We were lucky to catch up with Maria Isabel Segura recently and have shared our conversation below.
Maria Isabel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Please call me Isa, as people close to me usually call me; I am a passionate, well-being interior architect who discovered how to heal through design. My business and profession reflect my own life story and how creativity, persistence, healing, design, and wellness changed my life, taught me how to see the beauty in the small things, and how the built environment can help you to heal and to appreciate life even more. Being alive is a blessing, life is a short trip, people are a treasure, environments are powerful, and your talent makes you unique.
My journey in this fantastic experience began when I was a kid, so Legos, crayons, puzzles, coloring books, creativity, and the curiosity of exploring places became an active part of my childhood. Years later my passion motivated me to become an Architect, but suddenly a life-death situation changed my lifestyle and my life perception when I was 19 years old. It is not easy to receive the news that you need to face a risky Open-Heart surgery because you have a Congenital Heart Condition that was discovered then and needs to be fixed as soon as possible to allow you to continue in this world. At that time my beautiful world full of hopes and dreams collapsed; I was dealing with finding a cardiothoracic surgeon, and preparing myself mentally while my body was getting weaker daily. A stop in my fourth year of Architecture study in Costa Rica was not negotiable, and a trip to Miami for a life-saving surgery became my mission then. Time passed, and my surgery was done successfully in Miami when I was 23; so, the question: What will I do with my life? had more presence than ever before in my life. I returned to Costa Rica to finish Architecture, became a Costa Rican registered architect, and moved to Miami to pursue a master’s in interior architecture in 2018. The reason was simple: my life experience motivated me to use my design talent to help people heal through design. Architecture gave me the basis for understanding the built environment; still, I was missing the sensibilization that Interior Design offers to know how a space can impact the mood, emotions, and well-being of a person.
My goal / mission / vision was delimited by my own life experience since I used creativity and design to face the anxiety, stress, and depression of being stuck in a place for weeks caused me while I was recovering from my Open-Heart Surgery. Also, at that point, I understood that design colors, finishes, and materials can help to improve or deteriorate your health. I started the experiments by combining them and using evidence-based design to foster and improve my physical and mental healing process.
Hence, I firmly believe that Architecture and Interior Design can be a great tool to heal; I am a living proof of that. In brief, this was how life became my mentor and polished me to use my talent and sharpen my abilities to heal through design while I was reborn resiliently. Sometimes, you discover the purpose of your life by facing your worst life adventure, but later you understand that everything that you face has a reason to be. Now, I feel proud of who I am and love to share my life experience to motivate others as well as to explain the reason and the passion behind my work.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
As I explained at the last question, I discovered my life path and passion by facing a crucial life experience that made me reborn in an experimented Well-being Interior Architect polished and sharpened not only by training at school but also because of my particular life story.
Now, I feel proud of calling myself a Design Coach who teaches and uses design to heal while my client’s life quality is enhanced. I am a person who loves to follow a healthy lifestyle, and also use design every day to feel better; so, my job is a reflection of who I am. I love to educate my clients that Interior Architecture is more than aesthetics since it can be used as a powerful healing tool as well.
I offer services such as Design Coaching, Interior Design Consultations, Residential Healing Design Concepts, Home Design Shopper, Professional Home Organizing, Seasonal Decorator, and sometimes Gift-Boxes creation.
My best reference is my own life story because life taught me how to use design to create healing environments that helped me fully recover faster while my mental and physical well-being was nurtured. Also, my positivism, empathy, and love of being alive mirror my personal life motto “If you are living a second life opportunity, do the best of it”. Hence, I use my talent and life experience to help people feel better inside spaces by creating healing built environments. It is a fact that human beings spend more than 90% of their time inside buildings, so let’s make them more than aesthetic spaces and take advantage of how they can be used to improve our mental and physical health.
In brief, I want my potential clients/followers/fans to know about me and my design brand MS Design, Wellness, and Health as proof that design can be used as a powerful healing tool. Please follow me @msarquitecturaeinteriores on my social media to know about this!
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Being authentic, feeling proud of who I am, trusting in my gut, being persistent, being a workaholic, being a well-being design passionate, and sharing my life story have been my best references. When a smile, a nice vibe, and mastering what you are doing are a constant on your daily, it is a signal that you are doing great and that your job is more than it because it is your life path. I love what I do for a living, also I feel so grateful for my second life opportunity in this world, so designing for health improvement has become my obsession. I have learned how to discover and appreciate the small things in life, and that design is a powerful healing tool. In other words, being aware that life is a short, fragile but incredible experience has been my basic design concept for any project.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
I love to listen to podcasts about personal growth and entrepreneurship. However, having conversations with other entrepreneurs about how they did it has been my best resource to impact my entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy significantly. I believe nothing is better than experience; people learn and remember what they learned by facing real situations rather than reading books. Sharing and discussing my story with other entrepreneurs have motivated me to continue pursuing my dream about using design to heal; you can have a bad day or a bad season, but at the end of the day you become wiser and learn how to become stronger and resilient. It is like a kind of motivational club by learning through experience.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.
msdesignwellnessandhealth.com/ - Instagram: @
msarquitecturaeinteriores - Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/ msarquitecturaeinteriores - Linkedin: https://www.
linkedin.com/in/mar%C3%ADa- isabel-segura-r-720b56b3/
- Other: E-mail: msegura@
msdesignwellnessandhealth.com Mobile: 786-932-7692 will be a pleasure to help you!
Image Credits
Image Credits: The pictures were taken by my mom or friends who were present during those days. Thank You!