From Classroom to Career: The People Who Shape a Designer’s Path

Why Do We Need Mentors?

It’s easy to assume technology and training can launch designers fully fledged into the field. Don’t firms have greater access to information, new visualization tools, and established supply chain relationships? What else could emerging designers possibly need?

The resounding answer from the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) was to develop soft skills.

As senior director of engagement, Valerie O’Keefe helped to coordinate a 2024 “listening tour” during which ASID representatives met with firms of all sizes and collected feedback on topics spanning from membership to business development. When the ASID team asked what skills gaps firm leaders saw in recently employed graduates, they repeatedly identified communication skills, teamwork, and time management as top challenges.

O’Keefe acknowledged that these skills typically aren’t part of design curriculum. “Educators have an incredible job teaching, and those soft skills just aren’t always able to be a focus,” she said. “That’s where [associations] can serve as a resource for firms, students, and educators, to fill that gap. And that’s where mentorship and [other career development] programming comes in.”

Where Mentorship Really Begins

O’Keefe’s points on the value of structured resources are well taken by others in the industry. Still, I learned that not everyone begins mentoring through an intentional, organized process.

When we met to discuss his so-called approach to “warping young minds,” //3877 partner David Shove-Brown agreed that soft skills have often been acquired “in the fire”—but not always with care and intent. His own crash-course experience in leadership has helped to shape the firm’s open attitude toward the mentor/mentee relationship, which doesn’t strictly follow a linear “handing down of expertise.”

“I’ll start by admitting that we screw up a lot! A lot of firms don’t admit that, because they don’t want to present themselves as fallible,” Shove-Brown revealed. “But for [co-founding partner] Dave [Tracz] and I, when we were learning how to run a firm, that’s how [mentorship and growth] first happened.”

FCA senior associate and project architectural designer Ansel Radway shared a similar sentiment, noting that mentorship can start long before anyone calls it a program. Based on his own lackluster experiences with mentorship during his academic and early career, Radway was reluctant at first to consider developing a mentoring program.

At Temple, after witnessing mentors who didn’t spend much time nurturing their students, “I took a whole entire first year under my wing,” Radway recalled with a smile. Conversely, when he first participated in an early mentorship iteration at FCA, he found that he wasn’t sure how or what to communicate to his mentor to assist in guiding him.

At the request of junior staff, FCA relaunched its mentorship program in recent years. Accepting that “it’s just in my heart to pour into people, help them grow,” Radway realized he had already been mentoring since his college days.

Radway joined the Black Professional Network’s mentorship program, which encouraged him to foster “a culture of curiosity.” He explored a framework of questions about career path, suggestions for growth, and recommendations to establish a meaningful connection—all adaptable to the scope of the participants’ location, available time, and personal styles.