FUTURE NOW EJ

President
United States
Craig Elimeliah
Chief Creative Officer /prompt.
ABOUT

Craig Elimeliah

Craig Elimeliah is a highly decorated creative leader, renowned for his exceptional ability to unlock growth through innovation. With nearly two decades of experience, Craig leads multitalented teams with a vision to tackle complex challenges head-on, through the art of culture, design and creativity.

As Chief Creative Officer at Lippe Taylor, Craig brings an unrivaled passion for culture, technology, science, and data, and how they merge with creativity, craftsmanship, and storytelling. He seamlessly blends new and unconventional approaches to connect brands with customers, resulting in captivating experiences that redefine categories, embed culture, and disrupt the status quo.

A sought-after speaker and thought leader, Craig has been recognized at prestigious award shows such as Cannes, D&AD, ADC, LIA, Clios, The One Show, and Webbys, further cementing his reputation as an authority in his field.

With an insatiable thirst for knowledge, Craig is an enthusiastic champion of the transformative power of creativity to drive business results. In his free time, he indulges his passions for art, design, technology, and food, and finds joy in cooking, running, traveling, and learning.

Craig calls the banks of the Hudson River in Nyack, NY home, where he lives with his beloved family.

His impressive client roster spans across multiple industries and includes: TMobile, Athena Health, Amazon, Google, Cognizant, New Balance, BP, Motorola, Luminary, Dell, Office Depot, United Nations, Legoland, Related Properties, Pfizer, PHRMA, Humana, Time Warner Cable, J&J, NBCUniversal, Clorox, Mattel, Disney Channel, Gilead, Nestle, Novartis, HP, Bayer, SAP, New York State Development Corp, Converse, Herman Miller, Sony Music, Penguin Publishing, Newell Rubbermaid, Daffy's, Hershey's, Microsoft, Intel, Fila, AXE, Perdue, HP, Samsung, John Varvatos, Sean John, MINI.

USA
Walter Geer
Chief Experience Design Officer VMLY&R
ABOUT

Walter Geer

Sport-bike racer, track & field All-American, multi-patent holder, biometric lab creator, Adweek 50 most important people in Media Marketing & Tech, Adweek Change Creator of the Year, American Advertising Federations Mosaic Champion, and Savoy Magazines Most Influential Black Executives In Corporate America—these are just a few of Walter Geer’s self-earned epithets.

A veteran of the digital advertising space, Walter holds a total of six U.S Patents for digital ad formats, and has developed ad products and implemented creative strategies for a variety of publishers and leading technology and media companies including Google, Viacom, NYTimes and MySpace.

Throughout his twenty-year career, Walter has architected market-first usability labs, applying biometric research to the development of creative executions and minimizing risk by understanding how consumer emotions and demographics impact brand engagement.

His passion sits at the intersection of story-telling, design, technology, data, and research.

Australia
Aden Hepburn
CEO / CCO / Co-Founder Akcelo
ABOUT

Aden Hepburn

Aden is a new-world creative and business leader who co-founded Akcelo in 2020. The independent agency, just 3 years old, has scaled globally on the back of delivering award winning work for a host of the world’s most ambitious brands like TikTok, Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, Tinder, PepsiCo, LEGO and McDonald’s.

Prior to this, he built his career inside WPP, the world’s largest Advertising & Marketing communications group listed on the London stock exchange. There, he launched VML in Sydney, and under his leadership as Managing Director & ECD, scaled it to multiple offices alongside a host of world famous work, global awards and APAC clients. From there, he led the merger of VML & Y&R to create VMLY&R, where he oversaw 5 offices and 450 staff across Australia & New Zealand.

Aden has been awarded at Cannes Lions, FWA's, OneShow, Spikes Asia, AWARD Awards, New York Festivals, LIA's, SXSW Interactive, ANDY's, CLIO's, The Webby's... and even a yellow D&AD pencil. 

He was also named in B&T magazine's 30 under 30 leaders, along with AdNew's 40 under 40 leaders, and was the founder of a world famous digital marketing & creative technology blog, Digital Buzz.

United States
Elav Horwitz
EVP , Global Head of Applied Innovation McCann World Group
ABOUT

Elav Horwitz

Elav Horwitz is a futurist and innovator with over two decades of experience helping the world’s best-known brands harness the power of new technology to drive growth. She currently leads innovation and partnerships for McCann Worldgroup, working with clients including General Motors, Nestle, Mastercard, Coca Cola, L'Oreal, Cigna, and Johnson & Johnson. 

As an expert curator, Elav works across technologies, distilling current advances into digestible, relevant, and growth-oriented opportunities for clients. She established McCann’s world-leading Web3 practice and partnerships network, designed to educate Fortune 500 clients on the future of Web3, both ideating with them and implementing their visions. 

Elav is a champion of a culture of innovation throughout the enterprise, creating new proprietary tools and human-centric methods that tackle businesses’ challenges while driving revenue. Her global network of startups, founders, and tech leaders has been built during a career spanning the US, Europe, and Israel; her programming experience in the Israeli army, and deep connections forged with tech companies in Tel Aviv, several of which she remains an advisor and mentor to. 

