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Melissa Alexander spent a decade in architectural practice before spending the next decade in data analytics and visualization, and now consults at the intersection of the two. She holds degrees from Harvard's Graduate School of Design and MICA, and has served on the advisory board for the University of Washington's Data Visualization program and the Seattle Design Review Board. Her work bridges two design disciplines that rarely speak to each other, despite working on fundamentally similar problems.
Surbhi is a data journalist, and has spent many years searching for insights and composing stories that are coded and designed to turn numbers into striking and memorable visuals. She loves working on diverse topics to uncover what really may be happening in the boundless worlds of bollywood movies, digital commerce, climate change, urbanisation, and chocolates!
She has worked with different mindsets across many settings like: urgency in newsrooms, immersion in academia, clarity in communications, and creativity in design studios. She agrees that correlation is not causation, but believes strongly that walkable cities make life better. She has worked with xKDR Forum, Mint, World Bank, Thibi, Open Network for Digital Commerce, and written for Kontinentalist, Nikkei Asia, Indiaspend, The Hindu, and more. Her work has been recognised by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW), Festival de Datos, and The Pudding.
Arlene Birt is an information designer, visual storyteller, and educator. An expert in information visualization and narrative visuals to communicate science, Birt incorporates principles of behavioral psychology into visual communication. Striving to spread visual science communication globally, Birt is Information Designer and Graphics Officer with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group I, where she co-creates scientific figures with 100+ climate scientists. She was previously Graphics Officer on the 6th assessment cycle (AR6) Synthesis Report - including the designer of several figures that landed on the front page of global news media.
As founder and creative director at Background Stories, Birt aims to put data into context and help individuals emotionally connect to seemingly distant environmental concepts. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, Financial Times, Le Monde, Creative Review (UK), U.S. News and World Report, numerous other global media, and the Barcelona Design Museum. Birt has published chapters in several books, including New Challenges for Data Design and Strategic Sustainability Communication, and holds a master’s degree from Design Academy Eindhoven (NL).
As a professor for 11 years, Birt taught courses on data visualization and visual communication. Birt was visiting fellow at Seoul National University, adjunct faculty of Wuhan University of Technology (China), a Fulbright fellow in the Netherlands.
Dr. Nihanth Cherukuru is a scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, where he leads an interdisciplinary applied research group exploring how emerging technologies can improve scientific and communication workflows for Earth system science data. His research spans immersive AR and VR environments, AI-assisted visualization, and multisensory tools - including tactile data representations. His work has been featured at the White House Frontiers Conference, USA Science and Engineering Festival, displayed at the U.S. Capitol, and covered in HPCwire and Science Node. Across everything he builds, the goal is the same: help more people make sense of the Earth system we live in.
Anne-Marie is a designer and developer passionate about creating stunning data visualizations for all platforms. She crafts interfaces that seamlessly blend traditional web content with visualized data. Teaching has also shaped her career for the past 20 years, and she co-authored the third edition of the book 'D3.js in Action'.
I’m an urban planner and data designer driven by the belief that cities should be joyful, accessible, and equitable for everyone. With a Master’s in City Planning from MIT and nine years of experience across Asia and the U.S., I work at the intersection of transportation planning, urban design, and data storytelling, turning complex systems and data into clear, actionable strategies.
My career spans work with public agencies, design studios, and research labs, where I’ve built tools, insights, and narratives that help planners, policymakers, and communities make informed decisions. In Singapore, I collaborated with organizations such as the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Aviation Studies Institute, Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Asian Development Bank. In the U.S., my work has focused on equity-driven urban planning that enhances the public realm.
Scott is a seasoned data visualization professional with 20 years of experience in creating dashboards and scorecards, writing dashboard documentation, and implementing data visualization standards. Scott has honed his skills in data visualization in Tableau over the past 13 years and is passionate about and been actively mentoring for 10 years. Scott is a Tableau Ambassador and is a co-lead of the Career Pathmakers and Central Ohio Tableau user groups. Scott is an avid Trekkie and gamer as well as watching The Ohio State Buckeyes on Saturdays and Cleveland Browns on Sundays during football season.
