FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: Norma Escandon Michaels, ASID
Principal, NM Interiors Group, Inc.
(602) 257-2282
nminteriorsgroup@cox.net
Norma Escandon Michaels, ASID - One of a few Hispanic Commercial Interior Designers
in the Southwest- Solos as Entrepreneur with NM Interiors Group, Inc.
Phoenix, Arizona. December 8, 2004-Commercial interior designer, Norma Escandon Michaels, ASID, recently announced the opening of her own firm, NM Interiors Group, LLC, based out of Phoenix, Arizona. NM Interiors Group specializes in commercial interior design projects, including hospitality and office design, space planning, tenant improvements and retail design. The firm's target markets include the greater Southwest and Pacific Coast. In 2003, Michaels left Best Western International, where she was a Senior Interior Designer, to form her own company.
"After working 20 years in the trenches for architects, developers and others," said Michaels, "I decided that it was time to climb out of that rut and start digging up business for myself."
Michaels believes that she is one of the few commercial interior designers of Hispanic background in the Southwest. "I would like to think that I'm blazing a trail of sorts for other Hispanics who might like to become commercial interior designers but don't see anyone they can relate to in the business."
Among other recent projects, NM Interiors Group has worked on a modular workstation reconfiguration for William Jessup University in Rocklin, California. This project was part of a renovation that turned a former Herman Miller dealership, designed by Frank Gehry, into a private university. Michaels also recently completed multiple conceptual design layouts for a major West Valley development that has yet to be finalized.
Michaels was recently invited to participate in the 19th National Hispanic Women's Conference, October14th and 15th, in Phoenix, Arizona, as an exhibitor representing the commercial interior design industry.
Over the course of her 20-year career, she has won the Edward Fields Wool Rug Design Competition, for a pattern now included in the Edward Fields rug collection, and worked on the corporate headquarters of the Wolfswinkel Group in Mesa, Arizona, which was later published. She has also received the ASID Arizona North Chapter Merit Award for Office Design over 10,000 square feet.
She previously worked as the lead designer at KMS Building Group, focusing on tenant improvements, after which she moved on to Best Western International. "Considering the fact that I was born and grew up in Picacho and Chandler, Arizona, and had only been out-of-state occasionally and for brief periods," said Michaels, "working for Best Western was a tremendously educational experience."
While with Best Western, Michaels traveled the length and breadth of the United States and Canada, visiting hotel properties, advising the owners on needed improvements and putting together design packages for those properties. "Wherever I traveled," noted Michaels, "from Alaska to Florida, I invariably found Spanish-only speakers whom I was able to help with translations or advice." Clearly Michaels, a fluent Spanish speaker, is proud of her Mexican heritage.
Michaels, nee Escandon, is an Arizona native and was the first in her extended family to complete college. She graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science in Design awarded by the College of Architecture. She earned her National Council of Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ) designation several years later.
As an interior designer, Michaels sees a certain irony in the fact that her family didn't own a home of its own until she was 18. Today, Michaels lives in the Phoenix Historic District, in a Pueblo style home that she extensively renovated, and which has since become a neighborhood landmark.
For more information, contact Norma Escandon Michaels at NM Interiors Group, LLC., at (602) 257-2282 or by email at nminteriorsgroup@cox.net. The company website can be found at www.nminteriorsgroup.com.
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