Deep Impact With DeepMind
Bea Alessio (EDI ‘19) believes most people think developing AI is only about code.
The reality, she said, is far different.
"People would be surprised by how human the process is," said Bea, group product manager for generative design at Google DeepMind. "Building great generative products requires deep empathy, constant debate of subjective design decisions and prioritization. It is as much a humanities discipline as it is an engineering one."
Bea leads generative design efforts, with a specific focus on its latest image generation models like Gemini 3 Pro Image–known in the consumer world as Nano Banana Pro. The model produces studio-quality visuals and can render precise text in multiple languages to maintain character and brand consistency.
In January, Google announced users generated 1 billion images in the first two months following Nano Banana Pro's release.
“I am incredibly excited by the potential to lower the barrier to creation,” said Bea, who in 2023 was named to the Forbes “30 under 30” list in Consumer Technology. “We are reaching a point where the gap between having an idea and executing it professionally is disappearing.”
Success in her role requires her to be a cross-functional worker and learner. She has to know how to engage with researchers, engineers, and designers, and be comfortable bridging potential communication gaps between them. Along the way, her focus always remains on the consumer.
"Because the technology moves so fast, you need the technical fluency to engage with the research team on what is possible," she said, "while simultaneously having the design thinking skills to translate that potential into something that solves a real human need."
Those skills she honed in Northwestern's Master of Science in Engineering Design Innovation (EDI) program.
Bea was drawn to EDI because she didn’t want to choose between being an engineer and being a designer. She sought a program that recognized the interconnectedness between the two.
“The focus on human-centered design combined with the rigorous engineering backbone of the McCormick School of Engineering felt like the perfect environment,” she said. “I was looking for a place that valued teamwork and personal growth just as much as technical skill development, and EDI’s ethos was exactly that.”
The lessons she learned during her time in the EDI program provided a strong foundation for career growth. After graduation, she worked as a product manager in AI and innovation with Adobe and founded a company that developed a patented voice engine app on phones, smart TVs, and home voice assistants for seniors aging at home to facilitate cognitive and emotional insight.
She joined Google DeepMind as a product manager in generative design in August 2021 and grew to lead product manager in October 2023, before starting her current role this past October.
Through it all, she's leaned on one EDI philosophy more than all others.
“One of the biggest lessons I learned was the concept of building a bias to act," she said. “In EDI, we learned that you can't just think your way through a problem; you have to prototype, test, and iterate.”
That is exactly what she does with Google DeepMind.
“The prototyping mindset I learned in EDI is crucial,” Bea said. “In AI, things change so fast that we often have to build to learn. We release, gather feedback, and iterate quickly, which is a direct application of the design innovation process.”
Bea recently returned to campus to speak with EDI students about the evolution of the product manager role in the age of AI.
Her message was designed to emphasize the important role the students can play in the future of product development.
“They have the unique toolkit to shape how these technologies are designed and deployed,” Bea said. “I wanted them to see that their ability to bridge the technical and the human is their superpower in this industry.”