Born in Medellín, Colombia, Laura holds a BA in Economics and a Master’s degree in Digital Humanities. Her work sits at the intersection of data, storytelling, and design, with a focus on how digital tools can shape more meaningful forms of communication. She has experience developing interdisciplinary projects that bridge research, creativity, and technology. She is also the co-founder of Candura Studio, a creative technology studio and consultancy, that focuses on building thoughtful digital experiences, brand systems, and data-driven storytelling.
Ann K. Emery is an internationally acclaimed speaker who equips organizations to get their data out of dusty spreadsheets and into real-world conversations. Each year, she delivers over 100 keynotes, workshops, and webinars with the aim of equipping organizations to visualize data more effectively. She has been invited to speak in 31 states and 11 countries; 10,000 people have enrolled in her online training academy; and she has consulted to 200 different organizations. After traveling full-time as a digital nomad, Ann now resides in Florida along with her husband and five children. She runs a million miles a week so she doesn't lose her mind.
Alice Feng is a data visualization designer and developer based in the Washington, DC area. She is passionate about using design to make data and information more accessible to broader audiences and has been exploring ways to bring equity and accessibility into the way data is visualized through her work on the Do No Harm Guide series. Alice has created data visualizations at places such as the Urban Institute, the United Nations Development Programme, Axios, and Global Energy Monitor and has collaborated with organizations such as DataKind, Data4Change, and Data Science Africa.
Madeleine Filloux is a visualization engineer at Hex, where she builds tools that help humans and AI agents alike create beautiful, useful visualizations. Before building tools, she spent over a decade using them - across domains as varied as genomics, agricultural sustainability, and finance - earning a set of strong opinions and an even deeper bench of curiosities. Her current obsession is enabling agents to author, critique, and remix charts as effectively as human practitioners.
By day, Anne-Laure Freant works as a software technical writer. She has spent many years exploring dataphysicalization, material representations of information, and the history of knowledge systems. Since 2019, this interest has grown into the creation of the *Datartefact* project, an independent platform combining a series books, online essays, and the production of experimental 'datartefacts' to investigate how humans have encoded, recorded, and transmitted knowledge through physical forms across cultures and eras.
Chad P. Hall is Assistant Professor in Visual Communication Design at the University of Washington, Creative Director at September Works—an interface design studio, and Host of the podcast, This is Design School. His work focuses on transforming abstract ideas into tangible, accessible, and actionable insights by visualizing data, mapping systems, designing frameworks, and envisioning futures. He holds a Master of Design from the University of Washington's School of Art + Art History + Design and a BA in Communication from Pacific Lutheran University.
Yan Holtz is a French data visualization educator and solopreneur behind a family of reference sites including the R, Python, and D3 Graph Galleries, data-to-viz.com, and the weekly Dataviz Universe newsletter.
Han Huang is a data visualization developer at Reuters in Hong Kong, where she creates maps, animations, and data-driven stories for breaking news and investigative reporting. She was part of a Reuters team that was named a finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Illustrated Reporting and Commentary.
Previously, she worked at Reuters in New York and Singapore and was also a graphic designer at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong.
HaoChe Hung is a data artist and urban analyst who transforms civic datasets into multisensory experiences. With a background in urban planning from Columbia GSAPP and data visualization from Parsons, his work sits at the intersection of spatial research, data storytelling, and creative technology. He currently works in urban and mobility analytics while maintaining an independent creative practice that explores the hidden narratives of urban systems.
Milan Janosov, PhD is a geospatial data scientist and location intelligence expert, founder of Geospatial Data Consulting and External Consultant at Oxford Economics. Ranked #1 in Data Science globally on LinkedIn (Favikon, 2026), Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, and TEDx Speaker, he bridges spatial AI research and real-world applications for clients in real estate, infrastructure, and urban development. A three-time #1 Amazon bestselling author and public educator with 100,000+ followers, his latest book Geospatial Data Science Essentials: 101 Steps to GeoAI from Scratch launched June 15, 2026.
Natalia Jardon is an award-winning innovation designer and strategist operating at the intersection of human-centered design, global policy, and science communication. Currently Director of Communications and Digital Innovation at the World Justice Project, she specializes in translating complex metrics into actionable digital tools for journalists, civil servants, and citizens. Outside of her global policy work, she is also the co-founder of Sociedad de Científicos Anónimos, mixing science with a fun night out.
