Designer serves the industry through association involvement
Innovators don’t just create, they also lead. That’s clearly the case for Maria Stapperfenne, a 25-year industry veteran and 2015 NKBA president who continued her commitment to serving the trade as an NKBA Board member and association ambassador. She works on projects ranging from conceiving Voices of the Industry programs to working with her local chapter to raising scholarship money for architecture and design students.
The manager of Tewksbury Kitchens & Baths is always on the go, currently doing volunteer work and promotion for the Living in Place Institute where, after receiving her certification in 2016, she does presentations to designers and showroom personnel.
She’s also trying to bring into NKBA a greater focus on the living-in-place aspect of design, explaining, “One of the tenets of NKBA’s mission and vision statement is safety, and we believe it’s one of the things that separates us as an association.”
Education remains a priority for her, and she believes, “It’s our job to entice new talent into the industry and create more awareness to entice millennials,” with programs like the NKBA’s “30 Under 30.”
She is passionate about using design to “help people find their happy place” and is a huge fan of collaboration, joking that, “inter-professional collaboration is the new black!”
