Nina Grondin and Daniel Pierce are both partners and co-founders of Curioso in Chicago.

Following his studies in architecture in the U.S., Pierce’s global design perspective began to develop as he launched his career in Mexico City alongside Francisco Hanhausen. Pierce’s first hospitality endeavor, a fortuitous opportunity to redefine hospitality along the Riviera Maya, was Live Aqua, a boutique resort along the white sand beaches of Cancun. This formative experience catalyzed his interest and passion for hospitality design. Moving from the vibrancy of Mexico City back home to Chicago, Pierce sought to apply his passion for meaningful and memorable design at The Gettys Group where he quickly ascended to become the youngest principal in the firm. His diverse international experience helped shape the firm’s’ global growth, eventually leading the design of hotels, restaurants, and resorts throughout the U.S., Mexico, the Caribbean, Asia, and the Middle East. With the founding of Curioso, Pierce has dedicated himself to leading a multidisciplined design studio with the aim to create distinctly unique, commercially viable, and functionally attentive experiences for our client teams and their guests. He studied architecture at the University of Arizona where he received a bachelor of architecture cum laude. Pierce also studied design thinking at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design and architecture at Universidad de La Salle in Mexico City.

Grondin’s relationship with the restaurant and hospitality industry has been enduring and deeply rooted. Beyond loving to eat, drink, travel, and explore, she has over a decade of hands-on operational and design experience in hospitality. Merged with her background in economics and finance, Grondin brings an unique appreciation and knowledge of the industry’s day-to-day business. Prior to founding Curioso, she was a designer with The Gettys Group, working on variety of hotel projects across the U.S. and Asia as well as strategic design planning for a number of Hilton Worldwide’s focused service brands. Today, Grondin’s leadership on concept development and creating powerful brand stories for all work within the studio ensures that each project truly responds to the specific challenges presented by the client team, the locale, and the architecture. She approaches each project with a storyteller’s eye, constantly looking to evoke an emotive human connection. Grondin graduated from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill earning degrees in business administration and economics. After starting her career in financial marketing, Grondin studied interior design at the Illinois Institute of Art to pursue her true passion of creating memorable and transformative experiences within the hospitality space. Beyond design, Nina is an avid epicurean, and insatiable world explorer, and a stubbornly determined mother of two dogs and a little girl, Madeleine.