For twenty years, I’ve researched how people experience the world through the lens of product research: customer needs, business problems, and design solutions. I was a busy working parent commuting to downtown Chicago, to offices that were beautiful in the way that expensive things are beautiful: polished, controlled, optimized. Everything looked perfect, but something was missing.

I noticed it first in my own body. I was struggling — tired in a way that sleep didn't fix, overstimulated in a way that quiet didn't resolve. And I started paying attention to what actually helped: staring at the green roof outside my window. Walking through the Lurie Garden at lunch. Adopting neglected desk plants from coworkers.

I started asking why, and that question led me to the practice of biophilic design — the science of how humans experience nature in built environments. The research is unambiguous: our nervous systems are still running ancient code. We need the sensory signals of the natural world — light, texture, seasonal change, living things — to focus, recover, and feel safe. When those cues disappear, so does our capacity to do our best work, and to create a sense of well-being.

Armed with that insight, I nurtured a passion for sustainable cut flower growing: what it takes to coax a stem from seed, how to work with seasonality rather than against it, and why locally grown flowers look and last differently than imported ones. Now I channel all of it — the design research, the growing knowledge, the twenty years of watching how design can impact people — into Season and Color.

I design recurring, foam-free floral installations for hotels and commercial spaces, sourced from Midwest and US farms, plus a few stems I still grow myself. If your space is ready to feel as good as it looks, I'd love to talk.