Victoria Snelgrove completed AACC’s Interior Design program after a career as a neonatal dietitian. While the two fields may seem unrelated, she has found surprising overlap in the skills they require.
She said she often served as “an expert consultant on a multidisciplinary team” in the hospital and sees clear parallels in design work. "Building a house, renovating a house — it's a similar multidisciplinary team environment,” she said.
Interpersonal skills, the ability to explain complex topics in accessible language and technical expertise have also carried over.
"I think I was a little hard on myself when I first started the program, thinking I'm going have to learn everything all over again,” she said. "The more experience I got with the program, with networking, I started to realize how transferable a lot of my skills were.”
Snelgrove was looking for a new career that would offer more flexibility and time to spend with her family. After taking her first noncredit introductory class, she was convinced she had found the right fit.
AACC's program is “so focused on actionable technical skills and being able to jump into the workforce. That was what made this program make sense for me and work for me at the time in my life that I found it.”
This major life transition also gave her the perspective to relate to one of her first clients. She redesigned the entertaining and hosting rooms for a client preparing to move to a new stage of life as an empty nester.
"I'm really excited about others who are willing to kind of boldly step into a new transition as well,” she said.
Her work earned praise not only from the client but from the industry. She received the What’s Up? Annapolis Home Excellence Award and was featured on the blog, Hot Young Designers Club.
Snelgrove can be found on Instagram at @wisteriainteriors and at wisteriainteriors.com.
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