Leadership
Chris Pacione
Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer
As a Co-Founder and CEO of LUMA Institute, Chris leads a highly skilled, multidisciplinary team of practitioners located around the world who are passionate about preparing organizations to be more innovative. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of design and innovation in the US, Europe and Asia and is co-author of the book, “Innovating for People”.
Prior to LUMA Institute, Chris co-founded BodyMedia, Inc., one of the early pioneers in wearable health monitoring, and headed up experience design and customer marketing.
Chris’s work has been cited in numerous national and international publications including Business Week, 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.”
He holds several IDEA Gold Medal Awards sponsored by Business Week 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
Co-founder & 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
Co-founder & Director of Curriculum
As Director of Curriculum for LUMA Institute, Bill designs and delivers a full range of educational programs. He is an engaging instructor and a thoughtful advisor. He draws upon twenty-five years of experience to guide the development of LUMA’s core curriculum. Most recently, Bill served as an author and editor for LUMA’s “Innovating for People” series of reference materials.
Bill is also a Fellow at MAYA Design. In that role, he has worked on various research initiatives and served as a contributing author for the book, “Trillions: Thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology.” Previously, Bill served as Director of the Visual Design Group at MAYA. He designed products and services for a wide range of clients—including Whirlpool, Merrill Lynch, Bayer Healthcare and the US Postal Service. Prior to that work, Bill served as a Communications Designer in the Corporate Design Department of Corning Incorporated.
Throughout his career, Bill has served as a guest instructor and lecturer at various academic institutions—including Carnegie Mellon University, University of Cincinnati and the Institute of Design at IIT. Bill currently serves on the Advisory Board for the International Conference on Design Principles and Practices. Previously, he served on the Board of Directors for the Pittsburgh Chapter of the AIGA.
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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Justin Knecht
Senior Program Director
Before joining LUMA, Justin Knecht created the Innovation by Design program at the Centre for Design Innovation—the first user-centered design program of its kind in Ireland to equip organizations with practical tools to innovate more successfully. Previously, Justin was Head of Creative Services for Crayola in the US, where he was responsible for global branding, packaging development, POS and Internet services. Also at Crayola, he was part of the Global Innovation team, responsible for disruptive business model and product innovation.
Justin also co-founded and was CEO of the web development firm AOV in Philadelphia, where he developed over 20 award-winning websites for a range of national and international clients.
Justin has developed and delivered several workshops on user-centered design, brand experience and service design, and has spoken internationally at a number of design conferences, companies and creative events including Design Korea, World Usability Day, Ignite, Design Flanders, SEEdesign, Design Management Europe, HOW, Hallmark Cards, DMI, Thinking Creatively Conference and Oracle.
In Ireland, Justin delivered modules and contributed to several successful business acceleration programs including iGAP, CEIM, Endeavour and iFactory. He has worked independently with a number of internationally trading service companies including Thermodial, Bruce Shaw, Siopa.com and ezetop. He has personally worked on UI & UX projects for several Internet start-ups and technology companies including EPONA Biotech, Kelsius, Senubo and Simplify Learning.
Justin was selected to join the exclusive roster of Design Associates at the British Design Council, which delivers design support programs to businesses in the UK. In this capacity Justin delivered the Innovate program for early-stage technology start-ups looking at adaptive business models.
Along with Jonathan Ball (Program Strategist, UK Design Council), Justin created the Business Support Canvas, a framework for the development, planning, and assessment of business innovation support programs. This framework has been applied in Estonia and Denmark.
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Laura Vinchesi
Director of Communication Design
Laura brings to LUMA a career-long combined passion for visual design, writing, and teaching. Trained as a graphic designer and painter, Laura has found that a love of language—both written and spoken—enhances her dual practice in both visual communication and instruction.
Prior to joining the LUMA team, Laura worked in New York City for Ruder Finn Design, where she art directed a number of branding initiatives for global consumer health and research companies including Pfizer, Novartis and Affymetrix, among others. In this capacity she was instrumental in the organization, design, and writing of projects such as branding style guides, product collateral systems, and international health & safety guides. Typically these projects included efforts in project framing, client interviews, information design, icon system design, content writing and/or editing, graphic design, and art direction of digital applications.
Before and after her stint in NYC, Laura honed her teaching skills at the Carnegie Mellon Design School, her undergraduate alma mater. As an adjunct instructor and then later as a visiting professor, Laura has taught and critiqued at all levels of the undergraduate program in classes on drawing, 2D and 3D design, design fundamentals, typography, exhibit design, and even an original course called “Politics & Activism in Design: Using graphical media as an agent of change”.
Working at LUMA gives Laura an awesome opportunity to bring all of these interests together on a daily basis, and—most rewardingly—in the context of Human-Centered Design.