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Affect

Oct 7-8

Meet our speakers

Pictured: Alfie Padilla

Alfie Padilla

Alfie Padilla is transitioning from 4 years of social activist work into game development. They work with Pixel Arts, an organization that teaches children how to code and design games, particularly in areas where students don't have access to computers. Alfie is a proud person of color and an actor and stage performer who just finished a run of an immersive theater experience that dealt with disaster, holes in our healthcare system, and building community.

Pictured: Amelia Abreu

Amelia Abreu

Amelia Abreu is the founder of Abreu Consulting, a product design and user experience consultancy in Portland, Oregon, working with engineering, design, and security teams at Mozilla, Intel, Nike, Microsoft, start-ups and cultural institutions. Her writing on technology and culture has appeared in Model View Culture, The New Inquiry, and Motherboard.

Pictured: De Andrea Nichols

De Nichols

De Andrea Nichols is a trailblazing social impact designer, museum educator, entrepreneur, and ARTivist based in St. Louis, MO. She is an endowed community engagement specialist with the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Founder and Creative Director of Civic Creatives, a social design organization that equips organizations and leaders to resolve critical social challenges using design thinking. Her efforts like Design Serves (D*Serve), FoodSpark Nation, and United Story organizes communities through "common cultural denominators" and have been supported by the Clinton Global Initiative, Points of Light, AIGA, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, and more.

Pictured: Deep Shah

Deep Shah

Deep Shah is a product designer in denial about living in Brooklyn. Using a practice rooted in the scientific method, he designs by drawing on his research experience gained while studying Biochemistry. He comes from a largely self-taught background, having started tinkering at the age of 12. He spends his time learning new skills, honing old ones, and drinking coffee with the people in his life.

Pictured: Ijeoma Oluo keynote

Ijeoma Oluo

Ijeoma Oluo is a writer, speaker, and internet yeller. She's the Editor-at-Large at The Establishment: a media platform run and funded by women. Her book, So You Want To Talk About Race, will be released in 2017 from Seal Press.

Pictured: Jessica Tate

Jessica Tate

A senior user experience designer at ThinkShout by day and an adjunct faculty member at The Art Institute of Portland by night, Jessica Tate is a designer, developer and instructor based in Portland, Oregon. She has a passion for branding, web design, user experience and typography. On any typical day, you’ll find her with a coffee in one hand and her magic mouse in the other.

Pictured: Justin Kemerling

Justin Kemerling

Justin Kemerling is a designer, activist, and collaborator living in Omaha, Nebraska. He works primarily with community organizations, political campaigns, and changemaking startups in need of branding, graphic design, web design, and art direction. Justin's self-initiated projects and collaborations explore ways to move forward important causes and ideas with design, art, and other forms of creative expression.

Pictured: Kahlief Adams

Kahlief Adams

Kahlief Adams was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. As an avid technophile and lover of all things video games, he set his career path in the direction of a life making games until he found out his arch nemesis, "Math," had other plans in store. Instead of making the next Tetris, he found himself writing and talking about games on his podcast Spawn On Me, which spotlights marginalized groups and people of color in the industry. When he's not playing or writing, he's ingesting mass quantities of cured meats and stinky cheeses.

Pictured: Liz Susong

Liz Susong

Liz Susong is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Catalyst Wed Co, a community for wedding disrupters, creators, and critics alike. She publishes Catalyst Wedding Magazine, the first-ever print wedding magazine with a feminist consciousness and helps to host a traveling workshop, {un}convention, for progressive vendors who are passionate about diversifying wedding media and building collaborative communities that support minority business owners.

Pictured: Molly McLeod keynote

Molly McLeod

Molly McLeod is a designer, artist, zine-maker, GIF connoisseur, and educator based in Oakland, CA. At Code for America, she helped cities adopt user-centered practices to deliver better services to residents. She’s worked on a documentary film about a feminist art collective, a board game about economic justice, and public art projects in New Orleans. Her mission is to empower people to improve their communities through design.

Pictured: Nadia Gathers keynote

Nadia Gathers

Nadia Gathers is the Communications Coordinator at CODE2040. She graduated cum laude from Converse College, where she designed the institution's Social Entrepreneurship curriculum. She's been a facilitator at workshops for at-risk high school students, and coached an all-girls basketball team to a co-ed league championship. Most notably, she once taught a second grader how to read. When not actively overthrowing the patriarchy, she enjoys running, and making tea.