Gil Manalo, IDSA
Vice Chair | Kansas City Chapter
Industrial Design Team Leader at Garmin International
Gil Manalo is an accomplished industrial designer who has worked at small consultant firms, large consumer electronics corporations and car companies, and owned an ID consultancy business for a time. He has lived and worked around the world, earning patents and design awards. For more than 20 years, he has been consistently solving problems in various roles in the industrial design profession, always with a stack of bond paper and a black pen.
At Garmin’s headquarters near Kansas City, KS, Manalo is one of 40 industrial designers on staff and manages a group of 12 “secret ninja industrial designers,” as he calls them. “Recruiting, developing skills, inspiring and innovating new processes are among a few of my duties,” he says. “Mostly, I enjoy basking in my team’s industrial design culture and passion for perfection.”
Manalo’s goal with the IDSA Kansas City Chapter is to become entrenched in the industrial design community in Kansas City and the surrounding areas. To him, this means getting to know a wide range of people, from new design students all the way up to the “retired warriors” of industrial design who helped to shape the community. “Most of all, I look forward to talking with the many fellow ID professionals around town, “ Manalo says, “learning all I can and sharing all I can.”
