The Nubia Health Center

Amie Shao is a Principal with MASS Design Group, where she oversees research focusing on health infrastructure planning, design, and evaluation. Amie also leads the MASS.Made team in interior design, including space planning, testing and fabrication, and furniture design for office and healthcare spaces. Her work is aimed at engaging and empowering stakeholders in the design process; creating human-centered environments that are functional, adaptable, and mission-driven; supporting and substantiating the impact of design on health, social, and environmental outcomes; and and translating research into guidelines that can be used to advocate for policy change.

Currently, Amie is supporting the firm’s COVID-19 research and leading Maternal Health projects with IHI and PATH in Africa and South Asia. Blending human-centered design practices with evidence-based research, Amie has collaborated with Ariadne Labs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to investigate the Impact of Design on Clinical Care in Childbirth, worked with the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to design for the spatial needs of children with Cerebral Palsy, and coordinated the production of National Health Infrastructure Standards for the Liberian Ministry of Health.

Prior to joining MASS, Amie worked for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Beijing, WORK Architecture Company in New York City, and EnSitu, S.A. in Panama. Amie received her Master of Architecture and a Certificate in Urban Policy & Planning from Princeton University.

A licensed architect, Ashley has spent her career translating the spatial implications of organizations undergoing change, having worked with a full spectrum of education, technology, creative and nonprofit organizations in both design and strategy capacities. Her work has influenced furniture designers in Germany, youth in rural Idaho, major global technology companies, and emerging talent at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, where she has lectured.

Ashley joined MASS in 2018, driven by a desire to address the spatial implications of our rewired culture of life, learning, and play. For helping a public school in Oakland, California win a $10 million XQ Super School prize, Ashley was named ‘40 under 40’ by the San Francisco Business Times. Her research has received funding from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and been included in the conference proceedings for the Environmental Design Research Association, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference. Ashley was part of the team that wrote The Third Teacher –one of Fast Company’s best design books of 2010. She is the founder of a social impact studio at Cannon Design called Open Hand Studio, and is a past recipient of the Design Futures Council Emerging Leader award.

John joined MASS in early 2014 and spent two and a half years working in MASS' Kigali office before moving back to Boston, and is now based in Chicago. John has led design teams on two hospital projects currently under construction in Rwanda, Munini and Nyarugenge District Hospitals, and most recently New Redemption Hospital in Caldwell, Liberia. He is currently working on the design of a behavioral health furniture line and construction oversight for New Redemption Hospital. He's worked on projects in East Africa, West Africa, South Asia, and North America. Prior to joining MASS, John was awarded two Public Service Center Fellowships from MIT for water, sanitation, and hygiene projects in Tamale, Ghana. As a Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis in the spring of 2020 John led a studio focusing on the social determinants of health and design interventions in North St. Louis. He is currently pursuing an MBA at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business as a Neubauer Civic Scholar. John received his Master of Architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis.