It’s hard to be a prodigy.

As a preschooler, I could listen to any song and then play it on the piano. I started playing my older brother’s piano lessons by ear, and a year later, I began writing my own compositions. At age nine, I became the youngest winner ever of the BMI Young Composer Awards — an international competition open to composers up to age 26. At 13, I signed with Motown Records as a songwriter.

And then… and then…

I burnt out.

The short answer is that I didn’t like the people or the culture of the rock-and-roll and R&B industries.

Thankfully, I had been blessed with another gift — one I could pursue without the pressure of trying to write a hit.

I loved art. I loved drawing floor plans. Most of all, I loved analyzing how people use space. I would redraw my apartment, then my home, and eventually my friends’ homes and kitchens, always searching for better ways to make them function.

At the time, I was working as a graphic designer and teaching Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator at a local college. But my real passion was kitchen and residential design. Understanding what makes a kitchen — or an entire home — work fascinated me. It wasn’t my career. It was my hobby.

Then, 20 years ago, my husband said, “You know, people would pay you to do that.”

He was right.

Looking back, I realize I wasn’t just drawn to music — I was drawn to patterns, structure, and the way individual parts come together to create something beautiful. Today, I bring that same way of thinking to designing kitchens and homes.

For the past 20 years, I’ve partnered with homeowners to reinvent their kitchens and homes, balancing creativity, practicality, and the countless details that make a remodel successful. For nearly a decade, I’ve also helped clients bring those designs to life by supplying their kitchen cabinetry.

Kitchen and residential design is my profession, but it’s more than that.

It’s my calling.