She remains focused on nurturing and recognizing innovation throughout the industry, from various judging roles on innovations juries (Cannes Lions Innovation, The One Show, Jay Chiat, The Webbys) to speaking at conferences (Cannes Lions Innovation, ADFEST, Advertising Week) and establishing innovation incubators for the C-suite. She is a She Runs It Award winner, founding member of Chief, member of the Meta Creative Council and host of Jealous of the Partnership podcast, exploring the world’s most innovative partnerships shaping our future through the lens of people, culture, and business.

Germany
Joachim Kortlepel
Managing Creative Director and Head of Content JVM
ABOUT

Joachim Kortlepel

Joachim Kortlepel is Managing Creative Director and Head of Content at Jung von Matt, Germany where he creates ideas that attracts all kinds of audiences, constantly pushing the limits of Data, Tech, PR, Advertising, Design and Culture. Joachim has worked for major brands and his work has been recognized in several international award shows. He is a member of the Art Director’s Club of Germany, D&AD, Cannes Lions, and was a member of the jury for various renowned national and international awards. He studied Social Sciences in Germany and the United States, and started his career as a journalist in Washington D.C., joined BBDO as a Copywriter before becoming a Creative in Brand Experiences at Jung von Matt. He loves ideas and is a strong believer in creativity which basically – in his eyes - can solve every problem in the world. He is a father to three kids, lives in Hamburg, enjoys music, sports and writing.

USA
Karen Maurice-O'Leary
Founding Member Verses and Valleys
ABOUT

Karen Maurice-O'Leary

Karen (Kaz) Maurice O’Leary is an emerging technology specialist with a comprehensive career portfolio showcasing global executive leadership. She is a founding member of Verses and Valleys - a metaverse advisory council for non-for-profits and start-ups providing guidance on AR/VR/XR/NFTs and AI. The council is a group of award winning strategists, technologists, creative directors, producers and lawyers. Kaz is also an Industry Speaker on tech for good. Former Meta, Horizon Worlds, Instagram, Facebook, DDB, TBWA. Creator of The Bolognese Philosophy to protect time and promote wellness in corporate environments.

USA
Sarah Nguyen
Creative Director Zerotrillion
ABOUT

Sarah Nguyen

Sarah Nguyen leads design as Creative Director at Zerotrillion New York. She previously held roles at iconic brands such as Google where she served as design lead for high-profile divisions including Google Creative Labs. Sarah holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York and has worked at renowned agencies such as Goodby Silverstein & Partners, and Ogilvy. Her work spans a myriad of reputable Blue-Chip brands including IBM, Google, and Motorola. 

Sarah works at the intersection of art, design, and technology, imagining new ways of brand expression that inspire and excite customers and businesses alike. Curiosity about the future, deep appreciation for craft, and systems thinking has shaped her view on design. She harnesses emerging technology to help brands share their unique value while leaving lasting impressions.

Sarah balances the ephemeral and often intangible nature of tech through tactile pursuits like jewelry making, where she explores small scale sculptures in the form of wearable art.

USA
Mike Woods
Director of Immersive Content / ECD m ss ng P eces
ABOUT

Mike Woods

Mike Woods has been an industry leader in digital, experiential, mixed reality and VFX for over twenty years. Since joining m ss ng p eces in 2017, Mike has led a Cannes Lions and AICP award winning experiential project for National Safety Council, a huge Winter Olympic campaign for Intel and an Emmy award winning project for the Truth Initiative...

In 2020, Mike had the most award heavy year of his career, with projects for Tinder, Baskin Robbins & Stranger Things, and Ally Bank Monopoly all winning big. Tinder and Baskin Robbins actually have him a ‘clean sweep’ in the AICP Next Awards prestigious ‘Integrated’ category. He’s led projects as serious as a 3D selfie-powered petition app for the United Nations World Humanitarian Day and as light hearted as an AR Fart App, which was a Creativity editor’s pick and FWA of the month.

Known industry wide for his inventiveness and creative integration of technology, Woods was named to Ad Age’s “Creativity 50” list in 2013 alongside Jay-Z, Shonda Rhimes and Ted Sarandos.

In 2019 and 2020 Woods served as Jury President for the AICP.

Prior to joining M ss ng P eces Woods launched both Framestore’s Digital and VR Studios, serving as Head of Studio and Executive Creative Director. During his time there he developed real time animation and motion capture workflows for projects such as Coca-Cola “Polar Bowl”, “Beats Realtime” for Beats By Dre, and Geico’s “Gecko Realtime.”

He also designed and directed numerous award winning immersive and mixed reality experiences including Game of Thrones “Ascend The Wall”, Merrell’s motion tracking adventure experience “Trailscape” and a companion VR piece to Christopher Nolan’s Oscar winning Interstellar.

One day Mike will count all of his awards, like lots of other people on LinkedIn do, and list them all.

But not now. He’s too busy making stuff.