General Manager, Global Design & User Experience, GEHC
Bob Schwartz joined GE Healthcare (GEHC) in December 2007 as General Manager, Global Design & User Experience. With five studios in four countries, Bob is responsible for overseeing the Global Design function encompassing human factors, industrial design, ergonomics, user-interface and design research. As a strategic driver of organic business growth, his team focuses on the look, feel, usability and end-to-end experience of GEHC products and services.
Since 2009, Global Design/UX has been the recipient of 19 medals from the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) and was listed, in 2011, by Fast Company magazine as a Corporate Design Stronghold. In 2015, Bob’s career trajectory was cited by Fast Company as among the top Chief Design Officers. In 2015 the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) named him among the 50 most notable designers of the last 50 years. Bob is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and its Executive Committee. He is also Vice Chair of the Board of the Design Management Institute and was elected as its Chair beginning in January 2017. Bob is also the global GE Healthcare Executive Sponsor of the People with Disabilities Network
Bob joined GEHC from Procter & Gamble, where he was a global design leader working to transform the design function there to a strategically relevant capability, which is now comprised of 350 global designers and design managers.
Prior to P&G, Bob was Vice President, New Product Development, at Levolor Kirsch, a division of Newell Rubbermaid, where he brought innovation to the home decor industry. At Motorola, Bob was the Director of Industrial Design, responsible globally for all key product lines within the Commercial, Government, Industrial and Consumer Products businesses.
A significant accomplishment in Bob’s career was as Executive Director and COO for the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), where he forged an unprecedented relationship with Business Week magazine to annually publish the Industrial Design Excellence (IDEA) awards and later the Catalyst Awards. This accomplishment led to Bob receiving a United Nations appointment to the People’s Republic of China as Senior Advisor for Design. He has also testified before Congress on a Bill to establish a US Design Center in the Dept. of Commerce.
Bob was also the Director, Science and Technology Programs for AdvaMed, where he forged strong partnerships with the FDA, HCFA and Congress and lobbied and directed policy and voluntary standards research for circulatory and cardiovascular devices, healthcare information systems and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. Prior to this, Bob was the head of Corporate Industrial Design and Architecture for the American Red Cross, where he implemented new nation-wide mobile blood collection, tissue banking and disaster services systems.
Most notably, Bob was inducted into the IDSA Academy of Fellows at the 2007 World Congress of Industrial Design, for his outstanding contributions to the industry.