VizThink

Cliff Atkinson

Cliff Atkinson is an acclaimed writer, popular keynote speaker, and consultant to leading attorneys, Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. He designed the presentations that helped persuade a jury to award a $253 million verdict to the plaintiff in the nation's first Vioxx trial in 2005, which Fortune magazine called "frighteningly powerful." Cliff's book Beyond Bullet Points (Microsoft Press, 2007) is an Amazon.com Top 5 bestseller that expands on a communications approach he has taught at many top law firms, government agencies, lobbying firms, business schools and corporations, including Toyota, Nestle, Bristol-Myers Squibb and the United Nations.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Kevin Cheng

Kevin Cheng one of those kids who missed the memo to stop drawing after the first grade. Nowadays, he splits his crayon time between Brickhouse, Yahoo!'s internal incubator and OK/Cancel, an online comic on design he co-founded. He also co-founded a company for other like-minded crayon junkies in Off Panel Productions, an online comic publishing network. Kevin has previously exerted his sliver of influence at Adaptive Path and Trilogy. He holds a Masters degree from University College London in Human Computer Interaction and Ergonomics and has presented at numerous conferences including the SIGCHI and SxSW.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Bryan Christie

Bryan Christie began his training in 1996 at the illustration and animation studio SlimFilms, picking up skills from his father, Andy Christie, and Pete Samek. From there he took a position as assistant art director at Scientific American magazine. Bryan was impressed by the distinctive aesthetic of the magazine from the '50s and '60s; its influence can be seen in the development of his own unique style. His illustrations appear regularly in Newsweek, WIRED, GQ, the New York Times, Conde Nast Portfolio, and many other publications, and the work covers a broad range of complex topics, from medical visualizations to architectural renderings. His studio, Bryan Christie Design, is located in Maplewood, New Jersey.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Eileen Clegg

Eileen Clegg is a visual journalist, book author and founder of the company Visual Insight, creating large-scale, real-time murals for organizations. She works with top leadership invoking visual language to wordlessly introduce the power of emotion and meaning into group communications. Her practice emphasizes metaphor, intuition, and story to facilitate business transformation, strategic planning, and team effectiveness. Her clients have included companies such as IBM, Starbucks, and the Gates Foundation. She also has two books under way on the anthropological history and technological future of visualization.
Her full bio is available on the wiki.

Neil Cohn

Neil Cohn has gained attention for his research on the visual language of "comics" and its relationship to language and cognition. He has authored numerous articles and a book, Early Writings on Visual Language. Neil's work has been featured in publications such as the Comics Journal, the International Journal of Comic Art, the Public Journal of Semiotics, and the forthcoming textbook The Essential Manga Reader. His recent paper on visual language grammar won the 2007 M. Thomas Inge Award for Comics Scholarship. He has given numerous talks at venues in the US and Europe, and is an annual speaker at Comic-Con. His work can be found on his website and blog.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Ryan Coleman

In his role as CTO & co-founder of Toronto based Clay Tablet Technologies, it would seem Ryan Coleman is far removed from his days in Sheridan College's Media Arts program. His primary business focuses on the globalization and translation of content and concepts. In February of this year Ryan created the first regional VizThink group to help foster a Visual Thinking community within Toronto. Leveraging the experience he gained through participating, and later organizing events, in Toronto's BarCamp community Ryan took the VizThink event from 15 people to almost 50 at the most recent event.

His full bio is available on the wiki.

Bruce Daniel

Bruce Daniel's award winning map design work is found across the nation. An intuitive and inventive sense of technology and materials informs his design techniques, which make particular use of texture, dimensionality, lighting, transparency, and motion. As Design Manager for Cartifact, Bruce Daniel oversees the look and feel of a wide variety of mapping projects, and as Director of Cartifact Labs, he is engaged with the leading developers of emerging technology relating to map creation and usage. He has designed maps for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, and Sports Illustrated.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Nancy Duarte

Nancy Duarte has been a Principal of Duarte Design, the global leader in developing business presentations since 1988. Duarte Design creates cinematic-quality presentations in any media - helping innovative companies like Adobe, Electronic Arts, HP, and Wells Fargo deliver a compelling experience for their audiences. Duarte also worked with Al Gore to develop the presentation that became the Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. She has a passion for presentations that are clear, meaningful, motivating and attractive. She has an MBA from UCLA, speaks regularly at national conferences, and was a regular contributor to Presentations Magazine.
Her full bio is available on the wiki.