Andy Kirk is an independent data visualisation expert from the UK but based in Dublin, Ireland. His work involves delivering a range of professional services to clients around the world. He specialises in data visualisation design training and consultancy, but alongside this he is a sought-after speaker, a four-times published author, editor of visualisingdata.com since 2010, and the host of the ‘Explore Explain’ video and podcast series.
Judit Kisistók is an ML Engineer / Data Scientist at Hakio, where she builds demand forecasting systems for fashion retail. Her career has taken her from cancer research to fashion tech; a path that taught her the same lesson in every domain: nobody trusts a model they can't understand. Her research days ended with two co-invented patents and a Nature co-authorship - then she went on to figure out how many pink camo jackets the world actually needs. In her free time, she also mentors aspiring developers at HackYourFuture Denmark and starts way too many knitting projects at the same time.
Rebecca is a senior data visualization and UX designer at Graphicacy, a mission-driven data visualization and storytelling firm turning complex data into compelling digital experiences. She's involved from early design through launch shaping the experience, testing what gets built, and making sure clients feel confident with the final product. Her talk draws on her experience designing a production-ready charting system for a large survey research platform, where she applied atomic design principles to data viz documentation. She's here to make the case that how you document your design decisions matters as much as the decisions themselves.
Elsie is a data visualization designer with a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched how designers define what they want audiences to learn, feel, or do—and how those goals shape visual design. She crafts data-driven stories, spanning digital and physical mediums, and is a data visualization analyst at the Postal Regulatory Commission.
Mariana López has over eight years of experience transforming institutional and policy data into clear visual narratives. She holds a Master's degree in Information Design from UAM, where her thesis earned national awards. She previously served as Information Design Specialist at the World Justice Project, where she led the visual redesign of the Rule of Law Index. Her work sits at the intersection of data, editorial, and visual strategy.
Frankie runs the UK policy analysis and research at Ember. Both a lead analyst and spokesperson for Ember's UK work, the focus of his research is in accelerating progress towards a low-emission, abundant and accessible energy system.
Ray McLendon is an AI and data science leader with over 15 years of experience building machine learning systems. His career has spanned the finance, transportation, energy, and consumer electronic industries. He is passionate about helping teams move beyond AI hype and build reliable, human-centered systems that create real value.
Lauren is one of four data visualisation specialists in Ember's in-house data viz team, where she turns complex energy data into clear, compelling stories about the clean energy transition. She leads data visualisation training for analysts, develops rapid-response graphics and data records, and helps promote Ember’s open data through accessible visual storytelling.
Heather Page is a Statistician in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Monitoring Section of the UN Statistics Division. She has supported the programme on global monitoring of SDG progress for over a decade, including development and implementation of the SDG indicator framework, The Sustainable Development Goals Report produced annually and capacity building for developing evidence-based Voluntary National Reviews and data storytelling.
Rebecca is an Australian visual and graphics editor based in Singapore, leading Reuters’ Asia graphics team. With a background in data‑driven storytelling at The Straits Times, she’s passionate about human‑centred visual journalism, and a proud mum to two boys.
In his full-time work, Tyler Portis serves as a Senior Data Analyst at Noble Schools, the largest high school charter network in Chicago. Tyler leads the design of high-impact Tableau dashboards (750+ weekly views), automated workflows, and planning tools that support instruction, student experience, staff retention, and operations. His work lives at the intersection of analytics, product thinking, and human-centered design because data only creates value when it changes decisions and behavior.
Annie has worked on data visualization & data analysis for modeling and communicating environmental risks. She earned her PhD in Computer Science researching how visualization can improve science-based decision making. As a vis researcher and professional, she has focused on air pollution, wildfire, and other climate hazards.
Alexandria is a researcher and educator working at the intersection of data and archives. As an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Communication and Information, she studies data practices in library, archive, and museum collections from an intersectional feminist lens. Her current work exploring textiles as platforms for data sharing is inspired by her prior work as a cataloguer in a textile museum collection.
Serena Roberts is a 8x Tableau Ambassador and an expert in data community-building. With over two decades of experience in data and analytics, she’s held a variety of technical and non-technical roles, making her a versatile leader in the field. Since 2016, Serena has led the Twin Cities Tableau User Group and co-founded She Talks Data, a Minneapolis-based non-profit focused on improving gender equality in data-related fields.
