Aki Shigemori is a Senior Graphic Designer with a versatile background in commercial design, art exhibition, and museum education. She is at ease with a wide range of styles, enhancing Thinc's visuals with elegant hand drawings and precise diagrams. Her graphic designs often have a naturalistic flair that complements the ecological themes present in much of Thinc's work. Aki's projects include the Connecticut Science Center, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Infinite Variety quilt exhibition, the Discovery Center at Discovery Park of America, the National 9/11 Memorial Museum, exhibits for the MIT Museum and the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, the USA Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Jordan Museum, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the World Science Forum 2017 Jordan.

Previously, Aki worked as a graphic designer in Tokyo while curating and organizing contemporary art exhibitions in Kyoto and Hiroshima. Aki's expertise in 3D design began with her work as a shoe designer at Himiko in Tokyo.

Aki earned a MA in Museum Education from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and a BA in the Science of Design from Musashino Art University in Tokyo. She is fluent in Japanese.

Chris Muller is an artist and designer based in Brooklyn, NY. A background in theatrical and film design informs his work in many fields, with including his work in museum and exhibit design over the last 25 years. He has designed for the Museum of African Art. the Jewish Museum, the New York Historical Society, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, the National World War II Museum, the Children's Museum of Manhattan, the Morbid Anatomy Museum, and many others.

As a production designer and digital artist, Chris has worked on Broadway ('Allegiance,' 'On Your Feet,' 'M. Butterfly,' 'The Green Bird'), opera (San Francisco Opera, Dallas Opera, Pittsburgh Opera), film ('Ready Player One,' 'Ocean's 8,' 'Hostiles') and television (over 100 commercials as production designer and storyboard artist). He illustrated the children's book 'The Griffin and the Dinosaur' for the National Geographic Society.

Chris is an Associate Arts Professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, in the Graduate Department of Design for Stage and Film, where he teaches drawing, digital painting, and the cultural history of clothing and architecture.

Clara Morer brings more than sixteen years of experience as an exhibit designer and project manager. With knowledge, experience and interest in all stages of a project, she is especially engaged with artifact display, technical development and production and installation oversight.

She has worked on projects such as the Museum of Environmental Sciences in Guadalajara, Mexico, The USA Pavilion for Expo Milano 2015, and The Jordan Museum.

Prior to joining Thinc, Clara worked as an exhibit designer and project manager in Spain for several institutions and corporate firms, on national and international projects including the Madrid Pavilion at the World Expo Shanghai 2010, Sports Stadium Wayfinding Signage, and the Lazaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid, among others.

Clara holds a MA in Exhibit Design and a BA in Industrial Design from I.E.D., as well as studies in artifact conservation, mount display and showcases from the Spanish Society of Museography. In addition, she studied jewelry design at Central Saint Martin's College of Art & Design in London.

Clara also has experience as a project design teacher at the graduate level at I.E.D.

Cynthia Lee is an interpretive planner who brings a deep interest in the human condition to spark curiosity about the world around us. Cynthia received her BA at Vassar College, and her MPhil in Anthropology at Columbia University. She had early experiences working in Hong Kong's refugee camps and eventually became senior content developer for the Museum of Chinese in America. It was from these experiences that she derives a deep appreciation for the power of cultural work in everyday lives. She brings an understanding of community-based work, multi-disciplinary research, oral history, visual arts, and multimedia to a wide range of projects that aim to create engaging, immersive learning experiences.

David is a Senior Designer and Art Director specializing in the planning and realization of immersive and experiential exhibits for aquariums, zoos, botanic gardens, and other ‘living’ environments. He has an impressive portfolio of landmark projects in the US, Europe, the Middle-East, and Asia, and his forte is as a visualizer using both digital and physical modelling to create concepts that are immediately and vividly comprehensible.

Helen Divjak is a Brooklyn-based storyteller, investigator, and cultural navigator with over twenty years' experience creating public programs, exhibits, and visitor experiences with museums in the US, UK, and Middle East. Her recent projects include the Milwaukee Public Museum (slated to open 2026) and Showstoppers: Spectacular Costumes from Stage and Screen (New York, NY, 2021).

