founder artist designer
From the very beginning of our little studio, Jena has been an unstoppable force driving our commitment to relationships, clients, and beauty. Her designer’s eye and operations background come together to make her the ideal collaborator along every step of a project’s timeline. Trained in interior design and with more than a decade of experience in operations management roles, Jena has been our interiors lead since 2019. Based in Salt Lake City for the past ten years, Jena originally hails from southeastern Tennessee. She spends her free time on creative, methodical hobbies, displaying her knack for attention to detail through cross-stitching, gardening, and book clubs. She finds joy in constant learning, and is quick to pick up books across all genres, but her favorites continue to be historical fiction.
Jena is a jack of all trades, consistently stepping into the roles of manager, interior designer, furniture designer, and head of operations at any given moment. Her work experience has seen her taking charge in all different types of positions, and she brings that flexibility and enthusiasm to each project she takes on. She’s skilled at monitoring the creative vision for her projects, ensuring that through all of the deadlines, opinions, and roadblocks, the end goal of beautiful spaces stays squarely in sight. Her work is thorough, functional, and often playful and unexpected. The daily opportunities Jena’s work gives her to learn new things and connect with people are what nurtures her passionate approach to her projects. Her enthusiasm for knowledge leads her to ask all the right questions at the right times. She’s a pro at handling the constant gear shifts throughout her day, moving from putting together finish updates or renderings to being onsite learning about plumbing connections to working through potential construction issues with ease. This daily rhythm is Jena’s favorite part of her job, and what separates her from other designers..
Jena approaches her work with a strong set of guiding principles stemming from lessons she’s learned throughout her career. In past project management roles she learned how to keep groups of people on the task at hand, juggling timelines, focus time, and discussion to steer teams towards their goal. As an operations planner she picked up a skill for managing projects with huge variety in scale, duration, type, and client. This gave her a sixth sense for understanding when operations systems were flexible enough to last through overlapping timelines and day-to-day changes. At the core of Jena’s work lies a focus on bringing surprise and delight into her clients’ experiences. Often taking a simple material and introducing it in an unexpected patterning or colorway can reinvent a space, and create moments of joy into the interiors.
Certifications / Memberships
• IIDA: International Interior Designers Association• USGBC: United States Green Building Council
• ASID: American Society of Interior Designers
• CSM: Certified Scrum Master
• CSPO: Certified Product Owner
Education
• 2009 Tennessee Technological University, Bachelors Interiors
Professional Experience
• 2019 Interiors and Furniture Lead at Modern Out West
• 2018 Tech Manager at Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals
• 2016 Illuminations Coord. at Children’s Miracle Network
• 2014 Marketing Manager at Cricut
• 2010 Operations Planner at Kirklands, Inc. Nashville Office
Hobbies / Interests
• All things books!
• Cooking / stewing / bakery type things
• Walking the neighborhoods
• Gardening, rumor has it she’s more of a farmer than Trent
• Dreaming of a puppy
• Houseplanting, pretty much caretaker to their whims