Leadership
Chris Pacione
Director & CEO
Chris is a frequent speaker, teacher and writer on the topic of design and education both in the US, Europe and Asia and has years of experience as both an innovative entrepreneur and educator. In 1999 Chris co-founded BodyMedia, Inc., one of the early pioneers in wearable health monitoring, and headed up experience design and customer marketing for the company until 2008 when he started work on LUMA Institute.
Chris’s work has been cited in numerous national and international periodicals including BusinessWeek, the NY times, Wired Magazine and Fast Company as well as several popular books about design and innovation including “In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World” and “The Design of Things to Come: How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Products.” From 1995 to 1999, he was assistant professor in the School of Design at Carnegie-Mellon University where he held the McCandless Chair and taught courses in human-computer interaction, interface design, information design, and drawing.
During and prior to his tenure at CMU, Chris worked as a designer for the Engineering Design Research Center at Carnegie Mellon University and Fitch RichardsonSmith’s Exploratory Design Lab, where he developed new product ideas and experiences for such clients as Intel, Motorola, Xerox, Morningstar and Microsoft. Chris is also an adjunct faculty member in the School of Design at Carnegie-Mellon University where he is a frequent guest lecturer.
Chris has an undergraduate degree in design from Carnegie Mellon University and a master’s degree in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He holds several IDEA Gold Medal Awards sponsored by BusinessWeek and the Industrial Designers Society of America and has been awarded numerous US and EU patents for his work.
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Pete Maher
Chief Operating Officer
As COO for LUMA Institute, Pete is responsible for managing operational and business development efforts, serving as an instructor, and experimenting with finding new ways to help our clients “make things better”.
Most recently, Pete served as General Manager of Creative Good’s Councils business, a private peer-learning and leadership network for executives around the world. The business helps hundreds of customer-centric executives help each other build better businesses by sharing their mistakes and successes with peers in a confidential environment, free from vendors and competitors. Council members are leaders in marketing, product management, and customer experience across a range of industries who come from all levels (Presidents, CEOs, CMOs, EVP/SVP/VPs, GMs, and Directors). Previously, Pete was a Senior Consulting Director at Creative Good, where he sold and managed consulting engagements for clients spanning the retail, consumer products, financial services, and media industries, among others.
Prior to that, Pete was AVP of Customer Experience at Credit Suisse in London and Zurich, where he co-founded the company’s multi-channel customer experience discipline and methodology and led several projects assessing, mapping, and recommending improvements to the bank’s customer experience. His previous experience includes stints at two start-up companies and consulting in Accenture’s Strategic Services practice.
Pete holds a B.S. in International Business and Supply Chain Management from Penn State.
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Bill Lucas
Director of Curriculum
As Director of Curriculum for LUMA Institute, Bill guides the development of workshops and courses dedicated to helping people of all ages and backgrounds learn the principles and practices of design.
Bill is the inaugural member of the Professional Practice Fellows Program at MAYA Design. He has more than twenty years of professional experience designing communication systems, product/service offerings and educational programs for a wide range of organizations, including General Dynamics, Merrill Lynch, Whirlpool, the United States Postal Service, and DARPA. He also contributes interaction design expertise to MAYA’s various R&D initiatives. From 1996-2001, Bill served as Director of the Visual Design Group at MAYA. Prior to that, he was a designer in the Corporate Communications Division of Corning Incorporated.
Bill currently serves on the Advisory Board for the International Conference on Design Principles and Practices. In 2007, he served as co-chair for the “Design Community” facet of the ACM:SIG-CHI conference. He also served on the Board of Directors for the Pittsburgh Chapter of the AIGA. In 2001, he was creator and co-chair of a regional AIGA workshop titled “ED:DE” (Experience Design: Design Experience). Bill has also contributed to instruction at Carnegie Mellon University, Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, the University of Cincinnati and the Institute of Design at IIT.
Bill holds a B.S. in graphic design from the University of Cincinnati, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude from the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning.
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Abby Wilson
Director, Public Sector & NPO Relations
Abby’s attraction to the discipline of human centered design emanates from a deep belief in its transformative power. She is trained as both a cultural anthropologist and a domestic and international lawyer, and has contributed research to pending criminal trials at both the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Court.
Prior to joining the LUMA Institute, Abby worked as a Press Secretary for the New York City Council, where she developed subject matter expertise in areas including public education, housing and women’s health. She was involved with the drafting of numerous pieces of legislation.
Having lived, studied and worked in Africa and Europe, Abby has observed the power of people and organizations to solve even the most complex problems, which led her and a former colleague to found GLUE (Great Lakes Urban Exchange). Now in its fourth year, the GLUE network engages young professionals in ‘Rust Belt’ cities with local and regional policy efforts, an initiative that earned them inaugural support from the Brookings Institution. She continues to support GLUE in an advisory capacity, and has served on a number of other non-profit boards and committees, as well.
During her legal studies, Abby worked for Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics, were she focused on the ability of deliberative dialogue to shape public discourse on polarizing civic issues such as climate change, natural resource extraction and distribution, and municipal consolidation.
A speaker of French, Xhosa, and rudimentary Dutch and Spanish, Abby graduated from Columbia University with a degree in cultural anthropology, holds an LL.M. in Public International Law from Utrecht University, and a J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Law. She also has professional training in vocal performance and theatrical improvisation.
She and her work have been featured in media outlets including The New York Times, Newsweek, PBS’ ‘News Hour with Jim Lehrer,’ The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and NPR affiliates in Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, among others.