For our next member spotlight, we are meeting Registered Interior Designer Jasmine Prachter. Jasmine Prachter has recently joined Avison Young to manage the Workplace Consulting team in Canada within Avison Young’s Professional Services team. With 25 years of experience in interior design, specifically workplace, she is is highly skilled at managing the integration of disciplines and initiatives to enable high operational improvement strategies for a vast array of organizations. This experience includes analyzing corporate client business needs and leveraging trends to shape appropriate strategies and solutions.

She is a customer centric leader and a creative thinker who sees the big picture, builds relationships and ensures successful delivery and management of all her projects and programs. With a client-first and continuous improvement mindset, she works to provide optimal solutions for your organization.

Return To Work has been a focus this past year for Jasmine with numerous clients looking to support their employees with the best transition solutions. Analyzing organizations holistically while proposing new changes and strategies that align with their culture and goals. This includes the introduction of hybrid models to clients providing optimal flexibility and support to its employees.

Q: How long have you been a member of ARIDO? JP: I have been a member of ARIDO since 1996 when I was a student at Humber College. It was my first year entering the ARIDO student awards and won my first award. Since then I went on to win a few awards, and the support and recognition that ARIDO offers has always been extremely supportive.

Q: What’s the Interior Design community like in your part of the province? JP: In my part of the province, the interior design community is very tight, and supportive.

Q: Professional development is part of maintaining compliance with ARIDO. What’s been a professional development opportunity you’ve found particularly useful or meaningful? JP: For me, anything that is related to the OBC is useful to me and highly recommend to all ARIDO members. It keeps us informed, and of course integral in design and for building permits. The professional development links offered through ARIDO are vast and designers are able to select what is most applicable to them in their line of specialty. However, I also believe that all knowledge is a building block, and any course or new innovation assists us in becoming better informed.

Q: What upcoming innovation do you think will dramatically impact the industry in the next five years?
JP: COVID has shaken up the Workplace industry to enable organizational change. The human experience being the most important in building success, while organizations are looking to build high performing, meaningful spaces. This translates to new innovations taking place in our line of business to truly understand the dimensions of our workplace environments. At Avison Young, where I currently work, we are in the depth of fully understanding the multi-generational, diverse workforce in a way that has brought forth new ways of thinking and truly understanding the needs of people first.

Q: Who has influenced you most when it comes to how you approach your work? JP: As a teenager, I was very much interested in architecture and philosophy. The two main influences that jolted my career was an author by the name of Ayn Rand and the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Both classics and highly recommend for all young people. Ayn Rand, inspiring individualism, and Mies van der Rohe, being one of the great architects of our time, falling into that same category of innovation.

In my career, I have also had several influencers and mentors. Three or four were very significant, specifically in my 15 years at HOK where I was offered tremendous growth and support from my leadership team.

Q: What trend do you hope makes a comeback? JP: Trends are revolutionary. I would not necessarily like to have specific trends make a comeback, rather have past trends shape new ways of thinking and allow us to continuously evolve.

I embrace any new industrial revolution, specific to design and innovation that emerge from past experiences in ways that support and enhance our culture, our people, and our cities for the better.

The Member Spotlight will feature a different member each month.

Know someone who should be featured? Get in touch with communications@arido.ca .

See you next month!