Google’s Ivy Ross on reimagining the life you’re meant to live

As Google’s vice president of hardware design, Ivy Ross is breaking new ground in the physical world for a trillion-dollar company synonymous with building tools for navigating the virtual one. Since assuming the role in 2014, she’s been tasked with translating a corporate identity consisting of a primary-colored logo and blinking cursor into three-dimensional products and environments that are inviting, accessible and add value to people’s lives in ways big and small.

Ivy oversees the team responsible for Google’s entire eye-catching suite of curvy, pastel-hued devices including the Pixel phone and Nest smart home system. And she’s also the creative visionary behind Google’s first retail store which debuted this past summer in New York City. It takes a special kind of moxie to forge ahead with a plan to open up to the public during a time when many stores were still shuttered. But Ivy is a true iconoclast who understands the value in bringing unconventional thinking to bear on high stakes challenges.

I've seen the greatest ideas and products come to life when people are in this state of pure openness and creativity—no judgment.
Ivy Ross

Lorne first encountered Ivy through her role as an ArtCenter Trustee and quickly discovered a kinship around their shared interest in the role the imagination plays as a catalyst for change, particularly when combined with the physical act of making and doing.

In this evocative exploration of creativity’s humanistic applications, Ivy also explored the opportunities the pandemic has presented to improve our connection to each other and to the planet, her interest in the work of Carl Jung and how creativity can be a portal to accessing the life we’re meant to be living even when it’s not the one society has laid out for us.