Gresham Smith is proud to announce that Healthcare Market Design Leader Chris Hoal, AIA, and Senior Vice President Healthcare Research & Insights Lesa Lorusso, Ph.D., have been named winners of Healthcare Design magazine’s 2024 HCD 10 awards. The annual awards celebrate outstanding professionals across ten categories, highlighting the positive influence they have had on healthcare design through their contributions in projects and initiatives within the past year.
Healthcare Market Design Leader Chris Hoal, AIA, was named the HCD 10 Architect winner, recognizing his commitment to community-changing projects and focus on using design to empower and connect communities. Joining Gresham Smith in 2012 and quickly growing within the firm, Hoal works to cultivate a culture of design excellence, supports project teams in delivering high-quality design solutions and guides the market’s strategic direction as a member of the Healthcare Core Team. He has demonstrated the creative ambition to successfully lead or serve as a key team member for numerous award-winning projects, such as Kaiser Permanente’s North Baltimore Medical Center, UP Health System’s Marquette hospital, Baptist Health Care Pensacola’s new Brent Lane campus and The Nashville Food Project’s headquarters. Ultimately, he brings a process-oriented design approach that fosters collaboration and emphasizes critical thinking about optimal building performance, innovative and sustainable solutions, and meticulously weaving the social fabric of communities.
Senior Vice President, Healthcare Research & Insights Lesa Lorusso, Ph.D., was named the HCD 10 Research winner, in recognition of her demonstrated commitment to research for the advancement of evidence-based design. Examples of her ground-breaking work include her role as the principal investigator for a clinical trial with the Veterans Health Administration, which investigated multisensory environments for people with dementia, along with her work researching the effects of ICU redesign on sound levels, sensory stress, and patient and staff satisfaction. Lorusso is a firmwide resource at Gresham Smith, collaborating with teams to facilitate human-centered design, development and implementation of research strategy and scalable tools for knowledge-sharing among healthcare planners and designers.
“Having not one, but two, of our Healthcare leaders honored in such an impressive way is a testament to the immense passion and expertise within our firm,” commented Gresham Smith’s CEO, Rodney Chester. “Congratulations to both Chris and Lesa on their awards and a for a job continuously well done.”
The 2024 HCD 10 will be celebrated in the September issue of Healthcare Design magazine and during an awards gala at the upcoming HCD Forum, as well as during the 2024 Healthcare Design Conference + Expo in October.
