fabio sergio

1968, Italy
fabiosergio@freegorifero.com | twitter: @freegorifero



BIO


Fabio Sergio is Vice President of Design at frog, the global design and innovation firm.

He works across a wide spectrum of industries and sectors, with global leaders such as Vodafone, GE, HP, LGE, BBC, J&J, Swisscom, Novartis, Merck, UNICEF, The Red Cross and the World Economic Forum.
Fabio is part of frog's global Design Leadership team, the head of frog's Social Impact Design practice, one of the firm's healthcare experts and one of its User Experience Strategy leads.
He helps to advance frog's capabilities, processes and methodologies.

Fabio is passionate about exploring areas at the intersection of design, technology and human aspirations, wrapping business scenarios around people's desires and dreams.

He often speaks at worldwide events, including The Economist Technology Frontiers, The Guardian Mobile Summit, The Aspen Design Summit, SXSW, The Unicef Innovation Summit, Stanford Mobile Health, NEXT Berlin, LIFT Geneva.
He is a Professor at Politecnico di Milano, and a guest lecturer at Domus Academy, Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design and SUPSI's Master of Advanced Studies in Interaction Design.

Prior to joining frog Fabio was an Associate Professor of Interaction Design at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. Previously he was a Sr. Design Manager at 3 Italy, a User Experience Director at XYZ Reply, a User Experience Lead at Razorfish, and an Interaction Designer in the Global Consumer Design Center of Whirlpool Europe.

Fabio is formally trained as an architect and industrial designer.
He lives In Italy with his wife Valeria and their sons Andrea and Davide.



KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
  • 20 years of design and innovation leadership across diverse industry sectors, within corporations and consulting firms.
  • Co-founded the Italian frog studio, which has grown to 50+ employees.
  • Managed cross-disciplinary teams of 50+ creative professionals.
  • Played a leadership role - from pre-sales to execution - on key accounts across Europe, North America, Asia and Africa.
  • Global head of frogImpact - frog's Social Impact Design practice - heading collaborations with organizations such as Unicef, GSMA, WHO and The Red Cross.
  • Shaped frog's company-wide User Experience Strategy practice, coordinating 20+ director-level professionals across all frog studios.
  • Over 15 years of international writing and speaking experience on Design Strategy, User Experience and Innovation.
  • 15 years of experience as a graduate and postgraduate educator.


EXPERTISE:
  • Passionate advocate of design as a driver of meaningful human experiences that generate positive business and social impact.
  • System thinker capable of modeling customer, technical and business insights into frameworks and narratives that make complexity intelligible to diverse stakeholders and drive alignment of intent.
  • Broad and deep experience in deploying a human-centered innovation process: foundational and generative research, participatory ideation and concept development, iterative prototyping and testing, detailed design and implementation.
  • Visionary and inspiring communicator, excellent verbal and written skills, comfortable with large executive audiences.
  • Proven track record in pushing large cross-disciplinary teams beyond their comfort zone in the pursuit of excellence.
  • Business-savvy organization builder within corporations and design consulting firms.
  • Educator and mentor across the continuum of knowledge generation, organization and communication.


PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

frog

April 2014 - present
Vice President of Design

April 2010 - March 2014
Executive Creative Director

September 2006 - March 2010
Creative Director


Politecnico di Milano

April 2008 - present
Adjunct Professor



Interaction Design Institute Ivrea

October 2005 - June 2006
Associate Professor of Interaction Design
  • Co-organized and led intensive "Applied Dreams" workshops in collaboration with corporate partners.
  • Thesis advisor to postgraduate students.
  • Educator on design thinking methodologies to classes of 30+ graduate and postgraduate students.

3 Italy
Mobile Handsets, Industrial Design & User Interface

September 2002 - September 2005
Sr. Manager
  • Led collaborations with major mobile handset manufacturers.
  • Global LGE Product Manager, coordinating marketing activities with a team of product managers located in Europe, Asia and Australia.
  • Led the design and development of mobile accessories and wireless peripherals with Asian ODMs.
  • Led ideation, prototyping and testing of value-added mobile services.

XYZ Reply

September 2001 - August 2002
User Experience Director
  • Expanded the firms's offering from offline to online media, established new processes and team, led business development activities.
  • Supervised all client engagements: direction & vision, scoping & planning, resource coordination, quality and on-time delivery of creative output.

Razorfish

August 2000 - August 2001
User Experience Lead, Sr. Information Architect
  • Supervised all client engagements: pre-sales, direction & vision, scoping & planning, resource coordination, quality of creative output.
  • Information Architecture and User Intelligence skill-set lead.
  • New staff evaluation, training and mentoring.

Whirlpool
Global Consumer Design

March 1997 - July 2000
Interaction Designer
  • Led cross-functional User Interface projects across products and pan-European brands.
  • Co-led Networked Home Solutions activities.
  • Interaction design, behavior specification, software simulation development.
  • Usability and user testing, translation of usability requirements into design guidelines.

Studio di architettura Sironi

May 1996 - March 1997
Architect



SPEAKING / EXECUTIVE WORKSHOPS:


TEACHING / LECTURING:


PUBLISHING:


EDUCATION:

Architecture (industrial design minor)
Politecnico di Milano, October 1996


PERSONAL TRAITS:
  • Passionate, curious, future-oriented.
  • Unafraid of new, complex and ambiguous challenges.
  • Love for the details, seen from a mile high.
  • Self-motivated, self-starter.
  • Collaboration and people-oriented, low-ego, caring, active listener.