A karaoke star, a cycling babe, and spreadsheet queen walk into a conference room; I’ll let your imagination take it from there. Nobody, especially me, wants to work with a team that falls flat on personality. Luckily, unraveling from the design-work grind into Bright’s weekly team brainstorming session is anything but lackluster. From New York restaurants to athletic footwear and business development, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you the dazzling design minds that comprise the heart of our firm.
THE COMMUNITY BEHIND THE CRAFT
Katie Dahl
Bachelor’s from FIT, impressive design history in NYC, Bright’s right-hand woman (side note: Katie is left-handed!) since 2108. As our longest-standing designer, we’re grateful for her keen wisdom, innovative creativity, and love for the outdoors. Katie’s got the critical eye that every accomplished designer needs and the fiery drive to get the job done. She’s got high standards but doesn’t take herself too seriously when off the clock – on the weekends, you can find Katie cooking up a storm, camping with her favorite people, or headlining her own karaoke set at (undisclosed location).
Stacy Day
Mama bear to more than just her own , Stacy brings the compassion of a good friend and the conviction of a queen to the Bright team. With 20+ years of a wickedly impressive sales and design-adjacent career and an unyielding ability to care for her family, she embodies impeccable thoughtfulness and proactivity in all she puts her mind to. For Bright, all things (literally) come together with her organizational wizardry, drool-worthy recipes, and killer dance moves.
Laura van der Spek
Laura’s got that forthcoming sincerity you can’t get enough of. Her unrelenting curiosity and desire to understand life, work, and the like are both inspiring and grounding. She’s the type of woman who has a wide variety of interests that she actually invests time and energy in. Before joining Bright, she embarked on a diverse professional journey – working for her family’s business, followed by fifteen years in coffee, and eventually landing a lead designer role with Timothy Corrigan. Laura enjoys the simplicity of the mundane – after hours, you can find her climbing mountains, tackling crosswords, and making her own clothing.
Erica Parrish
NCIQQ + Well AP Certified
After completing her degree in Interior Design at the University of Alabama, and a Master’s in Architecture at U of O, Erica joined our team in 2021 – bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and smack dab in the middle of a global pandemic. Her resilience, ninja-like critical thinking, and passion for learning are essential to the heartbeat of our team. Before her Bright calling, Erica worked with several architecture firms and honed her innate ability to suss out details and compile a mean Construction Doc. She’s young, experienced, and ready to tackle any project with integrity and grace, while keeping us on our toes and organized. In her “spare” time you can find her reading cookbooks, hosting supper clubs, and spending time with her friends and family.
Maya Matthews
Maya embodies a buzzing, people-centered enthusiasm that helps drive our team toward compassion. She is curious, playful, open-minded, sensitive, and fiercely independent – which lends a particular nuance to her creative work. With a developed affection for how sustainable, social, and cultural structures blend with design, she loves engaging with clients and learning about what they’re drawn to. Prior to her work with Bright, Maya worked as a showroom assistant with Fully, an ergonomic furniture company. There, she helped clients find balance through aesthetics and healthy living. Her strong intuition, as well as her natural way with people, problem-solving, (and plants!) encapsulate just who she is and how she infuses her robust personality into her design work.
ONWARD WE GO
For so long, I’ve envisioned Bright Designlab as a collective of designers teeming with inspiration, creativity, and integrity. Vision-casting doesn’t always go as planned. It can be met with unexpected hurdles and challenges, yes, but sometimes, the harvest is more plentiful than anticipated. In my case, the result has been sheer intrigue of the new tomorrow mixed with bubbling curiosity and excitement. The outcome of it all: a more actualized Bright Designlab. It is with this strong brigade of talented women that we look forward to more thoughtful, innovative design.
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Photos by George Barberis