Geoff Wardle

Executive Director, Graduate Transportation Systems and Design

Biography

As the executive director of ArtCenter’s Transportation Systems and Design Department, Geoff Wardle is passionate about achieving a sustainable world by approaching transportation from a holistic and integrated point of view. “Our planetary well-being,” he says, “depends on choosing optimal modes of transportation for moving around goods and people while minimizing energy usage and resource consumption. It’s not an easy task. Leaders who are open-minded and adaptable will be successful. It is imperative to bring together all concerned stakeholders as we create solutions.”

Prior, he was the director of ArtCenter’s Advanced Mobility Research, which produced the Designing Sustainable Mobility series of summits, and the chair of the Transportation Design Department on the ArtCenter campus in Europe, which taught the Pasadena curriculum with a European perspective.

Fascinated by all forms of transportation, Wardle earned his BS in vehicle and mechanical engineering at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom and his master’s in automotive design at the Royal College of Art in London. His experience as a vehicle designer spans two decades and four continents, and he has worked with British Leyland, Chrysler UK, International Automotive Design, Saab Automobile AB, Ford Australia, Ford Asia Pacific, Tatra (Czech Republic) and TVS (India).

Wardle is also the co-founder of Urban Systems Labs, a nonprofit designed to assist key state, regional and municipal governments in developing large-scale public-sector technology. He continues to consult with transportation companies around the world and speak at conferences and with the media on transportation and design.