Speaker Bios

Tali Krakowsky

Tali Krakowsky, Director of Experience Design for Imaginary Forces, has been extensively involved for the last five years in concept development and management of the division and its projects in both the New York and Los Angeles offices. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Design and a Master of Arts from UCLA's School of Architecture, with a thesis on interactive architecture.

Tali has had a leading role in a range of projects for Imaginary Forces, including immersive environments for Airbus, BMW, IBM, MoMA and the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco. Additionally, she has worked on the World Trade Center redesign competition, an installation for the Netherlands Architecture Institute and MoMA's Tall Buildings exhibition as part of the design consortium United Architects. In addition to her work at Imaginary Forces, Tali has published several articles on design, architecture, and innovation through collaboration, and has been teaching a class on Experience Design at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles.

Jeff Boortz

Jeff Boortz is an award-winning creative director and designer with more than 20 years of experience creating compelling on-air brand expressions for networks across the globe. He has founded two well-respected and successful international branding services companies, 3 Ring Circus in Los Angeles, and Concrete Pictures in Philadelphia. Boortz is an industry thought leader known for pioneering new formats for communicating brand messages in visual media including film, TV, broadband, and mobile. He is a strategic problem solver who consistently drives his clients to achieve their branding and promotional goals. Boortz now teaches Cinematography and Editing, and helps prepare students to enter the Broadcast Design and Motion Graphics job market at SCAD in Savannah Georgia.

Kaye Gosline

Kaye Gosline has been tracking color trends and spinning inspirational color stories for over 20 years. She has an interesting background of 30 years in carpet that’s a unique mixture of chemistry, product development, marketing and sales. At Milliken, her role as Creative Director is to provide the global vision and color leadership for contract, residential carpets and rugs and hospitality divisions.

Kaye holds a BS in textile chemistry from Auburn University and an MBA from Brenau University. She was honored as one of the top 100 women graduates of Auburn in its first 100 years of accepting female students.

She has been active in the Color Marketing Group for many years and has held various leadership roles in that organization. She has been a speaker at countless functions in the design community as she shares her perspective on color and design, often drawn from her travels.

Doug Grimmett

Douglass Grimmett is founder and creative director of Primal Screen, a broadcast design firm based in Atlanta, Georgia, and leads a full-time staff of 25. Started in 1995, Primal Screen creates broadcast design, animation, and sound. Primal Screen’s work can be seen on Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, PBS, HBO Family, Disney, Cartoon Network, Oxygen, CNN, TBS, Spike, Lifetime, Animal Planet, Sprout, TCM, E!, Nickelodeon, and at the Sundance Film Festival.

Jonathan Bragdon

Jonathan Bragdon is an entrepreneur, design and business consultant, and president of the sustainable design company, Tricycle, Inc. His wide range of experience includes brand development and management, technical and international sales and merchandising, strategic process planning, and business development for the manufacturers of interiors products and packaged goods.

Since 2002, Tricycle has helped commercial interiors manufacturers, interior designers, and architects reduce sample waste. Tricycle has been honored with recognitions for leadership in sustainability from the American Institute of Architects, American Society of Interior Designers, Business Week magazine, the governor of Tennessee, Smithsonian Institution, the British Parliament, and the Prince of Denmark and design honors from organizations including AIGA, the International Interior Design Association, Industrial Society Designers of America, and the One Show. Bragdon holds an MBA from Vanderbilt University and has served on the boards of the Southeast AeA, the Chattanooga Technology Council, Chamber of Commerce, and CreateHere.

David M. Hamilton, AIA

David Hamilton is a principal at Praxis3 Architects and is currently serving as co-chair of the Metropolitan Public Art Coalition (MPAC), an Atlanta based public art, public space and design advocacy group. He shares responsibility for guiding overall design at Praxis3 with fellow principal Stuart Romm and has had an active role in the formation of both the Mixed-Use and Cultural-Institutional design studios at the firm.

Hamilton has over 25 years of experience working as an architect and project designer in several Atlanta architectural firms, among them, Lord, Aeck, Sargent Architecture and Johnson, Smith, Reagan Architects.

He has worked on notable civic and public design projects in Atlanta. He is one of the originators of the Architecture Society of Atlanta’s (ASA) Olympic Projects Program, “Atlanta 1996”; helped to launch the program’s first project, The International Boulevard Design Charrette; and conceptualized and managed the international design competition, “Public Space in the New American City/ Atlanta 1996”.

Amy Landesberg

Amy Landesberg is the principal of Amy Landesberg Architects, Decatur, Georgia. She is both an artist and architect whose designs for public buildings and exhibition spaces have won numerous awards, and whose public art works are prominent features of the Atlanta cityscape. Her most recent public art work is a critically acclaimed treatment of an electrical substation, Power Wrap, for Georgia Tech. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a BA, Phi Beta Kappa; from Georgia State University with a master of visual arts; and from the Yale School of Architecture with a master of architecture.

John F. Szabo

John F. Szabo is Director of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System. He was previously director of the Clearwater Public Library System and served as president of the Florida Library Association. He has also served as director of the Palm Harbor Public Library in Palm Harbor, Florida and the Robinson Public Library District in Robinson. Illinois. Mr. Szabo has also served as Head Librarian of the Residential College at the University of Michigan, where he received his master’s degree in information and library studies. His bachelor’s degree is in telecommunications from the University of Alabama. He is the author of a reference book and several professional articles. In 1994, Mr. Szabo participated in a professional exchange with Rotary International visiting libraries and archives in Sicily and the Aeolian Islands.

Mr. Szabo is a member of the Georgia Board of Regents Public Library Advisory Council, Fulton County Public Art Committee and the Cherokee Garden Library Board of Trustees at the Atlanta History Center. He also serves on the Board of the Urban Libraries Council and is an elected member of the American Library Association Council, the governing body for the 56,000 member professional organization.

Eric Bishop

Eric Bishop is a landscape architect involved in land planning and landscape architecture in the Atlanta office of EDAW. Specializing in urban planning and design, he has more than ten years of experience in the design, management, and delivery of urban public realm projects. His project experience includes planning and design for urban revitalization, streetscapes, parks, adaptive re-use and infill projects and transit oriented development.

Jim Choate

Jim Choate maintains a focus on the quality of his firm’s design solutions with anemphasis on creating architectural imagery that is unique and innovative, but appropriate to its context. His projects reflect an interest in architecture not only as function, but also as art.

Choate earned both a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Architecture from Georgia Institute of Technology. He was awarded the 1985 Paris Prize fellowship, he has won numerous AIA Design Awards, and his projects have been featured in periodicals and books on residential architecture.