Cindy Allen has established herself as a force in elevating the design profession’s importance and exposure—acting as an ambassador and fervent supporter of architects and designers, while providing a platform and vehicle of growth for the design industry.

Allen is an industry champion, promoting the Giants of Design as well as emerging talents. A self-proclaimed design junkie, she brings an unbridled passion for design that is manifested in 17 print issues each year, a digital platform reaching a global audience of over 8 million. With Allen’s direction, Interior Design is constantly evolving to best celebrate designers and their process.

Khoi Vo is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). Since taking the helm in 2022, he has led the association to expand membership across the broader design community and strengthen ASID’s visibility as a global thought leader through its respected research, recognized by leading national and international publications.

Vo brings more than two decades of experience spanning interior design, architecture, and education. In 2002, he founded Studio Four Los Angeles and later established Khoi Vo Design, where he served as Design Director for 12 years. His academic career began at California State University, after which he joined the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) as a professor. He later became chair of SCAD’s interior design department before being appointed Vice President, leading the university’s Hong Kong campus. In his final years at SCAD, Vo served as Vice President of Strategic Enterprises, overseeing the university’s collaborative studio and think tank that brought students and faculty from across all majors together to work alongside the world’s leading brands to develop creative solutions to complex, real-world challenges. He also served as a tenured faculty member and department chair at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

Vo serves on the Governance Council of the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI). His honors include a 2015 Honorable Mention for the CIDA Award for Excellence in Teaching and recognition as a 2017–18 DesignIntelligence Top 25 Most Admired Educator. He has served on international design juries, including the VMark Interior Design Awards in Vietnam and the Society of Interior Designers Singapore Competition.

Vo earned a Bachelor of Arts with a design focus in architecture from the University of Florida and a Master of Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture. When not working, he prefers to be outdoors hunting, fishing, and clay shooting. He shares a home in Georgia with his wife, son, and their three dogs.

Francine Monaco is an architect and educator whose work moves fluidly between architecture and interiors. Her practice is known for translating concepts into spaces that feel both experiential and enduring, blending technical precision with an intuitive understanding of how people inhabit the built environment.

Heide Hendricks is Co-Founder and Principal of Hendricks Churchill, an award-winning architecture and design studio based in New England. Under her direction, Hendricks Churchill has been named on the ELLE Decor "A-List" five years in a row, have received a dozen awards from The Institute of Classical Architecture and Art, have been featured in major publications such as NYT, WSJ, Architectural Digest, and Vogue, and have published two books with Rizzoli, the latest of which published this in the fall of 2025 entitled Distinctly American.

Heide began developing her aesthetic interests as a young adolescent. Her mother and father were both artists in New York’s mid-century bohemian art scene and raised their family in a house they built out of trees milled on the property. The ever-changing house was filled with artwork and unique finds from estate sales, flea markets and thrift stores. They taught their kids that every challenge has a creative solution and encouraged Heide and her four siblings to change and decorate the home in any way they saw fit. It was a life of abundant freedoms—traveling to carnivals where her parents painted portraits—which eventually shaped her career as a designer. Her approach and style remain instinctive and intimate—in her words, “a direct offshoot of my upbringing.”

Bryan Young is an architect, furniture designer, and founder of NYC-based studio Young Projects. Since founding the studio in 2010, Young Projects has completed several projects across North America and the Caribbean, ranging from buildings and interiors to furniture. Known for its experimental research into materiality and craft, Young Projects’ work has been featured in publications including Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Dwell, Architectural Record, Architect, Domus, Azure, Metropolis, and Wallpaper*, among others. The studio was named to Architectural Digest’s AD100 in 2025 and 2026, Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard 2020, the Architectural League Emerging Voices 2020, and received the League Prize in 2013. Young Projects’ first monograph, Figure, Cast, Frame, was published in 2022 by Monacelli.

In 2022, Bryan Young co-founded the itinerant furniture and design gallery VERSO. The gallery focuses on the narratives that bridge designers’ concepts, artisan techniques, and final objects.

Originally from Los Angeles, California, Bryan Young graduated with distinction from Harvard’s GSD in 2003 and was awarded the AIA Henry Adams Medal and James Templeton Kelley Thesis Prize. He received his B.A. in Architecture with Highest Honors from UC Berkeley in 1997. Young has given numerous lectures and taught architecture studios at MIT, Cornell, The Cooper Union, Columbia, Parsons, and Syracuse. Young lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Maya Bird-Murphy is a Chicago-based architectural designer, educator, and cultural producer. At the age of 25, while working full-time and completing her Master of Architecture, she launched Mobile Makers, an award-winning nonprofit that makes design education accessible through workshops, community engagement, public installations, and pop-ups hosted out of a retrofitted mail truck. Bird-Murphy’s practice centers on expanding access to design education, empowering people to see themselves as agents of change in the spaces they inhabit, and advocating for positive change in the built environment. Her work challenges the gatekeeping that often defines the profession and has welcomed thousands of children and community members to engage with architectural discourse. Bird-Murphy loves designing spaces, but excels at creating new systems that explore architecture beyond four walls. She was named a 2024 United States Artists Fellow, a 2023 Harvard Wheelwright Prize Finalist, a 2022 winner of the Hublot Pierre Keller Award, and was selected by Theaster Gates and the Prada Group for the Experimental Design Lab cohort.