Kirstyn holds a Masters’s Degree in Architecture from the University of Oregon and a Bachelors’s Degree in Architecture and Interior Design from The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and Mount Mary College. With 25 years of professional experience in the commercial design world, Kirstyn took the leap to start Growing Up With Design and explore the exciting world of design for children, finding a balance between her professional life and her family life.

Kirstyn’s love of design started long before her formal education. As an elementary student, she could often be found playing with her Crayola Interior Design Kit, drawing up and rendering perspectives for made-up clients, creating binders of inspirational images from the JC-Penny and Sears Catalogus, or much to her mother’s chagrin re-arranging her bedroom.

The inspiration for Growing Up With Design came a few years ago when Kirstyn used her design skills to create fun and inspiring spaces for her two Children. Designers are trained to have champagne taste but oftentimes have a beer budget and when you are designing for a child, who will grow out of things quickly and generally be hard on everything around them, this is especially the case. Growing Up With Design is intended to address just these issues.