Carol Way Cisco, Allied ASID - LEED + WELL AP
Founder of Designing for Veterans
"Our therapeutic approach is to design and build an environment that will aid in their recovery and not be a constant reminder of their disability. We build environments that heal.”
With over thirty years in professional interior design Ms Cisco has been utilizing her skills to improve the human condition on an international level. She has done extensive work in the nonprofit sector designing everything from the largest drug rehab facility in the US to the international headquarters for world literacy to a human rights embassy in Belgium. This work along with her many other humanitarian projects has been 100% volunteer.
Coupled with her background studies in the modern science of mental health and personally counseling over two-thousand hours she uses this experience to design environments that enhance the quality of life.
Ms Cisco started Designing for Veterans, Inc in 2010 as a nonprofit design firm to serve severely disabled veterans returning from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as a way to salvage their lives after having sacrificed so much to keep our country secure and free. The firm provides architectural, engineering, interior design and landscaping services, furnishings and construction at no cost to the veteran or their family. As an evidence-based design research program Ms Cisco has developed a “therapeutic design process” providing environments that will aid in the veterans' healing and recovery.
While Carol has received many awards throughout her career, the most important of these come from her work in Designing for Veterans. Recently, she won the ASID Design Excellence Award Residential - Universal Design for Mission Recovery; the ASID Foundation, Irene Winifred Eno Grant for her academic research into the Impact of Interior Design on Disabled Veterans and the ASID IL Design Visionary Award. Further recognition came when she received the International Interior Design Associations’ Recognizing Exemplary Design (RED) in the category of Healthcare - Residential - Assisted Living also for the Mission Recovery Project.
Mission Possible and Mission Recovery have received media attention from local TV stations. Mission Possible, for Army Sgt Cameron Crouch has been featured on CBS 2 “Your Chicago with Rob and Kate”. You’ll find Designing for Veterans work published in Contract and Interiors Chicago magazines and the ASID ICON – Design for Life.
Ms Cisco is a graduate of The Illinois Institute of Art - Chicago with a BFA in Interior Design. In addition to her work with Designing for Veterans she has worked in professional design studios in Chicago, Los Angeles and Aspen. She recently received acknowledgement from Colorado Homes & Lifestyles Magazine for her interior design work as the Colorado Home of the Year and national ASID Focus Award for Health & Wellness Design.
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