Dana Arnett is a founding Principal and CEO of the internationally recognized firm of VSA Partners, headquartered in Chicago, with offices in Minneapolis, Detroit and New York City. Arnett, along with his eleven partners, leads a group of 180 associates in the creation of design programs, digital and interactive initiatives and brand marketing solutions for a diverse roster of clients, including: Harley-Davidson, IBM, General Electric, Coca-Cola, Thomson Reuters and Nike. Over the course of his 28 years in the field, Dana and the firm have been globally recognized by over 60 competitions and designations including; Communication Arts, AIGA, Graphis, The Type Directors Club, the American and British Art Directors Clubs, ID, The LA Film Festival, theAR100 and the American Marketing Association. Arnett was a 1999 inductee into the Alliance Graphique Internationale, and holds the honor of being named to the ID40 — who has cited him as one of the 40 most important people shaping design internationally. Arnett is a former member of the AIGA National Board of Directors and he currently serves as a board member of the Architecture and Design Society of the Art Institute of Chicago, and The Chicago Children’s Theater, and has been a guest lecturer at Yale School of Business. In addition to industry work, Dana is also active as an advisor and member of the business development and capital group, Cueball Collective, who help fund and incubate consumer and socially driven ventures. These current and past accomplishments have helped to define a career steeped in design leadership, business consulting and policy making.

With an instinct for people and a passion for what’s new and next she has built a career innovating new techniques to communicate in an increasingly complex and ever expanding universe. She launched Pivotal in 2007 in response to the need for a responsible, transparent, forward thinking and agile marketing company. Shannon has trained hundreds of top-level marketers at leading ad agencies in digital and social media marketing and is known for her mad skills as a trainer. She loves Chicago + strives to do right by the city she loves. To that end, she is the mastermind behind TEDxWindyCity + regularly brings together the best and brightest to network, inspire and disrupt. Shannon believes in the power of doing good, spreading happiness, sharing a good laugh, and in living the adage, "If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life." In her spare time, she sits on the Board of Directors for the Firebelly Foundation and is an adjunct faculty member at DePaul University. She blogs for Crain’s Business on Women in Entrepreneurship and she had the privilege of doing a TED talk at the 2012 TEDActive Conference in Palm Springs. Shannon is a proud trekkie and geek.

Jason graduated with a degree in Character Animation from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), and soon joined Pixar Animation Studios as a storyboard artist for Toy Story. He continued to storyboard on many of Pixar’s subsequent films including A Bug’s Life (of which he also did character design), Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Cars and Up. Jason served as story supervisor on the Academy Award winning Toy Story 3, and was a co-writer and story supervisor for the Toy Story Toon animated short Hawaiian Vacation. He was also a co-story supervisor on Finding Nemo and Ratatouille. Jason is currently working in development on a future Pixar film. He lives in Oakland, California with his family.

With more than three decades of experience in filmed entertainment, filmmaker John Stevenson brings a full and varied skill set to every project, all of which bear the stamp of his keen eye and unending creativity. Stevenson co-directed Kung Fu Panda, which starred Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman and Angelina Jolie. Released in the summer of 2008, Kung Fu Panda has grossed over $600 million worldwide. In 2009 Stevenson was nominated for an Academy Award with Mark Osborne, and both won the Annie for best direction of an animated feature. Stevenson has lectured on the creative process in relation to story development in China, Malaysia, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand and at schools such as USC, UCLA, Oklahoma Arts Institute, Ulster University of the Arts, Ireland, the University of Andong, Korea, and for companies such as Sony PlayStation, Lego, and Valve. Prior to the release of Kung Fu Panda, Stevenson directed four episodes of the DreamWorks prime time television series Father of the Pride and held the post of Head of Story at PDI/DreamWorks serving as story artist for the DreamWorks worldwide blockbusters Shrek, Shrek 2 and Madagascar. While there, he also created storyboards for the animated features Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. A core member of PDI/DreamWorks' creative review committee, Stevenson had input on a variety of projects and also taught classes on the story process to artists at PDI and the San Francisco-based Wild Brain Productions. The mid- to late-'90s saw Stevenson working between multiple feature and television animation projects. John provided the lead voice for the pilot of the series Mr. Baby; designed characters for DreamWorks Television's Toonsylvania; and worked as a storyboard artist and character designer for DreamWorks/PDI’s Antz, Pixar’s Toy Story 2, and Nickelodeon’s pilot Fathead. During this period, he also acted as an independent creative consultant to CBS, NBC, Walt Disney Productions, Colossal Pictures and Protozoa Pictures. He worked with Henry Selick as head of story/creative development for Twitching Image, Inc. as puppeteer for the animatronic rhinoceros in Disney's James and the Giant Peach (also drawing storyboards) and directed an episode of Film Roman/CBS's The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat. As Staff Designer/Director for Colossal Pictures from '91 to '95, Stevenson worked in multiple capacities on the animated series Back to the Future and Moxy—Pirate TV Show; created advertising spots for Cheerios, Little Caesars and Parker Bros. and developed show formats and concepts for Nickelodeon/CBS. He served as art director, character designer and storyboard artist on the Central Television series The Dreamstone. His previous freelance career as an artist, illustrator, character designer and art director exposed him to myriad projects in nearly every medium, working on theme parks, museums, album covers, commercials, and various feature films and television shows. Films included Little Shop of Horrors, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal and The Great Muppet Caper. Stevenson’s entree into entertainment began with character/product design, storyboarding, show concepts and background puppetry on the seminal The Muppet Show.

Martin Venezky is a San Francisco-based designer and Associate Professor in the Graduate Design Program at California College of the Arts. His studio, Appetite Engineers, is known for its dedication to handcrafted processes and intricate detail in posters, books, and print material. Venezky’s client list includes the Sundance Film Festival, Reebok, and Capitol Records as well as institutions like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Tulane School of Architecture, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Venezky’s work has appeared in international publications, and in 1997, he was listed among I.D. magazine’s “ID40” list of influential designers. In 2001 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art honored Venezky with an exhibition of his collected design work, Martin Venezky: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Architecture and Design. A monograph of Venezky’s work, teaching and thinking, It Is Beautiful...Then Gone, is published by Princeton Architectural Press. In 2011 the American Association of Museums awarded Venezky its prestigious Frances Smyth-Ravenal Prize for Excellence in Publication Design for the International Center of Photography’s Mexican Suitcase catalog.