Nomi Altabef is a writer who shares her perspective on all facets of the design industry, from career tips to the "user experience" of advertising and information design, on blogs including Design Sessions: Notes on Design, Adland, and for Aquent’s talent blog.

She is currently the Director of Student Experience for Sessions School of Design where she manages the student Portfolio Review and Design Competitions and leads development of online education tools and products for the needs of visual designers. She is the creator of the DesignSessions Community website where she facilitates threads on a variety of design topics.

Nomi has worked in fashion design, illustration, and production for a list of clients including Vivienne Tam, Norma Kamali, and French Vogue. She holds a BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons.

Katherine Feo holds a Design History MA from the Royal College of Art in London.  She has taught Art Theory at the University of Westminster and worked as a research assistant on the forthcoming 2008 exhibition ‘Cold War Modern’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum of Decorative Arts in London. She currently resides in her home town of Long Beach, CA where she is a freelance writer for publications including the Journal of Design History, Eye, and the AIGA.

Katherine is the 2006 recipient of the AIGA/Winterhouse student award for Design Criticism, and the 2005 recipient of the Design History Society’s Annual Student Writing Award. In the fall she’ll be starting a PhD in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, either continuing her research on the material representations of Civil War history at popular venues in the American South, or potentially scrapping her tired old dissertation topic for another in accordance with her abiding interest in war, design and representation in the US. 

Tara is a design educator, author and web entrepreneur. Her professional web design career includes owning and operating Plain Mabel, an e-commerce site showcasing independent artists, site design for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and technical editing for titles including Graphic Design Portfolio-Builder (Peachpit Press).

She is Director of Education at Sessions Schools of Art and Design. Tara enjoys music, travel, and math (yes, really), and is not afraid to admit that she is a New Jersey native.

Élena Nazzaro is an award winning illustrator and watercolorist. Her work has been featured in Artist’s Sketchbook, Be Real magazine, and Kiwi magazine, as well as various trade publications and short story collections. She is illustrating a series of piano books with her husband Paul. Her website, www.frenchtoastgirl.com was a finalist in the 2007 Bloggies for Best-Designed Weblog and was recently named Blogger.com’s 1000th "Blog of Note."

By day, Élena is the art director at Publishing Resources Inc. To date, she’s designed everything from web pages to software interfaces to shirts to magazine covers. Her favorite project at PRI is being the lead designer at Muttscomics.com.

Élena lives in Westfield, NJ, where she is a member of her local Art Association.