Leadership
Chris Pacione
Director
LUMA Institute
As director of LUMA Institute, Chris leads a highly skilled, multidisciplinary team of practitioners and educators who are passionate about helping organizations foster pervasive competency in design.
Chris is also an adjunct faculty member in the School of Design at Carnegie-Mellon University where he is co-teaching a graduate studio course. He is a frequent speaker, teacher and writer on the topic of design and education both in the US and Europe and has years of experience as both an entrepreneur and educator. In 1999 Chris co-founded BodyMedia, Inc., one of the early pioneers in wearable health monitoring, and headed up interaction design and customer marketing for the company until 2008. 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 an interaction designer for the Engineering Design Research Center at CMU and Fitch RichardsonSmith’s Exploratory Design Lab, where he developed new product ideas and experiences for such clients as Intel, Motorola, Xerox, Kodak, NCR, Morningstar and Mircrosoft.
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.
Pete Maher
Director, Operations
LUMA Institute
As director of operations 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.
Bill Lucas
Director of Curriculum
LUMA Institute
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.