Technically proficient interior design professional with extensive experience in large-scale hospitality and residential projects. Skilled in producing space plans, detailed construction drawings, and millwork details. Strong background in material and finish specifications, project coordination, and ensuring compliance with codes and standards. Experienced in leading junior designers, providing mentorship, and overseeing project execution to deliver functional, high-quality designs.
Every Great Design Begins With An Even Better Story
In 1999, Melissa’s professional experience began in the industry at a residential design / build firm, while she attended the College for Creative Studies located in Detroit. After graduating with a BFA in Interior Design, Rodriguez was immediately hired as a Designer at JGA Incorporated, a retail architecture and design firm ranked among the “Top 100 Interior Design Giants in the World” by Interior Design Magazine. She was involved in a number of high-profile accounts, including Saks Department Stores, Tommy Hilfiger and Yankee Candle.
With her love of travel and experience, Melissa set out to find a job outside of her home state of Michigan. She accepted a senior designer position at Cagley & Tanner, a design firm in Las Vegas specializing in resorts, hotels, restaurants, bars, casinos, etc. Her leadership, professionalism, and abilities were recognized and valued as she traveled for a multimillion-dollar renovation of a casino resort located Perth, West Australia.
The next chapter of her life began after meeting her USAF husband while living in Las Vegas, Nevada. They were stationed to Fort Bragg, North Carolina where Melissa worked remotely and eventually working locally in residential remodeling projects. Meanwhile, one of her former colleagues from Cagley & Tanner in Las Vegas had moved to Design Atelier in the North Bay Area of California and reached out to Melissa to relieve them of a surge of work.
What started as a visit turned into a stay. Melissa immersed herself in the world of resort hospitality design in picturesque Marin County, California at Design Atelier. Their projects span the Bay Area down the west coast to Los Cabos, Mexico. Her time there brought more international experience to her portfolio with a majority of her time working on The Westin in Los Cabos, Mexico and the conversion of the hotel to timeshare units.
Still her dream was to own her very own home and remodel it with her father. With her family in Michigan, California is not where that would happen. Her dream finally became a reality when she found a fixer upper near her hometown in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Alongside her father, they’re meticulously remodeling every square inch of that house.
A collaboration with her longtime friend and fellow College for Creative Studies alumnus, Manal Kadry, Melissa was recruited to space plan her 1,885 square foot basement - complete with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, full kitchen, dining room, lounge and a kid's playhouse. The combination of their personality types, skillsets, work ethic and friendship gave them such joy working together that they decided to rebrand Designs by MK to the Manal Kadry Design Collective, a residential design firm with plans to open a furniture showroom and design studio. The design studio was not only going to be a workspace for them and their design team, but it would also be accessible to the design community ideal for independent designers to have use of a conference room, resource library, workstations and vendor list.
In November 2022, Manal Kadry and her husband tragically passed away in a car crash leaving behind 4 children.
"You learn things painfully. When you learn something painfully, a part of you has to die, that's the pain. When a dream is shattered for example, a huge part of you that constituted that dream, maybe even the biological substance of that dream, has to be stripped away and burned. Life is a constant process of death and rebirth and to participate in that fully is to allow yourself to be redeemed by it. So the good is that process of death and rebirth voluntarily undertaken. It's like you're not as good as you could be so you let that part of you die and if someone comes along and says there's some deadwood here and it needs to be burned off you think that stuff is still a bit alive and when that burns it might hurt. Yeah well, no kidding! But maybe the thing that emerges in its place is something way better."
- Jordan Peterson