Early in her career, the American Alliance of Museums named Helen an Emerging Museum Fellow, and her work has since won numerous local, regional, and national awards. She has since worked on major capital projects with the Museum of History & Industry in Seattle and London's National Army Museum, as well as with the National Museum of Jordan in Amman, London Transport Museum, Philadelphia Zoo, and the National Archives of both the US and the UK.

A passionate advocate for historic preservation and cultural heritage, Helen has extensive training in oral history, community engagement, and non-profit administration. She studied History and German Studies at Macalester College (Saint Paul, MN) and went on to earn a MA in European History from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA), specializing in cross-cultural encounters and warfare. She has served as an adjunct lecturer in Museum Studies with the University of Washington's Master's Program, and instructed courses on the preservation, care, and interpretation of historic collections.

Helen's hobbies include visiting UNESCO World Heritage Sites across the globe, baking cakes, and outdoor sports like hiking, running, and skiing (to make up for all those cakes). She is currently researching the impact and benefits of having fun—yes, fun—in museums.

At home anywhere near water, James grew up around the smokestack dotted shores of Canadian steel town, Hamilton, Ontario. The simple forms of an industrial landscape, best viewed from the harbor, set against the Niagara Escarpment made a mark on his aesthetic, as did an ethos of discovery and knowledge through iterative making.

Early exposure to the trades at a vocational high school, and later degrees in fine art and architecture from Toronto Metropolitan University, and Rhode Island School of Design, set the stage for a robust professional career.

Through his professional work and innate curiosity he honed a vast array of fabrication and technical skills in tandem with conceptual visualization and documentation strategies. As a hands-on generalist within a specialized field of design, James has the ability to lead the realization of complex projects in every phase.

Prior to joining Thinc, James worked with conservation focused zoos, public aquariums, national parks, and theme parks worldwide to develop award-winning naturalistic habitats and support facilities for animals in their care. Notably, he served as a lead exhibit and architectural designer for two decades with Seattle-based Portico Group.

James Hollingsworth is a designer in Brooklyn, NY with over 20 years' experience with NYC exhibition design firms. As a military dependent, he traveled extensively throughout the US and Asia in his youth. This time created an appreciation for diverse thinking in contrasting cultures while this broad world exposure laid the groundwork to take on a wide spectrum of exhibits continually fueling interests for all subject matter.

He has designed for Sony, GE, The Pro Football Hall of Fame, The New York Historical Society, The Hudson River Museum, Queens Library, Pertosains Discovery Center among many others. Collaborating with NYC fabrication shops, he has design detailed for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Samsung, Starbucks and Jeff Koons Studio. Working with many talented team members on many projects, he takes challenges with enthusiasm, constructive dialogue and hands on research and development when needed.

James holds a BFA with honors from Pratt Institute and a Master of Design Studies from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He spends his free time rebuilding vintage BMX bikes with his daughter.

Jesse was born in Tennessee and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. At a young age, he discovered his predilection for asking questions about pretty much everything, and this curiosity crystallized an active imagination that continues to drive his interests today. Jesse has always loved to discover new ways of engaging his creative impulses - from making Claymation films with friends as a child, to learning how to 3D model with Rhino3D while still in grade school, to teaching himself how to play several musical instruments over the years. He considers his proclivity for learning to be his most valuable personality trait. Jesse's passion for both art and science and his desire to work across a range of creative disciplines led him to a MA in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute in 2016. For his thesis, he developed a novel method of 3D printing holograms and continues to explore potential applications for this invention.

At Thinc, Jesse gets to indulge his love of learning new things and apply his diverse skillset toward contributing something meaningful to the world.

John describes his journey to Thinc Design as the "road less traveled" . He is motivated by service to the community and he strongly believes that intentful design can enhance our experience in the physical world. John is passionate about design in many forms his favorites being Illustration, sketching and 3D design. He loves to customize footwear and street fashion with pop culture inspirations. Living in New York City has made film and photography playful hobbies.

