With 20 years in corporate apparel design, Olivia Neal Howell built her reputation mastering project management, human development, and innovative brand strategy.

In 2019, she channeled that expertise into entrepreneurship, founding The Olivia Neal Experience, Inc. (T.O.N.E.) which champions interdisciplinary creatives. Part design studio, part production house, part talent agency, T.O.N.E. creates boundary-pushing cultural experiences at the intersection of arts, technology, live events, athletics, and community.

Zoe Crago is a visual storyteller who loves bringing ideas to life through illustration and brand design. After earning degrees in Visual Communication Design and Spanish, she co-founded Duo Design + Media in 2021.

Her work spans branding, campaigns, and illustration series for local businesses and organizations. Recently, she’s been curating live illustration experiences—like stylized portraits and interactive doodle fortunes—that connect people through creativity and play. She believes great design tells a story, builds connection, and helps communities grow.

Xiaolin Ma is a web designer and software engineer whose work spans IoT, robotics, and full-stack web applications. She creates beautiful, user-centered websites that blend thoughtful design with technical precision and care deeply about how users experience a product.

She loves bringing people together to collaborate on new ideas and build community through creativity and technology. Photography is her creative outlet, where she captures people in the moment, focusing on genuine connections and the biggest laughs.

Lori DeBortoli leads global creative at Adobe, overseeing work across 40+ products and a multidisciplinary team spanning design, storytelling, content, experiential, and everything in between. She leads a very talented group of humans who make complex things feel simple. Her background spans AKQA, Wieden+Kennedy, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, and Jam3, where she has built teams, launched brands, and learned how to navigate big ideas inside even bigger organizations. She holds degrees in Graphic Design and in Information Architecture and Usability, with a career spanning production, client leadership, and creative across digital, content, retail, and experience design.

She has been fortunate to work alongside some of the best teams in the world, whose influence continues to shape how she thinks, creates, and imagines the future. As a board member of Seattle Creates, Lori is focused on strengthening the creative community, supporting emerging talent, and advancing a workforce development pipeline for the next generation of Arts + Tech leaders.

Spanning design, photography, big tech, garage studios and academic classrooms, Jonny McConnell approaches creative work as a craftsman. A graduate of Western Washington University's BFA Design program, he also earned certificates in Business Management (WWU) and Emerging Design & Technology (MIT Media Lab). As a former board member of AIGA Seattle, a former mascot of the USL Seattle Sounders, and an active sailor of the Salish Sea, his passion for local community runs deep.

In 2020, Jonny cofounded the Seattle Creative Directory, where he chronicles the Pacific Northwest's creative community and the stories behind its formation. He balances this time with his personal practice of machine aided printmaking from his studio on Whidbey Island.

Nick Ames is an artist, designer, and educator dedicated to fostering radically inclusive spaces where people can explore the power and joy of creating. With over a decade of experience building and managing industry and academic programs, Nick has empowered individuals and teams to bring their ideas to life, whether through physical objects or digital media.

His personal work is found at the intersection of traditional analog craft and parametric and robotic tools. He builds structures, objects, and digital artifacts that explore spatial conditions, and how modern making is a conversation between people and the machines that help us.

Melody Biringer is a self-proclaimed “connection engineer,” a serial entrepreneur who has built a career around building communities for women to thrive. She is the founder of the acclaimed Crave Company, where she's spent more than 20 years encouraging women to have fun while connecting with others, and Women in Tech Regatta, an annual series of conferences in Seattle, Vancouver, and Amsterdam, first held in 2017.

Mel coined the hashtag #RelationshipsAreTheTrueCurrency, and lives it fully. In addition to empowering women and building relationships, she juggles her responsibility as an author, event planner, social maven, and strawberry shortcake heiress

Christina E. Holding builds brands that move people. With 20+ years in marketing, she blends strategy, storytelling, and cultural insight to power festivals, arts organizations, tech startups, philanthropic nonprofits, publishing houses, and community-driven experiences.

She builds culture-driven brands at the intersection of art, film, music, tech, and community. Her experience spans industries from Bumbershoot and Sony/BMG to automation solutions for OEMs and grassroots arts collectives—bringing a rare ability to translate across sectors. She combines strategy and storytelling to create campaigns that connect, grow audiences, and drive cultural connection and real-world change.

Her work lives where creativity meets impact—turning creative vision into measurable impact.