Anne Marie Garcia

Lauren

Anne Marie, thank you so much for joining us today. Can you introduce yourself to the audience and tell us what you do?

Anne Marie

I'm the Director of Business Development and Marketing for SV Design Architecture and Interiors — an integrated, full-service firm in Massachusetts.

Lauren

How did you get there? When we met, we both worked at a healthcare architecture firm, and you were in Nashville.

Anne Marie

It's been a journey. I made it back to Massachusetts with that same healthcare architecture firm — I was in the process of transferring from the Nashville office to Boston. There were some hoops along the way, but eventually I landed in the Boston office. After a while, I started to feel like I wanted a broader experience — different markets, different types of clients. And honestly, there were logistical reasons too. I live about 29 miles from Boston as the crow flies, which sounds manageable, but there were days when the commute was two and a half hours each way. Your quality of life is directly tied to how much time you spend in a car, and I started looking for something closer to home.

By serendipity, a business development and marketing role opened at a local firm, SV Design, where I am now. We do affordable housing, multifamily, commercial, institutional, nonprofit work, and high-end single-family residential. It's two ends of a real spectrum. Coming from healthcare architecture, which is its own world entirely, it was a tall order — overseeing BD and marketing across several different markets and three offices, plus talent recruitment. But I was genuinely excited for the challenge.

It also mattered to me that I landed somewhere doing meaningful work. I loved that healthcare architecture was about designing healing spaces. I didn't want to pivot to a firm just building office towers. The piece of SV Design that I really love is the affordable housing work. I can literally drive down the road and see five different buildings we've done. To see that work in my community, to see how it's genuinely helping people — that's pretty great. 

Lauren

Can we back up and talk about where your career started? Who is Anne Marie at 18?

Anne Marie

I'm not sure I know the full answer to that, but I always knew I wanted to be in design in some capacity. I've always had two sides to myself — a deep love of design and a deeply sensitive, empathetic nature — and I knew I wanted to combine them somehow. My path is not linear, but whose is?

I graduated high school at 17, and when I look back, that's a child being asked to figure out the rest of their life. It was overwhelming. So I took a gap year and worked for an AmeriCorps program called City Year. I taught domestic violence prevention curriculum as a 17-year-old in inner-city middle and high schools. It was intense — as a deeply feeling person, there were days it was almost too hard. But it really shaped what I wanted to do. I was always into art and design, and I thought, maybe I can design spaces where people feel loved and safe and comfortable. Working directly with people who came in every day describing situations where they felt unsafe made me want to create environments that offered the opposite of that.

So I went to school and started in a design program that eventually led me toward sustainable design and wellness — areas I'm still deeply interested in. I worked for a healthcare architecture firm out of school, then burned out. I moved to California, completely stepped away from what I was doing, and pivoted to product design — still applying design principles, but on a smaller scale. I was in the fashion industry for a number of years, working for an apparel company, and for someone like me, that world was genuinely torturous. It was notoriously superficial and completely unfulfilling.

So I came back to the architecture dream — creating safe spaces for people. I moved to Nashville and had a small interiors studio for a while. And then life happened: I went through a divorce and needed something more stable. I reached out to the architecture firm I'd worked for earlier; they had just opened a Nashville office. I said, "Hey, I'm here, you're here." They said they didn't need design help, but asked if I could do business development. I had no idea what that meant, but I needed a job — and the person asking was a woman I had always deeply admired, a real powerhouse in the architecture world. She sat me down and said, "I know you can do this. I wouldn't ask if I didn't believe that." That was what gave me the confidence to step into business development. And I've been doing it ever since. 

Lauren

What problem do you solve?

Anne Marie

I think I solve the problem of disconnect. There are so many ways to describe that, but at its core it's the gap between a client and the right architect, the right project, the right process. It's a puzzle — figuring out who to put in front of whom, what work we're genuinely good at, and what we should actually be pursuing rather than chasing everything.

On the multifamily and commercial side, that's very much a business development function — narrowing the focus and being strategic. On the residential side, it's more about creating a consistent brand story. And here's the thing people always conflate: business development and marketing are not the same thing. They live in the same pod, they need each other, they're best friends — but they are not the same job.

One thing I'm really proud of at this firm is how contextually we design. We don't have a signature style — we sit with clients and listen to who they are and how they live their lives, and then we design for the context of the project. A client might come to us not knowing where to start, having interviewed a half dozen architects. Our brand story makes that connection clear. My job is to make sure the right client finds the right person on our team to tell that story with.