Lance Dublin

Lance Dublin has been an advocate for innovative approaches to learning and change throughout his career. He went from designing a weeklong 'Experiment in Free Form Education' program in high school to co-founding one of the nations first fully accredited 'University Without Walls' in his twenties. He founded and built Dublin Group, a company which became a leader in providing solutions to improve individual and organizational performance, and implement large-scale change initiatives. He brings to his work more than 30 years of experience in adult education and training, communication, and change management.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Henning Fischer

Henning Fischer is a design strategist for Adaptive Path. His principal focus is on design research and strategy development. He has worked with a diverse group of organizations to develop multi-channel strategies for communications, services, and products for the web and beyond. Henning holds a Master of Design from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology, where he focused on the confluence of business analytics, design, and user research. Henning's portfolio of skills include digital product strategy development, business concept illustration, and user-centered research and analysis techniques.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Michele Floriani

Michele Floriani is the artist's businessman and the businessman's artist--a kind of translator of ideas and values. Tapping this as motivation, he transitioned from doing designs for the business to leading discussions with the business on how to model new creative services, grow talent and capitalize on the wins of having in-house creative talent. A majority of his focus today is on brand strategy and how communications, in all forms, work to support it. Currently, he is the Director of Brand Strategy at BMC Software where he also manages the worldwide creative, video, and web teams, including a formal information design service for business communications.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Roshi Givechi

Roshi Givechi, design director at IDEO, is fascinated with exploring and redefining how people interact with objects, brands, space, services and each other. Having started a collective around storytelling, she believes IDEO's insight-based angle on communication design and narrative form can better serve clients from the depiction of a strategic vision through to the tangible expression of a branded experience for their customers. Before joining IDEO in 1998, Roshi art-directed children's educational software, and designed news and entertainment-based web sites while at Microsoft and MSNBC. Roshi holds an MFA degree in Graphic Design/New Media from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
Her full bio is available on the wiki.

Dave Gray

Dave Gray is the founder of XPLANE a global design and consulting firm. His early career spans several newspapers, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He also was an educator in the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis - which is the where the idea struck him: "Why can't [visuals] be used to help clarify messages for companies and, in turn, drive bottom-line results?" His passion also plays a key role in his personal life, where Dave likes to spend his time painting and drawing. Dave earned his BFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

John Grimwade

John Grimwade is the information graphics director of both Conde Nast Portfolio and Conde Nast Traveler magazines, based in New York. Over the last 20 years, he has freelanced for 30 other major magazines, including an 8-year spell as graphics consultant to Popular Science. Although he has produced all kinds of explanatory graphics, his speciality is wayfinding maps and diagrams: helping people navigate complex spaces. In another life, John was graphics director at The Times in London. He has a degree in graphic design from Canterbury College of Art.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Karl Gude

Karl Gude has spent nearly three decades in the news business visualizing the complex in the form of information graphics. Up until last year Karl spent eight years as the Director of Information Graphics at Newsweek magazine and previously held that position at the giant wire services The Associated Press and United Press International. Throughout his career he has conducted scores of training workshops around the world on visualizing information. Last year Karl accepted a position at Michigan State University's School of Journalism to create an information graphics and visual thinking program.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Jim Haudan

James A. Haudan is President and CEO of Root Learning. Jim has helped over 70 Fortune 500 companies align, deploy, and execute their strategies by using innovative learning technologies to engage their people and create business results. Root Learning's unique capability to blend strategy with innovative learning has been the subject of business management articles published in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and The Economist among many others. In 2005, 2006, and 2007 Root Learning was selected as one of the 25 Best Small and Medium Companies to work for in America by the Great Places to Work Institute.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Nigel Holmes

