Where were you born?
Barcelona, Spain
Where do you live?
Palo Alto, California
What did you study at Elisava?
Master in Industrial Design Engineering
Where do you work?
I work as CEO and Co-Founder of the start-up Odapt, a medical device for ostomized people that was born from the master's degree I studied at Elisava.
What has been your professional career?
I started my professional career teaching algebra to groups of 30 university students, while I was finishing my studies in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Barcelona. Then I went to Paris to work in sales and marketing for the Life Sciences sector, where I learned about congresses, leads, SEO and SEM.
Attracted by the new Masters program in Healthcare & Design at Imperial College with Royal College of Art, I moved to London where I combined my studies with a job in a healthcare design consultancy as a UX researcher called Redline. After two years in London, I moved to Boston, motivated to design for the rare disease field as part of one of the leading companies in the sector: Sanofi Genzyme. I joined the medical operations team where I had the opportunity to work on projects to accelerate the diagnosis of rare diseases, as well as to improve the transition from pediatrics to adult medicine for children with MPS I.
After almost 2 years in Boston, I decided to come back home and learn more about the engineering behind product design. I enrolled in the Master in Industrial Design Engineering at Elisava, and started working at the same time in a design and forecasting consultancy for the health sector called Think Next.
As my final project at Elisava, with Jessica Nissen and Patricia Lopez, we created Odapt, a project in which I am currently working full time. I have recently moved to Palo Alto, California, where I am looking to continue with Odapt between Barcelona and San Francisco.
What is design for you?
I like to think that there is design behind everything we imagine, devise and create, both before, during and after having an impact on the world, however small. Personally, I like to use design as a tool to improve people's health in a way that is inclusive and accessible to all.
Who inspires you professionally speaking?
Soh-yon Park - Global Health Innovation, Designer for Equity and Inclusion in Healthcare
Stiliyana Minkovska - Healthcare Designer & Architect. Founder of Matrix
Sandra Camacho - Equitable Design Strategist & Educator
Anna Ferrer, Vicente Ferrer Foundation - Woman-to-woman project and prosthetics workshop at Bathalapalli Hospital in India
Melinda Gates - Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
How would you define your time at Elisava?
My time at Elisava has been a key point in my professional career. It has given me the knowledge I was looking for in terms of industrial design engineering and the confidence to move forward on my own in this complex field. Elisava is like a big family, everyone is willing to help you and encourages you to move forward with the projects you create during the master. I have met very interesting people in the faculty with very different and inspiring professional backgrounds, from the faculty to my classmates. Studying the master's degree in Industrial Design Engineering led by Jessica Fernández has undoubtedly been one of the best decisions I have ever made.
What has marked you the most from what you have learned at Elisava?
Meeting Jessica Nissen and Patricia López, with whom I now continue the Odapt adventure, is one of the best things I take from this master. In the same way, having been able to learn from Jessica Fernández, Mariana Eidler and Xavier Tutó, with whom we are still working today, is also one of the things that has marked me the most during this last year.
Even after finishing my master's degree, I still feel part of the Elisava family. This feeling of belonging and feeling that you can look for support within the university itself at any time is something very unique to Elisava.
A piece of advice:
Always listen to the user and involve them as much as possible in all phases of the design. I believe in design done with or by the user rather than for the user.
A challenge for the future:
In the fast-changing world we live in today, it is a challenge to foresee the impact the products and services we design today will have in tomorrow's world.
