L IFESTYLE /C ULTURE
Philly Faces: Eli Robbins
P H I LLY FACES
SASHA ROGELBERG | JE STAFF
WHEN ELI ROBBINS moved
to Philadelphia in 2014, his
fi rst job was designing animal
habitats for local zoos.

Aft er receiving a bachelor’s
degree in architectural studies
and a minor in studio arts at
the University of Pittsburgh,
the Hershey native moved to
Portland, Oregon, where he
earned a master’s in architec-
ture from the University of
Oregon. During his time at design
firms in New York after
graduate school, Robbins, 32,
honed a passion for experi-
ence design, combining
software and architecture
to build digital and physical
user-friendly spaces, such as
animal habitats, museums and
offi ce spaces.

A 2021 Tribe12 alum,
Robbins recently launched
Civio Studio, a design agency
with a focus on creating acces-
sible spaces and technologies,
infl uenced by Robbins’ own
experience being paralyzed in
early 2020.

When did you come up with
the idea for Civio Studio?
I mean, it really came from
my own lived experience. In
the beginning of 2020, early
February, I was diagnosed with
Guillain-Barré syndrome.

What was your experience with
Guillain-Barré syndrome?
I was working at a design
company called Primer Design.

When I was working there,
I started having a series of
very unusual symptoms that
happened very rapidly and kept
piling on.

It started with a numbness in
my mouth and then a tingling
in my hands, and just kind of
a powering down. Over the
course of fi ve days, I became
paralyzed. Long story short, I was in the
accessibility on a much deeper
level. Th at pushed me into
two directions: One direction
was developing a product; I’ve
always wanted to teach myself
how to become a [user experi-
ence] designer, and I also
realized that I wanted to start
my own design agency. So that
pushed me into starting Civio
Studio. And the other thing that
Eli Robbins in his hometown of
Hershey happened was I started to
Photo by Rachel Robbins
develop this web app called
civio.io, which was really trying
hospital for a couple of months. to solve problems that I had
I was barely able to do anything; when discharged from rehab.

I couldn’t even really hold my
phone. But it was a slow process What problems were those?
Once you get discharged,
of getting out of that and, fortu-
you’re just sort of on your own,
nately, it’s treatable.

and it’s really up to you to get the
How did your experience with devices you need, to make all of
GBS impact the development your appointments, to fi gure out
how to exist in your home that
of Civio?
When you go through you previously existed in as a
something like this, a signif-
icant life experience, it kind
of makes you refl ect on what’s
important. I wanted to refocus the work
that I was doing on work that
had meaning — down this path
of really trying to understand
tight-knit group of people.

I was really involved in
[United Synagogue Youth] and
became the regional president
for the eastern Pennsylvania
region. Th ere’s a whole position
on the board of USY for
repairing the world. So, that
was always a fundamental
understanding I had, that a part
of fundamentally being Jewish
is thinking about, “How do we
repair the world?”
My father was a physician; he
passed away in April. [Tikkun
olam] was his whole life. He was
a corneal surgeon. And I think
about just how many eyes he
helped see. He’s also the son of
a Holocaust survivor. Th at was
something that was a funda-
mental part of our family’s view
of the world, our Jewishness. ●
How has your Jewish upbring
and values impacted your
desire to create accessible
spaces and designs?
Th ere weren’t a lot of Jews
that I grew up near. We call
ourselves “ATJH” — all the Jews srogelberg@jewishexponent.com;
in Hershey — which was a really 215-832-0741
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JEWISHEXPONENT.COM more able-bodied person.

And one small part of that
problem is getting the actual
assistive technologies and the
medical equipment — these are
all the things that you need
to start living independently
again. For some people that
might be in a wheelchair; it
could be a walker, canes; it could
be soft ware if you’re blind. It
can be any number of things,
but there isn’t a very stream-
lined process from leaving
rehab to acquiring those things.

Th at was the problem I’m trying
to solve with civio.io.

JEWISH EXPONENT
10/19/21 3:45 PM
NOVEMBER 4, 2021
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