Celebrating Design in Everything

Welcome to Northumbria University's School of Design for the launch of Design in Everything, North East England's design week. We're bringing together expert speakers on design in the region, celebrating some of the great work going on here and what we can do to build on this for a brighter future.

About our speakers

Rachael Miller

Founder, Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean

Rachael Zoe Miller is a National Geographic Explorer, expedition scientist, inventor and author working to protect the ocean. She is the Founder of Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean, a nonprofit addressing marine debris, co-inventor of the Cora Ball, the world’s first microfibre-catching laundry ball and author of Decision-Making in the Age of Plastics. Rachael leads expeditions whose results are published in peer-reviewed journals and education programs that inspire thousands of all ages. She is a Visiting Scientist with National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions, investigating microplastic and microfibre in polar oceans and co-chairs the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research’s plastics public engagement working group. She’s presented at myriad events worldwide, including TedX, SuomiArena and Chautauqua Institution. Rachael captained the 60’ sailing research vessel, American Promise, trained Navy SEALS to use underwater robots, and mentors young scientists. She lives in Vermont and loves human and wind-powered snow and water sports.

Alana James

Professor in Sustainable Fashion Innovation, Northumbria University

Dr Alana James is Professor in Sustainable Fashion Innovation at the School of Design, Arts and Creative Industries at Northumbria University. Her expertise lies in the use of design tools, methods, and approaches to enable creative interventions in the global fashion value chain. Through her work she collaborates with multiple disciplines including environmental science and forensic science, alongside and a breadth of stakeholders across the fashion and textile sector to collegiately respond and address complex environmental and social challenges. In 2023, she was awarded £1.9million from UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to lead the IMPACT+ Network which challenges the way that environmental impact in the fashion industry is measured, addressing inaccurate and misleading data currently directing policy, funding and action.

Kelly Sheridan

CEO, The Microfibre Consortium

Kelly Sheridan is Associate Professor of Forensic and Environmental Science at Northumbria University, where her research underpins the FibER Hub research facility, studying fibre fragmentation and its environmental impact. She trained as a forensic scientist specialising in textile fibres before moving into environmental fibre science, and her research challenged the assumption that environmental fibre pollution is mostly synthetic, showing that most fibres found in the environment are actually natural.

Alongside this, Kelly is CEO of The Microfibre Consortium, a non-profit working with brands, manufacturers and researchers across the textile industry to reduce fibre fragment pollution. She has led TMC since December 2023, having joined the organisation in 2021, connecting her academic research directly to industry realities and practical solutions.

Bea Chivers

Urban Designer, Ryder Architecture

Bea joined Ryder in 2024 after completing the PlanBEE programme and was awarded the Ryder Bursary in 2025. She holds a master's degree in urban design and is a TechCIOB member. In her role at Ryder, Bea helps shape places that respond to the needs of the communities they serve. She has led a series of city walks focused on the experiences of women and girls, sharing resources and advocating for more inclusive and safer urban environments. Bea is passionate about the intersection of urban design and social equity, and believes thoughtful placemaking can create cities that work better for everyone.

Cathy Russell

Urban Design Director, Ryder Architecture

Cathy is passionate about shaping healthy, inclusive, sustainable places which enhance wellbeing and strengthen communities through participatory design. She contributes to Ryder’s research on placemaking for health and wellbeing, including presenting at the SALUS International Healthy City Design Congress, and is a Building with Nature approved assessor and a Healthy Streets Designer. Cathy’s role at Ryder involves placemaking, masterplanning, connectivity and public realm strategies, research, and stakeholder and community engagement. She also leads on planning input, historic research, and heritage statements. Cathy gained an urban design MA at Newcastle University and is a recognised practitioner in urban design and an associate of the RTPI.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Journalist and author

Chris Stokel-Walker has been a journalist for more than a decade, reporting for the world’s biggest publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Economist, New York Times, WIRED, Guardian, Telegraph and Times. A skilled communicator, he frequently appears on the BBC, CNN, ABC, Times Radio, and others to explain the latest developments in the world of technology, and chairs panel discussions and hosts events around the world.

He is the author of How AI Ate the World, published in 2024, described by UK Tech News as one of its best technology books of the year and “the ideal primer” to AI, as well as TikTok Boom, YouTubers, and The History of the Internet in Byte-Sized Chunks. Alongside his reporting, he teaches journalism at Newcastle University.

Lucy Batley

Owner, Traction Industries

Lucy is a designer by trade, with more than 30 years’ experience working at the intersection of design, technology and innovation. Her creative career began with early industry recognition, including winning EMAP’s Best Young Designer and an international packaging design competition for MonteCristo. She went on to design internationally award-winning digital products, brands and experiences for organisations and artists including Audi, Fila, Max Mara, Barclays, David Bowie and the Manic Street Preachers.

Having worked through the emergence of the web, digital products and now artificial intelligence, Lucy has spent her career exploring how new technologies change not only what designers can create, but how we think, work and communicate.

Today, Lucy works across AI strategy, governance and innovation, helping organisations navigate both the opportunities and implications of artificial intelligence. She was recognised at the House of Lords in the UK

Top 100 Digital Leaders in AI and is a Non-Executive Director for CyberNorth.

Dominic Lusardi

Director, Digital Thinkers

Dom is an award-winning digital business leader and director empowering a multi-sector, global client base to fuse emerging technologies into innovative and forward-looking solutions. He previously was founder and managing director of a successful virtual reality business (Animmersion), raising external investment and leading through to a management buyout. He has extensive experience of utilising his entrepreneurial flair to engage and direct SMEs, business owners, boards, panels and steering committees, to develop business and digital strategies and revolutionise their business and digital thinking. Alongside his Edge work, Dom is a Governor of Middlesbrough College, Chair of an artificial intelligence startup and Entrepreneur in Residence for Durham University’s Venture Lab.

Laura Richards

Director, Idea Junkies

Laura is founder of Riff, a voice-first writing tool that turns speech into copy in the writer’s own voice, and Idea Junkies, a consultancy advising businesses and government on AI strategy. Her current research asks what happens to human creative and intellectual output when it can be reproduced at almost zero cost. She is exploring whether verified authorship could allow people to own their thinking as an asset, rather than supply it as raw material for someone else’s model. She has spent twenty years in strategic communications and public affairs, including a decade working with emerging technology firms, investors, universities and government. She helped launch PROTO and the UK Tech Clusters Group, was part of the team behind the UK’s first patient capital fund, and created a £100k Tech for Good fund for North East charities. Her policy work includes contributions to the National Data Strategy, national and local industrial strategies, and work with cross-party MPs on violence against women and girls and online harms. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and a qualified AI and Machine Learning developer. Her writing on gender and digital culture has been published by Palgrave, and on generative AI by FuturePRoof. And she learned to build AI applications on maternity leave… with twins.

Rachael Wadsworth

Head of Culture, Creative Industries and Sport, North East Mayoral Strategic Authority

Rachael leads regional strategy and investment across the creative economy at the North East MSA.

Working across the creative industries, she is responsible for programmes that support growth, place-making and regional identity. Her work brings together public policy, investment and creative practice, with a focus on how creativity can help create better places, stronger communities and more inclusive economic growth.

Prior to joining the North East MSA, Rachael held a number of senior roles across central government, including at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the No.10 Policy Unit and the Levelling Up Taskforce. She has led major national initiatives spanning creative industries, cultural investment, local growth and regeneration, and is passionate about the role that design plays in shaping the places and services people experience every day.