Follow your inner voice.

When I was a little girl, we lived on the South Side of Chicago in a modest (white box) home. My parents hired a designer. The transformation was magical. I was dazzled/hooked! By the age of 12, I knew I was going to be an interior designer; dreaming/speaking of it on occasion, even journaled about it.

In my circle, worthwhile professions were “white collar”, teaching, law, healthcare, or Jewish, not something in “the trades”. Ultimately I went in the “expected direction”. Those were different days. In our era, many of us went into professions to satisfy the dream our family/community expected of us.

Then I turned 21. I graduated from the School of Education at the U of I in Champagne-Urbana, Illinois, hoping to love teaching. I never caught the spark.  With a diploma in hand (fallback), I registered with an interior design “trade school”, specializing in interior architecture. We sat alongside architects learning trade secrets. I never looked back.

What motivated me to shift directions?

I audaciously decided not only was I going to design interiors for personal homes I was going to design Jewish institutions. I’m not sure where that idea came from. It never left me. My first opportunity/plunge into the waters of hospitality/institutional design was when our family decided to design/build a staff lounge for Camp Ramah in Conover, Wisconsin in memory of our beloved father/father in-law Albert Kopin in the year 2000.

I had never done anything in the hospitality world before. As I began working on this project I had a deep knowing that I was meant to do this. Recently we did a refresh on the building. I was asked to write a piece for the Ramah newsletter. I........

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