Jury

Born and raised in New York, Talya joined AKQA in 2018 as the first employee based in Stockholm. She now leads Strategy across AKQA’s Swedish studios as Group Strategy Director. A storyteller at heart, Talya has worked at the convergence of brand and digital for nearly 20 years. She shapes her work to blend human emotion with business rationale, harmonising the delicate space between commercial objective and creative possibility. Inspired by natural systems and human truths, Talya specialises in brand -vision, -story and -experience. She’s most passionate about helping great companies do more good in the world through the power of narrative; unlocking new audience behaviours and mindsets through better storytelling. In 2021 she helped shape and drive H&M Looop – a project which invited customers to transform previously-owned clothing into new garments without the use of water or chemicals – which won the Cannes Lion Design Grand Prix, Fast Companys World Changing Idea Award, two D&AD awards, three One Show awards and several more. Talya is an awarded leader and proud cum laude graduate of New York University where she was inducted into Kappa Tau Alpha, the American National Honour Society for Journalism and Mass Communication. Some of her past clients and partners include Coca-Cola, Microsoft, MTV, BBC, Discovery, HBO Cinemax, SAS, TUI, Scania, SEB, H&M Group, H&M, H&M HOME, Minecraft, IKEA, Spotify, the UNDP, Heart 17 and UNITE.