Nigel Holmes does explanation graphics, working as a freelancer until 1977, when he went to work at Time Magazine in New York. As Graphics Director of Time, his pictorial explanations of complex subjects gained him many imitators and a few academic enemies. To this day he remains committed to the power of pictures and humor to help readers understand abstract numbers and difficult scientific concepts. Now he has his own company, which has explained things to and for a wide variety of clients such as Apple and Visa, and he continues to do graphics for publications such as Harper's and The New York Times. He's also written six books on aspects of information design.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Bob Horn

Robert E. Horn is a visiting scholar at Stanford University and has taught at Harvard and Columbia universities. His recently published Mapping Great Debates: Can Computers Think? series delineates the intellectual history of the philosophical debate and illustrates how visual language can be used to handle the most complex of topics. He is the author of Mapping Hypertext and The Guide to Simulations/Games. He is also director of several projects to apply visual language methodology to mapping debates about evolution and the frontiers of consciousness research.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Harlan Hugh

Harlan Hugh is CEO and cofounder of TheBrain Technologies, a leading knowledge management software company. Harlan is the inventor of TheBrain technology, a visual search and categorization solution in use world-wide since 1998, as well as founder and innovator in the field of information visualization. Focusing on user interface design and information architecture, Mr. Hugh's passion is helping people organize and share information the way they naturally think about it, transcending the boundaries of traditional desktop computing. He holds multiple patents on the relational display of information and authoring content visually.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Donna Kienzler

Donna Kienzler is a Professor at Iowa State University, where she teaches in the Rhetoric and Professional Communication program. She is the Director of Advanced Communication and oversees more that 150 sections of business and technical communication annually. She is also an Assistant Director of the university's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, where she teaches classes, seminars, and workshops on pedagogy; directs graduate student programming; and directs the Preparing Future Faculty program. Her research focuses on ethics and pedagogy and includes work on visual ethics.
Her full bio is available on the wiki.

Lee LeFever

Lee LeFever is the founder and principal of Common Craft. Common Craft's explanatory online videos have been viewed over a million times since April of 2007. The videos, produced in a simple paper-and-whiteboard format, focus on making complex concepts like wikis and RSS easy to understand and "in plain English". Common Craft also works with organizations to produce custom videos that explain the value of a product or service. The company recently worked with the Google Docs team to produce "Google Docs in Plain English". Lee and Sachi LeFever work from their home in Seattle, Washington.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Sachi LeFever

Sachi LeFever joined Common Craft in late 2006 as it transitioned from a consultancy to an explanation company. Along with producing videos "in Plain English" with Lee, she works behind the scenes as the video editor and manager of the gory details. In her past experience, she managed many-a-project implementing performance improvement tools for U.S. hospitals, and grew many-an-organism working and studying in microbiology labs. Sachi holds an M.B.A. from Seattle University and certification as a Project Management Professional.
Her full bio is available on the wiki.

Doug LeMoine

Doug LeMoine leads the design communication practice at Cooper, a pioneering interaction design consultancy. In seven years, he has tackled problems in consumer and business domains, designing compelling interactions for touchscreens, handheld devices, the desktop, the old web, and the new web. He looks forward to the future web, to opportunities for rich, natural, humane human-computer interaction. Doug's portfolio work includes interfaces for personal information management, neurosurgical planning, financial portfolio analysis, database marketing, telecommunication network construction, and computer-assisted surgery.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Christine Martell

Christine is in charge of the creative path and marketing direction for VisualsSpeak. She is an accomplished consultant, public speaker and artist with more than 25 years of professional experience. In 1995, Christine made the transition from a product artist to a process artist, concentrating on helping others to discover the value inherent in the process of creating art developing ways to help art students reduce their creative anxiety. She is passionate about opening up the whole person so people can really be appreciated for who they are, and throws life lines to people who really need to discover new openings.
Her full bio is available on the wiki.

