The Whole Wide Web is Watching
Announcing the 2017 Embers Judges
From Vancouver and Philadelphia to UK and New Zealand, we've collected the best of the best to see what Alberta has to offer. How do you stack up?
Join us on September 23, 2017 in celebrations and find out first-hand at the Ember Awards!
Nigel Hammersley
Digital Business Director, Bray Leino
Having worked in advertising, specializing in digital and emerging technologies for over 21 years, Nigel has experience in both the UK, NZ and the Middle East (based in UAE) working in various roles leading agencies such as Clemenger BBDO, Y&R and more recently Edelman into the digital age before joining Bray Leino. He has delivered numerous campaigns and projects across multiple platforms for a variety of sectors. With clients from government, corporate and consumer and brands including Diageo, Bank of NZ, Castrol, Royal Bank of Scotland, Microsoft, Telecom, Panasonic, Colgate, Land Rover, HP, Toyota and Sony PlayStation, winning a variety of industry awards along the way.
Exeter, United Kingdom
Sara Blake
Illustrator & Designer, ZSO
Sara Blake is a New York City based illustrator and designer. Mostly she makes art under the name ZSO. On dry days she leaves free art and love notes around New York through Love Letters to NYC. She is a design director through Minetta Design Co. working to create brand experiences. She is 1/2 of Solid Gold House and a Rocket Car.
New York, United States
Maura Cottle
Partner & Creative Director, Heat Wave Collective
Maura is responsible for the creative vision and execution of client and internal product incubator initiatives at Heat Waves. She excels in developing content & design strategy from a product standpoint, overseeing the translation of conceptual design into digital and physical spaces. She has led and developed creative solutions for clients like Apple, FX Networks, FOX, Lexus, and Sephora. She helps to establish and enforce a creative process that fosters innovation and collaboration between strategy & technology. Her passion for creativity is not limited to digital, but extends to all consumer facing touch-points where design can make an experience great.
Los Angeles, United States
Douglas Dollars
Senior Product Manager, Google Cloud Platform
Douglas Dollars is Senior Product Marketing Manager of the Google Cloud Platform, and in his quiet time he judges your websites and strong-arms friends into philanthropy, providing classroom materials for 2064 at-risk students across 20 projects and raising more than $12,000 to provide clean water for 400 human lives this year.
California, United States
Joost Korngold
Motion Designer & Director, Renascent
Joost graduated in ’99 from a graphic design school. After having worked for various webdesign agencies he started Freelancing under the name Renascent in November of 2002. Currently active in visual static and motion imagery for different media, he has worked for clients such as Nike, Wired Magazine and HewlettPackard and has been commissioned by numerous advertisement agencies around the world.
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Carole Guevin
Founder & Editor, Netdiver Magazine
Carole Guevin is an internationally recognized pioneering editor + curator of the creative industry. She founded one of the first design portals, Netdiver Mag back in '98 and to this day, she is passionate about showcasing the design digital culture. She has served on many prestigious award programs as well as was invited to speak at major design events.
Montreal, Canada
Pete Montgomery
Creative Director, Xero
Pete Montgomery is the Creative Director of the internal creative team, the Hub, at Xero. His team is spread across the world crafting beautiful brand moments through user experience, digital advertising, exhibition design, motion graphics and advertising campaigns. During his career he designed one of the most iconic symbols of ‘New Zealandness’ — the new New Zealand passport.
Wellington, New Zealand
Tom Worthington
Educational Designer, TomW Communications Pty Ltd
Tom Worthington is an independent educational designer, computer professional and an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Research School of Computer Science at the Australian National University. A Certified Professional member of the Australian Computer Society, in 2015 Tom received a national gold Digital Disruptors Award for "ICT education" and in 2010 was Canberra ICT Educator of the Year. He blogs as the HigherEducationWhisperer.com
Canberra, Australia
Brigid Alkema
Executive Creative Director, Clemenger BBDO
Brigid first found herself at Clemenger BBDO Wellington back in 2000. After a stint in Sydney Australia, first at DDB and then at Clemenger, she returned to her beloved hometown and, and of course, her beloved agency. She was consistently ranked as one of Australasia’s top creatives and then became Clemenger BBDO’s Executive Creative Director in 2015. Since then, WARC100 has ranked the agency in the Top 25 globally. Brigid has been a jury member at Cannes, D&AD, The One Show, New York Festivals, Spikes, Webbys, AdStars, AWARD and Axis, and has been highly awarded at every major award show. Campaign Brief ‘The Work’ and Best Ads have had her ranked as one of the top 5 creative directors in Australasia for the last five years.
Wellington, New Zealand
Chelsea Klukas
Ux Design, Amazon
Chelsea is a UX design manager at Amazon and an interdisciplinary technology-focused artist. Her work at Amazon is focused on consumer experiences that are delightful and engaging, including the recently launched Amazon Spark and Echo Look. Outside of building great products, she is passionate about building design culture in data-driven environments and driving processes to innovate at scale.
