Carrie Knight’s interest in interior design was sparked when she was a young girl.
Her parents would drive her through neighborhoods under construction, and they would stop and walk through the homes, Knight tells Business Report in a new Executive Spotlight feature. She was hooked.
“As I got older my desire to improve interior space and my appreciation of interior architecture grew,” she says. “Commercial interior design seemed like a field in which I could be happy and would still feed my family.”
Fast-forward and Knight is now a partner at Crump Wilson Architects. She accepted the role about two years ago after working for nearly a decade as an interior designer.
The most challenging part of the professional transition: confronting infertility and giving birth of her first child at the same time. Fortunately for her, Knight says she was surrounded by encouraging people along the way.
“I’ve learned to be flexible,” she says. “It’s not unusual for me to be helping with color selections, writing a proposal, presenting a design concept, working on invoicing, tweaking our marketing plan, coordinating with engineers and talking to a contractor all in one day. You learn to roll with the punches and try to keep your team moving forward on their projects.”
Read the full Executive Spotlight Q&A. Here’s a sample of what you will find:
What advice would you give to a young person who would like to pursue a career in design?
“Make sure it’s something that you love and be flexible. When you are working in a design firm you are working long hours giving your heart and soul to ideas that don’t always come to fruition or can end up to be a fraction of what they once were. You need to be okay with that. Be flexible because many of the designers I know don’t actually work in the design field. They are facilities managers, project managers, construction managers, or most often manufacturer reps. Life will take you in many directions embrace it.”
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