Michael Martine

Michael Martine is IBM's Director of Enterprise Integration Architecture in the office of the CIO, leading the global team responsible for simplifying IBM's application portfolio using Service Oriented Architecture patterns and technology. He also leads the IBM Strategic Application Partner team, responsible for leveraging the investments IBM makes internally using their technologies to transform the business. Mr. Martine is a frequent client/analyst/conference speaker on 3D Internet concepts. He holds an MBA from Thunderbird and did his undergraduate work in International Studies/Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud has been writing and drawing comics since 1984. His book Understanding Comics was a New York Times Notable book for 1994, and is available in 16 languages. McCloud has lectured on comics and digital media at Harvard University, MIT, Pixar, Microsoft and The Smithsonian Institution. McCloud's online comics can be found on his website at scottmccloud.com. His latest book, Making Comics, for which he just finished a 50-state-and-several-Canadian-province tour is in stores now.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Nick Myers

Nick Myers is a Principal Visual Designer at Cooper where he delivers desirable and memorable experiences for companies across a host of digital products, websites and desktop applications. Nick teaches, studies, and writes about visual design but he mostly enjoys helping companies craft lasting impressions whether in retail, portfolio management, patient care, or photo sharing. Nick has been practicing design since 1994. Prior to joining Cooper, he worked for Capgemini and Boston Consulting Group. Nick has an award-winning portfolio of work for such clients as GM, HP, and Merrill Lynch. When he's not designing he's running but he's mostly just trying to make the world a slightly better place.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Jamie Nast

Jamie Nast is co-founder of NastGroup, Inc. and partner of The Learning Consortium (TLC). For 15 years Jamie has specialized in mind mapping and mind potential optimization. She is committed to guiding individuals and organizations towards overcoming barriers to achieving success including those which reside in one's own mind. Jamie has consulted for a wide array of clients including BMC Software, BP, Ford, Mayo Clinic, and L.L. Bean. In 2006, Jamie released her first book, Idea Mapping: How to Access Your Hidden Brain Power, Learn Faster, Remember More, and Achieve Success in Business.
Her full bio is available on the wiki.

Sarah Nelson

Sarah B. Nelson is a design strategist for Adaptive Path. She has experience in interactive media, designing kiosks, mobile and online experiences. Sarah has a particular passion for practice development, conducting research into methods for improving collaboration, supporting creativity, and encouraging innovation. A classically trained violinist, Sarah graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy and received a B.A from Oberlin College in visual arts and electronic music. While completing her Masters at the Institute of Design in Chicago, she studied the definition and design of complex multi-modal systems supporting collaboration and communication.
Her full bio is available on the wiki.

Tony O'Driscoll

Tony O'Driscoll is an educator, speaker and author. He currently serves as a Professor of the Practice at North Carolina State University's College of Management. One of O'Driscoll's recent research projects includes an examination of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing (MMORPG) environments to study leadership in the enterprise of the future. He's also a member of the editorial board for Human Resources Development Quarterly. Dr. O'Driscoll has been a keynote presenter, panelist, workshop leader, and facilitator at over 75 national and international conferences and symposia.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Dan Roam

Dan Roam is the founder of Digital Roam Inc, a management consulting company that helps executives at Microsoft, Wal-Mart, eBay, Wells Fargo, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Peet's Coffee & Tea, The US Navy, and other organizations around the world solve complex problems by learning to think with their eyes. His book The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures will be published March 2008 by Penguin Portfolio.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Dan Rose

Daniel Rose is a consultant and facilitator for Bell Canada in Toronto, Canada. He designs and facilitates breakthrough collaborative work events for groups up to 100 people. Daniel brings experience in photography, improvisational acting and drawing to the collaborative events to encourage his clients to see and explore new perspectives and vantage points. Prior to this work at Bell, Daniel was a Producer for Yahoo! Canada a producer for tsn.ca, the online presence for Canada's most watched sports specialty television network. In addition to his work, Daniel is involved with various groups that promote grassroots community development.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Brandon Schauer

