Ivy Ross is a visionary leader who is transforming the way we interact with technology as Vice President and Head of Design for Google Hardware. Spearheading the Silicon Valley giant’s move into the realm of consumer products, Ross draws on her unique expertise from the world of fashion, art, design, and metalwork to translate the world’s largest information technology platform into physical household objects with profound sensitivity.

Ivy has an outstanding record of achievement with Fortune 500 companies, previously holding senior positions at Calvin Klein, Mattel, Gap, Coach, The Disney Store, and Swatch Watch. Her personal metalwork is featured in the permanent collections of 10 museums around the world. She has also received numerous awards and honors throughout her career and was named among Fast Company Magazine’s new faces of business leadership. She attended Harvard Business School and received an honorary PhD from the Fashion Institute of Technology.

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In conversation with Ivy:

Can you talk about how you see the world around you?
The through line of my life has been curiosity, and I am a builder. I am a builder of ideas, brands, teams concepts. The most fun thing for me is to have a vision and bring a group of people to execute on that vision together because I think life is a journey. They’re really isn’t an end pinnacle; it’s a constant journey. I’ve always been extremely curious—I pay close attention to what gets my attention. I started studying sound and vibration when I was a kid because I played the drums, and I could feel how my heart got in resonance with the beat and wanted to understand more about what sound and music really is and how it affects us, and that led to my understanding that everything is energy and you have to find the things that you resonate with. I walk around as my dad taught me, looking at everything, seeing connections and extrapolating those connections and figuring out how I can apply them to other things that get my attention.

Where does your curiosity come from?
So my dad was an industrial designer. He worked for Raymond Loewy, the famous designer in the ’50s, and he would say to me, “Ivy, look up at that plastic lighting grid over the fluorescent lighting. Think about what you could do with it. Could you cast it, could you mold it, what else could you do with it? Look at the way the hubcap is connected. What could you learn from those connections and where else could you use those connections?”

How has shifting perspectives played a role in your life?
I became a metalsmith, a jewelry designer I think because my dad at five years old would move me from car to car and I was eye level with the hubcaps so I would literally get into this flow state discovering all of the linkages and the way the metal connected.

So as soon as I was old enough to start making with my hands, I think in my mind’s eye, I wanted to re-create some of those metal details I had seen in all of the car hubcaps.
And I got my work in about ten museums around the world in my 20s because I invented new metal techniques because I was curious and would always ask questions. So I would be in the studio being relentless, saying to myself, “But why? Why can’t I cut back through the oxide layer of this metal? Why can’t I bend it in this way?” And it was just this beautiful dialogue with myself. You know, I think when you make things with your hands, it’s a great gift that mind-to-hand connection. Having an idea and being able to manifest it is something I am so grateful for doing at a young age.

How do you think about health?
I’ve always been a whole-systems thinker; I just don’t understand how you can look at any part without understanding how it fits into the whole. As a little kid I was also very intuitive. I remember when Western doctors would tell me things about me, I remember I would even go, “Wait a minute. That’s me. I know more about me than you know about me.” And I actually always went inside to find out about my body, and I could feel to me health is when you’re happy and joyful and you feel optimized, like you know you are working at your best, and I can feel the subtlety of when I am in that kind of shape and when I’m not. And I think that’s why I started studying energy because I think a lot of it is feeling the energy of your own body, feeling when it’s under-resourced and being able to feel others’ energy.

If you were thinking about the opportunity we have to shift perspective, what do you think it is?
Well, maybe because I am a curious person, to me the opportunity to shift the perspective is knowledge. I think knowledge is power and so actually even looking at—I know it had a profound effect on me looking at images on—I’m a visual person—of our cells many years ago.
I felt a closeness and connection to it, so I think there needs to be a new way to educate us about our health and body that is very more visual, more igniting our senses, more—so that we can really see it as a reflection of us as opposed to, you know, science, medicine being scary or something other than. So I would make sure that we were constantly reflecting back in new ways, new ways to educate people as to, you know, this question—this old-age question of what are we.

What does “inquire within” evoke in you?
Inquire within evokes basically the way I’ve always lived my life. I do believe the answers are inside of us because we contain and we’re now finding out what billions of, you know, years-old genes and bacteria—and so all of that wealth of information is within us in incredible forms.
And so “inquire within” really is saying to me that we have all the answers, we have all the insights inside of us, and instead of looking outside of ourselves, we should tap into all of that ancient wisdom. We own it.