With over 20 places to call home, I’ve witnessed first-hand how the world around us affects our wellbeing.
Much of my interest in architecture stemmed from my upbringing. Throughout my childhood, my mother and I would move nearly every year; this provided me with exposure to some of the wealthiest and some of the poorest areas scattered throughout Lithuania, Turkey, and the United States.
I noticed that certain regions had tight-knit communities while others had members with shared feelings of distrust, cultivating my fascination in the ways our surroundings influence and shape who we become.
During graduate school, I explored some of the many ways architecture can change how we perceive ourselves and interact with others.
Whether it was creating a proposal for a cultural center that pressures its guests into interacting with strangers or a thesis that encourages us to reconsider our relationship with being stuck in traffic, I used my time in graduate school to investigate how humans can rethink the way they engage with their surroundings, others, and even themselves.
I’ve been surrounded by some of the most talented architects at firms committed to pushing the boundaries of the field.
Throughout graduate school, I worked as a teaching assistant and took on a graduate assistantship while interning at Scrafano Architects, Gensler, and HOK. While living abroad after graduate school, I worked full-time at PTW Architects on large-scale residential and mixed-use projects, and upon returning to Chicago, I took on historic preservation and museum work with Vinci Hamp Architects. During the pandemic, my husband and I made Austin our forever home, and I have been working with StoryBuilt ever since.
view professional work
projects below are from my time at PTW Architects, Gensler, and HOK
And I am grateful to have been shaped by all the relationships and new perspectives I’ve discovered along the way.
Each move my family made and each job I have taken along the way has lent itself to new relationships, perspectives, and opportunities. As I continue to explore the various ways architecture shapes others, I hope to give back to others and leave a positive mark on the world.
