Lis Russo, 32

Lis Russo isn’t your average designer at Gensler, a global architecture firm. She sees beyond the look of an office and homes in on how workers actually use the space. And much has changed since the pandemic.

“In our old way of doing things, we managed in such a way where we looked at butts in seats and basically said, ‘OK, this person’s doing work because they’re here.’ But it doesn’t actually serve its original purpose in today’s world,” Russo said. “You can have all of these different new spaces and a new hybrid model. But if your managers and your leaders are still managing in an old way, that strategy is going to be hindered.”

One of Russo’s missions is to promote innovation from inside a company. An inherent but often neglected part of the innovation process is failure. “There’s gonna be things that don’t work out. It’s just part of getting to somewhere new,” she said. 

To break the taboo and encourage employees to propose
outside-the-box ideas, Russo and her team created a “failure” podcast for a client, in which different leaders talk about endeavors that didn’t work. 

Another endeavor included creating a hackathon competition. “We take employees out of their day-to-day, put them through these different innovation experiences,” Russo said.

Russo’s projects have pushed her to envision the future and how offices thrive, or survive, under different scenarios. “What does it look like if technology is totally pervasive and defines every aspect of our lives? Or, what does it look like if the climate crisis is totally dialed up?

“It’s a huge challenge because nobody can predict the future,” she said, “but you can apply a strategic approach to kind of create the future in the way that you can hope for it to materialize.”