SCI-Arc Board Welcomes Alum and Amazon Music Exec Byron Merritt as New Trustee

SCI-Arc is pleased to announce that Byron Merritt (M.Arch 1 ’99) has been appointed to its Board of Trustees. Merritt is a design industry veteran of more than 30 years with tenured roles at companies including Nike, Delta Airlines, and IDEO, and, most recently, Amazon Music as VP of Design. In his role at Amazon Music, Byron leads a global multidisciplinary design team across brand, UX, marketing, voice, and more, while driving a strategy that furthers the evolution of Amazon Music from a music streaming service into a leading audio-first entertainment service inclusive of music, podcasts, and video.

With over 30 years of experience in the design field, Merritt previously held a role at Delta Airlines as the VP of Customer Experience, where he established and led the discipline of consumer experience design bringing a creative, consumer centric, digital mindset to the organization. He also led the envisioning and creation of the end-to-end passenger experience, including aircraft interiors, onboard inflight entertainment and connectivity, as well as the use of biometrics at airports and digitally enabled personalization experiences across the customer journey.

Prior to Delta, Merritt spent over 13 years at Nike, where he held a number of leadership roles in Marketing, Design, Digital Product, and Innovation, pioneering several first-of-their-kind, award-winning digital and physical customer experiences. In his last role as VP of Global Retail Innovation, he led the creation of Nike’s first Nike Live concept, an innovative, connected shopping experience which won Retail Concept of the Year. Prior to Nike, Merritt held a leadership role at the design and innovation firm IDEO.

Of his new role as SCI-Arc Trustee, Merritt shares, “SCI-Arc was a pivotal part of my early creative journey and was foundational in allowing me to push the boundaries of where an education in architecture could take one. I am honored and excited to come back to SCI-Arc in a capacity to help shape its next chapter, and I look forward to getting to know and working with my fellow board members, faculty, staff, and students.”

“Byron is an extraordinary addition to the Board of Trustees,” comments SCI-Arc Director Hernán Díaz Alonso. “He not only brings commitment, but a very expanded view of architecture through his rich and visionary professional experience. “We are very excited to welcome him in this role.”

Merritt holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Master of Architecture from SCI-Arc. He lectures, teaches, has been a keynote speaker and design juror at Institutes, Universities, and Colleges including Syracuse University, Yale School of Architecture, Otis College of Art and Design, UCLA, and SCI-Arc.