Lauren

How could the system better support women?

Anne Marie

I think we need to change how we define leadership. We have a very one-track view of what a leader looks like, and it tends to skew masculine — extroverted, loud, the biggest personality in the room. But there are so many sleeper leaders. And while this isn't true of every woman, I think more women than not operate that way. We need to educate ourselves — and each other — that there are all kinds of leaders, and they're all valid.

More broadly, I think we need to genuinely recognize the value of what women bring to the table. I consider myself a feminist, and to me that means equity and equality — but it also means accepting the qualities that are more feminine in the same way we accept those that are more masculine. Empathy, intuition, relational intelligence — those are not soft skills in a dismissive sense. They are leadership skills. Championing them, naming them, teaching people to take them seriously — that's where I think we need to go.

Lauren

What would you tell your younger self — let's say 17-year-old Anne Marie, just starting the domestic violence curriculum work?

Anne Marie

I get really emotional thinking about my younger self. I went through a very difficult time and felt deeply lost and unsupported. So first and foremost — and I do this every day — I tell her she is safe, loved, and supported. My phone's lock screen is actually a photo of me as a kid. It's a daily reminder to be kind to her.

And I would tell her that her empathy is a strength, not something to tone down or be embarrassed by. You can be a gentle person in this world and still take up space. Those two things are not in conflict.

Lauren

One of the things I'm particularly enjoying in this conversation is how deeply ingrained self-reflection and self-talk are in who you are. Can you talk about how that supports you — and whether there are practices others could adopt to help them through their work day?

Anne Marie

I think it's one step at a time. I used to feel like I needed the whole plan laid out in front of me before I could move — and that's just not how life works. You put one foot in front of the other and go in the direction that feels good to your soul. That's sometimes really hard to hear, especially when you're scared.

Getting quiet with yourself is essential. Understanding what makes you feel confident, what makes you feel safe, what genuinely excites you — pulling that thread and going in that direction, even if you can't see where it leads, even if you're worried about money or stability. Even if you start with just a hobby. The thread unravels. You step onto the path without even knowing it.

And at the end of the day, I really don't believe there are many truly wrong decisions. You make the decision and you go — and every single thing that happens is an opportunity to learn something about yourself. Standing at the fork in the road longer doesn't make the choice clearer; it just creates more anxiety. There's a real sense of relief in simply making the call and moving.

I'd also say: listen to your body. It's giving you cues all the time about when you're not in the right place. As women especially, we often override those signals because we're busy taking care of everything and everyone else. Our needs end up last on the list. Learning to listen to yourself — to what your body is actually telling you — is one of the most important things you can do. 

Lauren

Is there anything you wish you had unlearned sooner?

Anne Marie

Perfectionism. I was a perfectionist as a kid — worried about every grade, every project, whether it was good enough. In adulthood that translated into anxiety and, as I've recently discovered, ADHD. But with age I've realized: none of that stuff defines you. Nobody remembers what your eighth grade book report was about. But if you run into someone from eighth grade and they say "you were such a great friend" — that's what people remember. How you made them feel. That's what lasts.

And that translates directly into business development. People will not work with you because you gave a perfect presentation. They'll work with you because they like talking to you, because you make them feel seen, because you remembered how their dog was doing or that their kid had a big week. The relationship is the work. And I wish I'd let go of the pressure to perform perfectly much sooner so I could have focused on that all along.

Lauren

Asking for a friend — do you have any tips on how to be likable?

Anne Marie

It's pretty basic, honestly: listen. Be a genuine person. In business development, they say it takes seven touch points to make a real connection — and a lot of those touch points have nothing to do with work. It's seeing someone at an event and asking how their dog is, how their kids are, and actually remembering what they told you last time. People notice when you care enough to remember the small things. That's what builds trust. That's what builds relationships. And relationships are everything in this work.

Lauren

Do you have any final words you'd like to share with other women in the industry?

Anne Marie

Trust your instincts. There have been so many times I didn't, and I ended up in places where I was miserable. I'm almost 44, and I'm still learning to trust that I do know what I'm doing most of the time — that the voice telling me otherwise is just imposter syndrome playing games with me. Your brain will give you a hundred reasons not to do what you actually want to do. But your body is always telling you the truth. Learn to listen to it.