Jorge Martinez has extensive experience working for clients ranging from corporations and zoos to natural science and children's museums. His work blends the best of environmental design - inviting spaces that evoke moods and settings at a glance - with an attention to content and a subtle wit that gives each exhibit a memorable twist. Jorge's educational background is in aerospace engineering and archaeology. He split his time between engineering and art at the University of Michigan, where he graduated from the Industrial Design program. He began working at a children's science museum while still in school and has been immersed in the world of exhibition design ever since. His work has spanned continents, communities, cultures, sciences and species. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.

Melanie Feaster is a designer with a background working in museums, university galleries, design studios, and non-profit arts organizations. Her diverse skill set includes exhibition design, graphic design, research, and content management.

Prior to joining Thinc, Melanie worked as a registrar for the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture in Baltimore, MD. There, she managed the gallery's Civil Rights Archive for the traveling exhibition, For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Additionally, she worked as an associate designer at International Arts & Artists in Washington, DC and created the visual identity for various traveling exhibitions, such as Modern Twist: Contemporary Japanese Bamboo Art. Her exhibition branding packages consisted of logo designs, didactic materials, and exhibition catalogs.

Melanie holds a MA in Exhibition Design from the Corcoran College of Art + Design and a BA in Visual Arts with concentrations in Graphic Design and Art History from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She designed her first exhibition, Constructed: Images of Labor, while attending the Summer Institute in Art Museum Studies at Smith College.

Oronde Wright loves a good problem. Even as a student designer at Rochester Institute of Technology, he always pushed himself to come up with many diverse solutions to a challenge. While there, Oronde set up an interclass mentorship program based on his conviction that every generation should strive to be better than the last. The experience exposed him to the pleasure of working for and with a community dedicated to self-betterment. His time as an art therapist at Menorah Nursing Home also fostered his sense putting people first in a space.

During his career as an exhibit designer he's worked on zoos, national museums and international expos, but his favorite project was a humble climate exhibit in Kathmandu that focused on teaching school groups how they could deal with climate change.

For fun, Oronde writes fiction and is fascinated with storytelling in all mediums, as it's an art form deeply ingrained in humanity since its early history.

Ryan is a researcher dedicated to using creative media to cultivate spaces for reflection, dialogue, and action. Having studied History of Art & Architecture and Urban Studies at Brown University, Ryan brings to Thinc experience working across the boundaries of art and architecture in several international contexts. Most recently, he was a cataloguer of contemporary art at a major auction house and previously acted as the David and Nina Fialkow Research Fellow at the Norman Foster Foundation in Madrid.

Across his professional experience, Ryan has balanced critical inquiry and creative practice while editing publications, authoring interpretive texts, and developing multimedia projects based on archival research. Sparked by his own family history and research projects based in Berlin, questions of collective memory and public space have emerged as a major through line in Ryan’s work. Ryan is interested in the way exhibitions, installations, and digital platforms can rebuild a sense of possibility and collective care for the communities and ecosystems which we inhabit.

Shahira is a versatile architect and artist with experience in architecture, product design, and museography. She holds a Master's degree from the Excessive postgraduate program led by Hernan Diaz Alonso at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (dieAngewandte) where she graduated with distinction in 2012. Prior to dieAngewandte, she received a bachelor's degree in architecture with honors from the Arab Academy for Science and Technology and was awarded by the World Architecture Community for her thesis project.

Shahira has worked for architecture and design firms in New York, Vienna, and Alexandria. In 2018, she received a research fellowship from Terreform ONE where she took part in the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary project which was exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Triennial: Nature. She strongly believes in the Gesamtkunstwerk ethos of creating a total work of art focusing on interdisciplinary collaboration and experimentation. Her work has been exhibited and published widely in international magazines and events including Outsider Art Fair NY, Evolo, Designboom, among others.

Shahira was born in Minneapolis and grew up in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.