Phantila Phataraprasit is the co-founder and CEO of Sabai Design, a sustainable furniture company with the mission to make conscious living accessible. After graduating from Columbia, she worked at Morgan Stanley for a year before attending NYU School of Law. Phantila is from Thailand, was recognized by Inc.’s Female Founders 100 (2021) and is passionate about all things sustainable/circular.
Co-founder and creative director of Design Works International, Nancy works alongside Neil Breslau, her business partner, husband and co-founder of Design Works International. She is recognized for her natural ability to connect her passion for color and design with a keen understanding of the changes and developments in lifestyle trends, helping brands to adapt and capitalize on an ever-changing market.
Jeronimo Cooklin founded the Sustainable Furnishings Council to transform the home furnishings industry and to help preserve the world's forests. Involved in the furniture Industry since 1986 and in Sustainable Development since 1998, he put these two together to form SFC in late 2006. He founded PaTS, a Peruvian nonprofit organization in the Peruvian Amazon, working with the Yanesha indigenous community members helping them to become artisans and business people, who are able to create a sustainable living for their families while preserving their forests.
Jason is internationally renowned in the furniture industry for his fresh contemporary designs. His work has been published in dozens of design and lifestyle magazines as well as hundreds of blogs. Notably, he was honored at the 21st Annual ARTS Awards as Product Designer of the Year, the youngest ever recipient of this prestigious award. In late 2009, he won VERANDA magazine’s inaugural ‘The Art of Design’ Award for his body of work in the ‘Trade Secrets’ category.
Michael J. Hirschhorn is founder & CEO of mebl | Transforming Furniture. By expanding the market for beautiful new furniture reimagined from old wood, metal and plastic, mebl seeks to help accelerate the transition to an environmentally sustainable and circular economy.
A veteran in the interior textiles market with 30 years experience, Jennifer K. Harmon has a passion for textiles that can be traced back to her early career years in textile design and product development. As a seasoned, visionary business executive, she applies both creative & critical thinking skills and believes advancing both art and science is vital in the business environment.
Cindy Morris is president and CEO of Dallas Market Center, the global wholesale marketplace and tradeshow management company hosting dozens of business-to-business trade events each year inside its 5 million square foot campus.
Abi Sood is Founder & CEO of Avasa Home. He was born and raised around the textile industry. His family's sourcing business has been operating out of India since the 1960s, sourcing products from all over south Asia and offering them to the world. After joining the family business for a short time in the 1990s, Abi decided to break off on his own and started manufacturing home textiles.
Julia Noran Johnston is President of Business of Home.
Jonsara Ruth is Design Director at Parsons The New School Healthy Materials Lab, Founding Director of the MFA Interior Design Program, and Associate Professor at Parsons School of Design. Here she led AFTERTASTE, a symposium that brings new definition to the field of interiors. Central to her work is listening to and learning from diverse perspectives, and studying human experience, behavior, and health as principal motivations for design. Material curiosities drive her research.