Brandon Schauer is an experience design director for Adaptive Path. Brandon has over a decade of experience developing new products, services, and user experiences for the web, desktop, and devices. Brandon holds two master-level degrees from schools with the Illinois Institute of Technology. He received a Master of Design from the Institute of Design in Chicago where he studied the planning, development, and management of innovation. Concurrently, he graduated with a MBA from the Stuart School of Business. Brandon is a past editor for the Institute of Design's Perspectives on Design and Strategy, allowing him to pick-the-brains of leaders in the fields of innovation, design, and strategy.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Brent Schlenker

Brent Schlenker is the Program Director and Emerging Technologies Analyst for The eLearning Guild. He is leading our industry's transition from eLearning to Learning 2.0 by taking advantage of Web 2.0 technologies, social community models, and interactive 3D gaming environments. He helps learning organizations recognize the untapped value of informal conversations and collaborative learning environments. Brent's Corporate eLearning Development blog has become a must read for learning professionals, and gained him recognition as a thought leader in our industry.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

David Sibbet

David Sibbet is an organizational consultant and information designer who, for 25 years, has been supporting people communicating and collaborating across group, organizational, and community boundaries. His explorations in graphic facilitation, action learning, strategic visioning and collaborative process design, have been pioneering efforts in the field of organization development. He works around the world and is an acknowledged master facilitator and expert on visual language. David is founder and President of the Grove Consultants International, a full service organization development consulting firm and publishing company based in San Francisco's Presidio.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Dana Smith

Dana Smith is an Interaction Design consultant at Cooper, and a former interaction/information designer at Xplane. She focuses on facilitating the design process, creating solutions to meet real human and business needs, and clarifying and communicating those solutions. Dana studied user-centered design and innovation in the Industrial and Interaction design programs at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Her full bio is available on the wiki.

Christine Valenza

Christine Valenza is a pioneer in the field of Graphic Facilitation. For the last 18 years she has worked all over the world co-creating environments where necessary change can occur. Currently she is working at IMD University in Lausanne Switzerland on an Action Learning Team that considers graphic facilitation to be a critical productivity tool in their approach to innovation. She is the co-author of the award winning book, Visual Thinking: Tools for Mapping Your Ideas. Christine is a founding member of the International Forum of Visual Practitioners.
Her full bio is available on the wiki.

Susi Watson

Throughout her career Susi Watson has been a creative problem solver. She is passionate about bringing meaningful ideas to life. Susi started For Balance, LLC in 1998 with the goal of helping companies achieve a balance between customer and business needs while managing ever changing technology demands. Over the past 9 years she has led communication solutions at companies as diverse as Disney, MOCA, LA and Cisco Systems.
Her full bio is available on the wiki.

Luke Wroblewski

LukeW is an internationally recognized Web thought leader who has designed or contributed to software used every day by more than 750 million people. He is currently Senior Principal of Product Ideation & Design at Yahoo! Inc. and Founder of LukeW Interface Designs, a product strategy and design consultancy. Luke applies design methodologies, skills, and principles to create and refine the strategy and user experience of new or existing products. Previously, Luke was the Lead User Interface Designer of eBay Inc.'s platform team. Luke also worked as a Senior Interface Designer at the NCSA, the birthplace of Mosaic.
His full bio is available on the wiki.

Tom Wujec

Tom Wujec is a Fellow at Autodesk, a leading innovator of 2D and 3D design software. As a recognized thought-leader and award-winning technology innovator, Tom works with leading edge Fortune 500 companies to foster visualization practices. Tom applies visualization tools in unexpected ways to improve creative problem-solving, increase design efficiency and measure business effectiveness. Tom has degrees in Astronomy and Psychology. Tom is author of three books on creative thinking, including Pumping Ions which has been translated into twenty languages. Tom is publishing his experiences business visualization in the upcoming BizViz: Using Images to Foster Innovation and Collaboration.
His full bio is available on the wiki.