Ivy Ross is an American business executive, jewelry designer, and, since July 2016, vice president of hardware design at Google. She has worked at Google since May 2014; prior to being appointed VP of hardware design, she led the Google Glass team at Google X. Ross's metal work in jewelry design is in the permanent collections of 12 international museums, including the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. One of few recognized fine artists to successfully cross over into the business world, Ross is also a keynote speaker and a member of several boards, and has been hailed as a “creative visionary” by the art world. In July 2019 she was named #9 on Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business.
Ross began her professional career as a designer. After college she launched a jewelry design business in 1978 called Small Wonders,. Until the mid-‘80s, Ross worked as a designer for Avon Products Inc. She oversaw product development for Swatch Watch and worked as an accessories designer for Liz Claiborne before moving on to direct design and product development for Outlook Eyewear, Coach, and Calvin Klein. During Ross’s tenure at Mattel as senior vice president of worldwide product design & brand image for The Girls Division, she was charged with developing a new toy for the pre-teen girls segment. Ross conceived of an experiment in multi-disciplinary design dubbed “Project Platypus”, which resulted in Mattel’s highly successful Ello Creation System. After leaving Mattel, Ross joined the Gap Inc. as executive VP of product design & development for Old Navy from 2004 to 2007. While there, Ross created an in-house blog called "Culture Feed" with insight culled from the Internet and curated by trend-hunter Jody Turner. She left to become Senior VP and chief creative officer for the Disney Stores of America, a position she held for one year before returning to the Gap in 2008. As executive vice president of marketing for the Gap Inc. Ross was responsible for the launch of the 1969 denim line of jeans. In July 2011, Ross joined Art.com where she served as chief marketing officer until her move to Google X in 2014.
Jewelry
Ross was one of the first jewelers to use titanium, tantalum, and niobium, metals that reveal a spectrum of colors when they are charged with electricity. By age 26, Ross had some of her jewelry designs included in the permanent collections of 10 museums, including the Smithsonian, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Schmuckmuseum, in Pforzheim, Germany, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City and the Montreal Visual Arts Center. Ross is a recognized American craft artist and has had her work exhibited globally. In 1984 Ross and then-husband Robert Ebendorf won a Formica design competition through the exploration of a new product called ColorCore™.
Ross was given the Juror, Industrial Design Excellence Awards competition in 2006. Additionally, she presented as a business storyteller for BIF-2, a collaborative innovation summit sponsored by the Business Innovation Factory, that same year. In 2003, Ross was one of nine executives chosen by Fast Company magazine for the “Who’s Fast 2003” issue. In 2008, she was named a Fashion Design Mentor for Otis College of Art & Design.
