Tia has always been drawn to the balance between big ideas and small details. As an Associate at GEC, she brings that perspective to her work in post-secondary projects across Alberta, helping universities imagine spaces that reflect and support their communities.
Her path to architecture was shaped by a mix of curiosity and creativity. Tia holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the University of Calgary, as well as a Bachelor of Environmental Design and a Master of Architecture from the University of Manitoba. Before focusing on education projects, she gained experience in transportation and aviation design—always with an eye for how spaces influence the people who use them.
What energizes Tia most is the human side of design: listening to clients and collaborators, understanding what matters to them, and translating those ideas into buildings that will serve generations of students. She believes design should be rooted in both people and place—user-centric, sustainable, and responsive to its surroundings.
Colleagues describe her as collaborative and a holistic thinker, someone who can see how the smallest details connect back to the bigger picture. That perspective shows up in her favourite stage of a project: the shift from design development to construction documents, when ideas start to turn into something real. For Tia, there’s nothing more rewarding than moments like the groundbreaking of the SAIT Campus Centre, when a project moves off the page and into the lives of the people it was designed with.
Outside the studio, Tia and her husband can often be found hiking or tackling home renovation projects. A former painter, she still leans on creativity and time outdoors to fuel her work. If she weren’t an architect, she imagines she’d still be shaping the built environment—just with a more hands-on, community-driven focus.
Whether walking through her very first completed project or contributing to a large campus plan, Tia brings perseverance, care, and curiosity to everything she does—always looking for the connections between vision, detail, and community.