I was raised between the green trees and blue lakes of the upper Midwest, which set my trajectory and planted my core appreciation and knowledge of the fundamentals of materials and the presence they evoke. I studied and completed my Bachelor of Science with the focus of Interior Design, with the ambition that I could manifest spaces that are habitable arts. I continued my Master of Fine Arts, focused on Ecological Architecture. And then Master’s Program with creative drive, artisanal charm and craftmanship. I explored and exploited the essence of materials as it pertained to time, touch, and value.

In my twenties, I realized that architecture and interior design should build the physical world around us for the benefit of everyone. I’d felt the need to create built environments with positive social impact. To design soulful and interesting places that embrace and celebrate the complexities of the real world. This realization fully crystalized one day seated on a small commuter plane, next to a middle-aged car salesman, flying from one Middle America town to another. I would find motive. An over dressed man with French cuffs, clad in a desperately showy suit for a Thursday evening flight, was about to tell me how. This gentleman described in intricate detail the patient room that the mother of his sons lived in, during her final days. He talked about the walls in the Intensive Care units that witnessed her sons kissing their mother goodbye, and he smiled when he recalled the Dale Chihuly yellow & green glass chandelier that had briefly animated his late wife’s eyes. The building and its partitions, windows, egresses, textiles, stones, and artworks surrounded, held, and supported her body, as she died. All the details he recounted to me were the work of the Architecture firm that I was now on my 4th day of employment with.

It is the seemly arbitrary design decisions that in fact carry the weight of the healing, safety, pride, ownership, security, confidence, hope, and sometimes grief, of the patients, practitioners, staff, and family members that occupy a building. 

My practice, Sada, institutes the primary focus of listening to the client’s needs, and to echo those needs into outcomes. This is design as a social act of conscience that understands history, whilst creating something entirely new, to serve communities and their futures.

The design of interior buildings and space has cultivated my daily practice of design for almost 20 years. I infuse artistic sensibilities and an ethos of inclusivity, health, and wellbeing into all projects. I am driven with an empathetic, gregarious, and positive approach. I have a continued curiosity and passion, and a conception and construction of special and unusual places. Ingenuity and inspiration are used to make projects that are affordable and buildable. I have a portfolio of focused work with well-regarded international architectural practices and clients. Accomplished projects can be found in the United States, Asia, and the Middle East.