Seattle, United States
Kim Alpert
Director of Creative Technology, DCI Artform
Kim believes, first and foremost, in human-centric design and integrating technology with strategy in her time-based work. With a background in fine art, music, and carpentry, Kim brings an attention to detail and diverse styles to both her video installation and advertising work. Kim’s art primarily focuses on humanism, media and change. Kim holds a degree in Digital Art & Design from Full Sail University and was inducted into their Hall of Fame in 2013.
Chicago, United States
Ingi Erlingsson
Co-Founder & Creative Director, Golden Wolf
Ingi is a guy that wears many hats, but mainly the hat of the co-founder and creative director of Golden Wolf, an animation production company based in Shoreditch, London. Golden Wolf makes animated content for all kinds of clients, mainly in the advertising, entertainment, sport and music industries. Other than that Ingi runs a few blogs, co-founded Hurt You Bad magazine and dabbles in graffiti once in a blue moon.
London, United Kingdom
Owen van Dijk
Tech Lead & Creative Technologist, Imagination
As the founder of the Adobe User Group in Amsterdam, Owen has organized over 30 meetings and 2 sold out conferences, bringing worlds best digital talent and agencies to Amsterdam. In his daily life he works as a Tech Lead & Creative Technologist at Imagination London blending experiential & digital for the worlds biggest automotive clients. He is also a FWA SOTD Judge since 2014.
London, United Kingdom
Alison Garnett
Partner & Creative Director, FIeld Trip & Co
Before launching Field Trip & Co, Alison guided creative teams at SapientNitro, on concept to execution of finely crafted technology and UX campaigns with strategy at its core. In the last year, she was instrumental in winning Porter Airlines, Cadillac Fairview and Holt Renfrew. In addition to speaking at industry events, she has many prestigious awards to her credit including a pencil from The One Show. Alison also recently participated as a juror at both the CMA and Marketing awards.
Toronto, Canada
Daniel Schutzsmith
Co-Founder & Creative Technology Director, Mark & Phil
Daniel is a rare breed – an equal-parts hybrid of business, design, programming and strategy – ready to change the world. He’s the Creative Technology Director and Co-Founder of Mark & Phil, a digital creative agency making marketing and fundraising easier for nonprofits of all sizes. Over the past decade he has worked with clients such as Adobe, Greenpeace, CosmoGIRL!, Live Earth, The Pixies, MTV, Phish, Nelson Mandela Foundation, PBS, They Might Be Giants, TBS, Pepsico, and Dave Matthews.
New York, United States
Jim Thomas
Digital Creative Director, Tribal
Jim Thomas is a digital creative director with over ten years experience at agencies such as Tribal and AKQA in Amsterdam, Dare, Sapient and razorfish in London. He has also worked in New Zealand, Singapore, Barcelona And Berlin. Recent digital projects include making films with Serena Williams for Beats, working with Samuel L Jackson on his cancer charity and developing a gaming platform for the Maclaren F1 team.
Guildford, United Kingdom
Pierre Chan
Copywriter & Associate Creative Director, Cossette
As a naive teen, Pierre’s dream was to become a politician or lawyer. When he failed at both, the natural progression was to move onto the next most-hated profession. Today, Pierre works as a Copywriter and Associate Creative Director at Cossette Vancouver. When not writing for clients like McDonald's, Arc'teryx and Tourism Yukon, he spends his time writing grocery lists, craigslist posts and angry emails. Pierre's work has been internationally recognized by Cannes, Communication Arts, One Show, Clios, Webbys, ADC NY, and Kleenex on adsoftheworld.com.
Vancouver, Canada
Warren Wilansky
President & Founder, Plank
Warren is the President and Founder of Plank, a Montreal-based digital agency that specializes in developing websites and mobile applications for all types of companies and organizations. He takes immense pride developing projects that matter and aim to make the world a better and more enjoyable place. Some of Plank's past and present clients are: Michael Moore, The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Rush, Bioware, The Sun Magazine, Culture Days, Yellow Pages Group, McGill University, and Bell Centre.
Montreal, Canada
Ethan Smith-Gillespie
Founder & President, The Program
Ethan is Founder and President of The Program, and idea company in Portland, Oregon. He guides the team at The Program as they create digital experiences for some of the world’s most ambitious lifestyle brands. He also coaches college soccer and is an avid mountain runner.
Portland, United States
Greg Hoy
Principal, Happy Cog
Greg has been involved in digital design for over 20 years. He's been managing teams since 1997, and started Happy Cog in Philadelphia in 2006. He writes and speaks about collaboration, work ethic, and the client service industry. In 2012, Greg co-founded Bureau of Digital, an organization devoted to fostering collaboration between digital studios and agencies. The Bureau has hundreds of participating organizations with thousands of active professionals.
Philadelphia, United States
Jim Fitt
Founder & CEO, Velsoft
Jim is an energetic, award-winning edupreneur and a global eLearning evangelist. He is the founder and CEO of Velsoft which serves clients in 164 countries from offices in New Glasgow, Halifax, Antigua, London, and Johannesburg. Jim is also the founder of znanja, Eager2Learn, Gameo and countless other edtech companies. Jim balances work with a passion for community economic development and can be often found volunteering both locally and in locations such as Guatemala and the Philippines.
Nova Scotia, Canada