia Comstock Bellantoni
A lover of the human mind, practical optimist, and informal
motivational speaker, Patricia is an Information Architect at Weight
Watchers International. She began her career in website copywriting
and content strategy – always mixed with information architecture work
- and has also been a full-service website consultant. A couple of
years ago, Patricia moved to full-time user experience design at House
Party, an experiential marketing and social media company.
Derek Chan
Derek Chan is an interaction designer with a penchant for game design. He’s interested in how gameplay can change behavior and positions himself at the intersection of interaction and game design. As a Senior Interaction Designer at R/GA, he is helping to build out Nike’s Digital Sport product line, which includes the Nike+ FuelBand and the new Nike+ web platform. Derek holds a MFA in Interaction Design from the School of Visual Arts.
Carl Collins
Carl Collins is an interaction designer, information architect and content strategist, which is to say he is a planner, writer, drawer and sometimes coder of things that work on internets, cellphones, Xboxes and toothbrushes. Having worked at several design agencies and startups in NY and Michigan he currently splits his time between working on side project like his 3d printed jewelery business GothamSmith, as adjunct faculty at Parsons and a full time position as an interaction designer.
James Gartrell
James is a UX traveler: his adventures have taken him to prison, peddled ring tones, and help small businesses get out their marketing message. James has 8+ years experience in everything UX, including interaction design, information architecture, and even running a team. James is in heaven whenever he’s designing interfaces, interviewing users, or leading whiteboard discussions.
Karlyn Neel
Karlyn Neel is a Sr. Design Manager at eBay. She was the design lead for eBay’s iPhone application. eBay’s iPhone app was featured prominently as part of Apple’s App Store launch and has since gone on to generate over $2 billion in eBay sales. She now leads a high performing design team that creates fresh and innovative experiences that improve people’s lives.
In addition to her work at eBay, Karlyn has also created award-winning design for e-commerce, retail, technology and financial industry clients including Sprint, Macy’s, Mervyn’s, Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual, Hewlett-Packard, Providian and WebEx.
Patrick Neeman
Patrick Neeman is Director of User Experience at Jobvite, a Social Recruiting platform with hundreds of customers, including Twitter, Groupon, Living Social and LinkedIn. He’s worked on the web for 17 years. Some of the companies he’s has worked with and for include Microsoft, MySpace, Move.com, Orbitz, Comcast, and Disney. More importantly, he’s the owner of the UX Drinking Game, contributing to speakeasies at agencies all over the world, and runs a blog, Usability Counts.
Andrea “Ajay” Revels
Ajay Revels is a design researcher with expertise in user experience and design strategy of complex web-based and mobile applications. Her approach combines an ecosystem perspective with ethnographic techniques to research how people create, connect to and circulate information to meet their business, social and decision-making needs. Her other research interests include “polite” design, research communication, science literacy, the future of money, ecosystem-centric design, and selfsufficient cities.
Caitlin Robinson
Caitlin is a senior interaction designer with a passion for making tools. She approaches the problem-solving process with user centered research and systematic design methods. Her interests include design for immigrant communities and documentary photography.
Caitlin currently works at R/GA where she (in partnership with Nike) is striving to make athletes better. She received her Masters of Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon and her B.A. from Duke.
Kevin Saunders
Kevin attended Cornell from 1992-1998, earning an M. Eng. degree in Environmental Engineering. He transitioned to video game design and production and has worked with companies such as Atari, Electronic Arts, Lucas Arts, Obsidian Entertainment, Sega, and Westwood Studios. He currently works at Alelo on serious games that use instructional social simulations to teach language and culture. In early 2012, Kevin finished writing the second edition of his book, Game Interface Design.
Anthony Viviano
Anthony Viviano, 10-year UX veteran, is a UX Lead at TD Ameritrade, where he’s redesigning the user experience for TDA’s most active investors. He’s also leading the effort to employ Lean Startup methods for the User Experience Team. Before joining TDA, Anthony worked at a Organic where he worked on a wide variety of brands. Most recently, he led the UX re-design of the Hilton HHonors site and tested users in China, Germany, Italy and the United States.
Alla Zollers
Alla is a passionate and innovative experience consultant. Over the last six years, she has worked as a user experience lead for agencies, startups, and software companies. Alla is also personal coach, and she strives to help individuals create a fulfilling, and exceptional life.
[...] Mentors [...]