People

Below is a listing of the people participating in Race to the Bottom, their bios and, in some cases, a sampling of work. A sincere thanks goes out to each of them for their time given to help make this a reality.

In Alphabetical Order

Jimmy Ball
Creative Director
Jimmy Ball Design

---

Alex Bogusky
Co-Chairman
Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Alex joined Crispin and Porter Advertising in 1989 as an art director. He became the creative director five years later, a partner in 1997, and co-chairman in 2008. Under Alex’s direction, Crispin Porter + Bogusky has grown to more than 900 employees, with offices in Miami, Boulder, Los Angeles, London and Sweden. CP+B has become one of the world’s most awarded agencies and is the only agency to have won the Cannes International Advertising Festival Grand Prix in all five categories: Promotion, Media, Cyber, Titanium, and Film. Alex was inducted into the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame in 2008, and in May of 2009 Alex received an honorary PhD from the University of Colorado.

---

Ric Grefe
Executive Director
AIGA

Richard Grefé assumed the position of executive director of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the largest and oldest membership organization of graphic designers, in the spring of 1995. During this period, AIGA has doubled in size, established a national design center on Fifth Avenue in New York, moved toward a more active role in advocacy and stimulating thinking about design, and centered itself on representing the process of designing, rather than designers. AIGA has become a vital center in emerging areas of design, including brand experience, experience design, interaction design and design for film and television.

Before joining AIGA, Ric was executive vice president of America’s Public Television Stations, where he was responsible for public broadcasting’s legislative strategy, strategic planning for local public television stations, and for coordinating public television’s involvement in such local community projects as literacy, women’s health and teenage drug awareness.

Ric spent nearly a decade leading a firm that dealt with public policy and economic issues; was a journalist at Time magazine and the Associated Press; and, for a brief period, was a printer’s devil at the Stinehour Press.

He has always been interested in design, art and nonprofit institutions. He went to business school in order to develop his skills in dealing with public and social issues. The AIGA is the perfect joining of his interests and skills-at least from his perspective.

---

Doug May
President
May & Co.

---

Roger Martin
Dean of the Rotman School of Managment
University of Toronto

Roger Martin has served as Dean of the Rotman School of Management since September 1, 1998. He is an advisor on strategy to the CEO’s of several major global corporations. He writes extensively on design and is a regular columnist for BusinessWeek.com’s Innovation and Design Channel. He is also a regular contributor to Washington Post’s On Leadership blog and to Financial Times’ Judgment Call column. He has published several books, including: The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage (2009), The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking (2007), The Responsibility Virus: How Control Freaks, Shrinking Violets-and The Rest Of Us-Can Harness The Power Of True Partnership (2002), and The Future of the MBA: Designing the Thinker of the Future, (with Mihnea Moldoveanu, 2008) and Dia-Minds (with Moldoveanu, forthcoming, 2010).

• In 2009, Roger Martin was named one of the top 50 management thinkers in the world by The Times of London.
• In 2007 he was named a Business Week ‘B-School All-Star’ for being one of the 10 most influential business professors in the world.
• He serves on the Boards of Thomson Reuters Corporation and Research in Motion and is a trustee of The Hospital for Sick Children.
• He received his AB from Harvard College, with a concentration in Economics, in 1979 and his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981.

---

Keith Owens
Associate Professor of Design
University of North Texas

---

Mike Samson
Co-Founder
Crowdspring.com

Mike is an Emmy Award® nominated Producer, and Production Manager with more than 20 years of experience as a senior manager in the film and television production industry. He has worked on dozens of feature film and television projects including “Wall Street,” “Bull Durham,” “Steven King’s The Stand” (Miniseries), and “Men in Black II.” In prime-time dramatic television, he supervised on TV series such as “New York Undercover” and “Third Watch.”Mike has received numerous honors individually and as a team member, including an Emmy Award nomination, DGA awards, and a George Foster Peabody Award. Mike received his MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

---

Virgil Scott
Assistant Professor of Design
Texas A&M Commerce

Scott holds a BFA and MFA in Communication Design from the University of North Texas. Currently Scott is teaching undergraduate typography and graduate level classes in the MFA program in Communication Design at the TAMU-C downtown Dallas UCD campus.

Scott’s professional career has been based in Dallas for 28 years where he has functioned as a partner, owner and creative director in various creative environments. Forming Scott Design in 1990 Scott  has created niches in designing restaurant collateral programs, consumer and business to business solutions for commercial real estate clients and identity programs for national entertainment venues. Scott has been a consistent recipient of both local and national design awards being recognized by the Dallas Society of Visual Communications and Print Magazine among others. He has served as a judge for both student and professional competitions.

Most recently, Virgil and his wife Kim Neiman have opened a letterpress studio, Studio 204, where they are designing and printing limited edition posters on an 1949 Vandercook letterpress. They utilize vintage wood type, metal type and hand carved linoleum block images in creating work for both commercial clients and public gallery exhibitions.