Rosa Romero Gómez is a data visualization engineer originally from Spain, with a background in Human-Computer Interaction and Data Visualization research. At Graphicacy, she leads the engineering of interactive data visualization projects, working across data, design, and technology to create usable and impactful public-facing data visualization tools. Rosa earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Georgia Tech. She has also led visual analytics projects for organizations including DARPA and has served as publications and program co-chair for the IEEE Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security.
Brian is a UX Strategist & Architect with a proven record in Digital Transformation from start-ups to Fortune 500 with 30+ years of experience building innovative solutions to complex problems.
Jonathan Schwabish is founder of the PolicyViz data communication firm and is an economist, writer, and data communications expert widely recognized for making complex research clearer and more accessible. He is the author of five books, including Better Presentations, Better Data Visualizations, Data Visualization in Excel, and Elevate the Debate. His newest book, co-authored with Alice Feng is, Thoughtful Data: A Guide to Empathy and Equity in Data Communication, is due out at the end of 2026.
Robert Simmon is a cartographer and science communicator with decades of experience working with remote sensing experts and entrepreneurs, helping share their research and products with the public. Along the way he’s designed some of the most widely viewed imagery of our home planet.
His work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, and web sites; including the front page of the New York Times and the cover of National Geographic. He’s also known for creating the first global view of the Earth at Night, crafting the Blue Marble featured on the original Apple iPhone, and writing about best practices for scientific visualization.
Juliana Smith is a multi‑award‑winning data and reporting specialist with a background in Physical Oceanography. With over 15 years of experience uncovering stories within data, she has spent the past several years using Power BI to deliver scalable, high‑quality insights and accessible data visualisations. Recognised for her leadership in Power BI and inclusive design, she speaks at global events on ethical data storytelling and practical approaches to digital accessibility.
Andrés Snitcofsky is a graph designer and data visualization practitioner from Buenos Aires. For more than a decade, he has collaborated with journalists, researchers, and activists on data storytelling projects spanning investigative journalism, independent media, and civic technology. His work also focuses on teaching, experimentation, and community-building around data visualization and open information across Latin America.
Sophie Sparkes is a freelance information designer based in the UK who makes data memorable, approachable and fun. She specialises in hand-drawn data visualisations, creative workshops, and participatory data experiences like sticker charts, data badges, and interactive exhibitions. She starts a PhD in Diversity in Data Visualisation at City St George's and University of Warwick this October.
Andrei Speridiao is a Senior Designer at Microsoft's AI and Cloud Devices + Experiences team, where he explores symbiotic human-computer partnerships across physical and digital experiences. His "around, between, and within" design philosophy threads through his work: urban sensing devices that revealed invisible greenery and urban layers at MIT Senseable City Lab, multimodal AI systems and forward-looking experiences at Amazon's Devices Design team, and immersive experiences centered on perception and emotion at ARVORE. Seasoned across startups, agencies, academia, and global corporations, he blends technique with curiosity, emotion, and creative experimentation to explore how technology can deepen the relationships we have with our environment, each other, and ourselves.
Julie Uhal is a Chicago-based information designer with nearly a decade of experience at Planned Parenthood, measuring impact and clinic capacity amid the post-Roe v. Wade abortion access crisis. She is also a recent graduate of the Data Analytics and Visualization Master's degree program at MICA. She excels at seeing the big picture and leveraging data to communicate complexity with a playful lens.
Alan Wilson is a Principal Product Designer at Adobe. As an experience design leader he works to improve Adobe's products with composable systems and frameworks. His biggest endeavor is to make data easier to understand through the effective use of data visualization and artificial intelligence. Alan also teaches user experience design and data visualization design at Brigham Young University.
Vincent Zhu is a developer, multimedia artist and creative technologist working across computation and audiovisual media to build interactive experiences. He has an interdisciplinary background in computer science research and experience at multimedia art studios, working with emerging technologies to build data-driven systems that drive audiovisual elements for interactive public installations.
Martina Zunica is a freelance Information Designer who turns data into engaging visual stories, helping companies and teams make data intuitive and impactful through visualisation, infographics, and interactive reports.