We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jackie Gusic a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jackie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

As a parent I have contemplated this question a lot because I hope to do just as good for my kids as my parents did for me. I think it all comes down to how they never made me feel like I couldn’t do something. No matter what I said I wanted to do they were right there supporting me – including making posters for my run to be student government president in high school and leading to a lifetime of public service in local government. But it goes beyond just not saying “no”. It was more that doubt was never expressed in my ability to do something. That, I think, was what made the real impact on my journey through life so far. I never heard “really, are you sure that’s a good idea?” I had those doubts myself, but I am grateful my parents never expressed them if they had them.

This support also extends from everyone in my life, not just my parents. I am lucky enough to have found that same type of support and confidence from my husband Don. He has had the most significant impact in my career all because when an unexpected moment at a job lead to it being time to start my own firm he never for a second questioned if I would be able to handle the task. When I had the idea of starting my second business, an app development company, he never questioned if I’d be out of my depth.

I’ve come to realize that real confidence, the deep-down confidence, comes from having those around you believe you are capable of whatever you set your mind to.

Now that I’m a parent I know how easy it would be to let even just a little doubt creep into conversations. Not that I have doubt in my kids, but more that I have doubt in this world to work out how I hope for them. My parents have provided an excellent example though of how to support them in their own journey.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am an architect as my “day job” but I think what sets me apart from the many other good and truly interesting architects out there in the world is that I was getting frustrated in my work, identified what the main crux of the problem was, and then I went out and tried to solve it. I’ve had my own architecture firm since 2006, and then with a partner since 2011. We focus on mostly residential work and we are very design-focused with a heavy emphasis on client engagement. I wouldn’t change that for anything, because in the end we are creating spaces FOR our clients and they should be an integral part of the process. However, the time spent on client engagement can really effect the amount of time spent on the other parts of the job of being an architect. It became really easy to rush through the design parts because the week was being consumed by the client and other regular project management tasks needed to successfully run a project.

So three years ago I embarked on a journey to create a tool that would help me – and others in the residential design world – to be more efficient in the management aspects of our jobs. CollabMind launched this May 2025 as an app for just that purpose. Its purpose is to create a platform for all members of the project – the design professionals, the clients, the contractors – to collaborate on all aspects of the project, from the very beginning inspirational ideas to the completion of the last items on a construction punch list. CollabMind is designed to be user-friendly (we can all imagine some clients and contractors who will balk at technology!) and I had a lot of fun thinking through features that would be important to a design professional. One small element that I think will make big impact is that each firm will be able to set a custom color scheme in their subscription so that their clients will be able to experience the app as an extension of their firm. It’s these small built-in touches that I think set CollabMind apart. This is a tool created by someone in the industry who understands the pain points and what features make it useful.

While I’m still in disbelief that I managed to make this happen, that’s also what I’m most proud of. I have pretty close to zero technical ability, yet I still managed to create this app by working with a development firm and get it out to market. I have spent so much time researching everything from copyrights, to what an API actually is (application programming interface), to why you need so many of them to make an app run. There were many times I was out of my comfort zone but I worked hard to find a way out and I learned a lot along the way.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Being able to envision something within my imagination and then seeing that come to life is incredibly rewarding. I’ve been lucky to experience this in many scales. I can close my eyes and build a space in 3D. This is helpful in my professional life as an architect. It’s extremely rare that I get shocked by how a project turns out versus what I’ve envisioned all along. And I’m always surprised when a client admits that they were just going on faith because they couldn’t imagine it themselves. For CollabMind, I was able to largely think through the functioning of the app before I even put pen to paper to sketch it out.

I am working through honing this skill still with my outside-of-work creative pursuits. I think because I don’t get to spend a lot of time on those and I’m still developing the skills, what I envision does not always turn out in real life. This is a hard reality and really tests my patience! It’s pretty sad to spend many hours sewing a new garment to basically have to set it aside for scraps when the fit isn’t right or it’s just not 100% worthy of being worn. But when I’m able to create clothing, or an embroidered piece, or newly tufted rug as I’ve envisioned it, there is no better feeling.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My professional and creative journeys have been intertwined for the past twenty plus years but I’m starting to feel some separation between the two. I’ve come to realize that architecture is my profession and that I have other creative interests, mostly in the fabric arts. The creation of CollabMind was a response to this realization. Its goal is to better manage the work time spent in a day, providing more time for other creative pursuits. As an architect with a small firm, it’s easy to get sucked into endless project/client management and completely disrupt a healthy work/life balance. So basically I’ve used my professional ingenuity to build a tool that will allow more time for my individual creative pursuits. My mission now is to find ways in a busy life to carve out time for pursuing a new creative path.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.collabmind.app
• Instagram: collabmind.app
• Linkedin: CollabMind

Image Credits

Gabriela Barrantes Photography