about gong szeto
Gong Szeto, 43, is the co-founder and CEO of Doxa2, Inc., and a Fellow at the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College (appointment begins Fall '10).
He is an internationally recognized designer, who recently served as the Director of Design and Product Design at PEAK6 Investments, LP, a proprietary equity options trading firm, hedge fund, and new financial services business incubator. He recently designed OptionsHouse, a next-generation retail equity options brokerage, garnering top in category in design and usability in Barron's in 2008 and 2009. He was formerly Chief Creative Officer of publicly traded Rare Medium, Inc. and Creative Partner at i/o 360 digital design, inc. in New York City.
His clients have included Sony Corporation of America, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, XM Radio, USA Networks, The New York Times, ThompsonReuters, Dow Jones and Company, Microsoft, Nikkei, Fujitsu, Shiseido, Viacom, Barnes and Noble, Sotheby's, Compaq, Cablevision, and First Data Corporation.
Gong has lectured world-wide, and is a recipient of numerous awards from The Art Director's Club, American Center of Design, Net Tech, CASIE, and was included in I.D. Magazine's ID40 Top Forty Innovators in the U.S. and Europe in 1996. He has work in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt Museum.
He is a career-entrepreneur, most recently launching the OptionsHouse retail brokerage with PEAK6, and co-developing the Moon Units Live/Work urban infill development in Austin, TX as Partner at Szeto Brothers Ventures, Inc. He holds a U.S. Patent in on-demand interactive advertising in digital television, co-invented with Sony Corporation of America.
He has served on the National Boards of the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Van Alen Institute for Public Architecture. He received a B.Arch ('91) in Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and Planning, and has studied Business, Finance, Economics, and Intellectual Property Law at NYU Stern School of Management Extension School, and Harvard Business School Executive Education Program.
Gong currently serves in an advisory capacity for the Santa Fe Innovation Park, investigative journalism startup WarIsBusiness.com, is on the Board of Directors of Open Forum Foundation, is involved in the Open Model for Citizen Engagement Working Group, and serves on the Board of the Preservation of Land for Agricultural Needs Trust (PLANT!).
Born in Hong Kong, dwelled in Massachusetts, Alabama, Texas, Illinois and New York, he currently lives in Santa Fe, NM with his wife Bonnie Schwartz, daughter Willow Lin, dogs Waylon (lab mix), Bailey Mae (pit bull mix), Lucie Liu (bluetick hound mix) and horse Rubiyat (dutch warmblood/oldenburg).
He blogs here and at Rhetorics & Heretics. Follow him on Twitter at @atomiota and @RtrxHrtx.
His current preoccupation is exploring how humanistic needs-centered innovation can resolve dangerous information asymmetries and skewed power dynamics in politics, democracy, governance, the economy, and global finance.
.
public realm
- 2009
Invited Attendee, AIGA/Winterhouse Institute Aspen Design Summit (Changeobserver coverage here)
Speaker, TEDxTamaya (cancelled appearance due to family emergency)
Speaker, Cusp Conference, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, "Is Democracy a Design Problem?"
Attendee, Stupski Foundation National Education Innovation Summit, Albuquerque
Attendee, OVERLAP09, Monterrey, Design for Emergence
Keynote Speaker, Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, GradEx Gala
Speaker, OCAD/Strategic Innovation Lab/Torch Partnership, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, "Design as Derivative: Weapons of Mass Disruption"
Attendee, OCAD/Strategic Innovation Lab, Situate.us Summit, Toronto
Live Radio Interview, "Design Matters with Debbie Millman", New York City
Co-Presenter, Finovate09 Conference on Financial Startups, New York City, "WeSeed.com"
Presenter, The Open Planning Project, New York City, "YourOwnDemocracy"
Video Interview, Sunlight Foundation's Transparency Camp, Washington DC, "Why are you attending Transparency Camp?"
Presenter, Sunlight Foundation's Transparency Camp, Washington DC, "YourOwnDemocracy"
Award, Barron's Annual Roundup of Top Online Brokers - OptionsHouse, 4-1/2 stars
- 2008
Judge, AIGA New Mexico Showdown
Feature Interview, Archinect.com, "Working out of the Box: Gong Szeto, Architect-turned-Information Designer"
Article, TechPresident.org, "YourOwnDemocracy"
Feature, DesignObserver.com, "Dogs and Their Designers"
Contributor, DesignObserver.com, "Interview with Brian Oakes of I.O.U.S.A."
Contributor, DesignObserver.com, "Lehman's Bankruptcy Statement"
Award, Barron's Annual Roundup of Top Online Brokers - OptionsHouse, 4-1/2 stars
Article, I.D. Magazine/Businessweek, "That's The Ticker"
Interview, UsableMarkets.com, "Interview: Gong Szeto of OptionsHouse"
- Past
Attendee, GAIN Conference, Minneapolis
Panelist, Seybold, New York City, "Online Selling: SIG Panel, Design Track"
Speaker, Play: Doors of Perception 5, Amsterdam, "The Interface Designer's Burden"
Attendee, AIGA Advance for Design, Nantucket & Santa Fe
Presenter/Panelist, AIGA/UDA Design Series, New York City, "Creating Effective User Experiences: From Whiteboard to Website Panel"
Presenter/Panelist, Macworld, San Francisco, "My Info to Go: The New York Today Website, A Case Study: Future of the Web Panel"
Presenter, Seybold, New York City, "Future Interfaces for the Web and Beyond"
Presenter, Milia, Cannes, "Parasite Email Technology"
Presenter, Seybold Seminars, Boston, "Interface Technology"
Presenter, AIGA National Conference, New Orleans, "On Interface Design and the Web"
Presenter, Doors on Tour, Netherlands Design Institute, Amsterdam, "Interaction Design Workshops: Push Technology"
Presenter, Magazine Publishers of America Conference, New York City, "i/o 360 digital design, inc. Projects"
Speaker, Signs of Trouble, Vienna, "i/o 360 digital design"
Mention, "What Huiping Enjoyed about UI10" (Jared Spool calls Gong Szeto a "chicken-sexer")
.