She recently received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri and has a degree as Graduate Engineer of Interior Architecture from the University of Applied Science in Düsseldorf, Germany. She practiced interior design in large architectural teams in Europe and the United States. Her portfolio includes mostly cultural buildings and projects of higher education. Building on an interest in physical environments for children since her time as an undergraduate, her dissertation was an ethnographic case study of the impact the spaces between classrooms at a public high school “designed for the twenty-first century” have on students’ attitude toward school.