Alex’s Story: ‘Why I Coach’
I’ve spent my career at the intersection of design, business, and personal growth.
After graduating from RISD, I co-founded RBW — a lighting brand that grew from a tiny studio with two friends into a globally recognized company. Over 17 years, I learned what it takes to build something enduring: creative vision, persistence, trust, and not being afraid to take risks.
It was a privilege and an incredible journey — full of lessons about leadership, partnership, and staying creative inside a growing business. It also taught me something I now see in almost every founder I work with: businesses and the people running them don’t evolve on parallel tracks. The company needs one thing, the founder has become another, and nobody calls out the gap.
That gap is what I help founders close. My work blends strategy and empathy, structure and creativity, grounded in real experience building, leading and evolving a creative company.
Experience and Expertise
As a founding partner of RBW, I helped grow a design-led lighting company from a small NYC studio into an internationally recognized brand known for its innovation, culture and quality craftsmanship. Over seventeen years, I worked across nearly every facet of the business — from sales, marketing, and business development to product strategy, leadership, and long-term planning — learning what it takes to turn creative vision into sustainable success.
RBW became a Certified B Corporation and earned recognition for both its creative and cultural leadership, including honors such as Wallpaper*’s Guide to Creative America: 300 Names to Know Now, Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies, Great Place to Work, and a six-time Cooper Hewitt National Design Award nominee. I was also named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for my role in building the company’s growth and impact.
The work took me around the world — from factories in China to design weeks in Bulgaria and beyond — and even into collaboration with IKEA’s PS Collection. Those experiences built an international network of designers, makers, and thinkers that continues to inform my work today.
Through this journey, I developed deep expertise in integrated business models that connect design, manufacturing, and client experience; in purpose-driven leadership and culture-building; and in serving world-class clients across architecture, interiors, and hospitality — including Google, Starbucks, Marriott, Rivian and many others.
As my career evolved, I became increasingly interested in the impact side of business — how companies can strengthen the communities and people around them. At RBW, I helped establish a philanthropic fund that supported local nonprofits and launched the RBW Endowed Scholarship at RISD, created for students who are the first in their families to attend college. This commitment to creative opportunity and community engagement has continued to shape my work. In 2024, I founded StüdiGroup and co-created Neuland, extending that spirit into projects that bring people together through design, conversation, and shared purpose.
As I set out on this exciting new chapter of my career, putting this wealth of experience to work for you and your creative business is what lights me up! I can’t wait to work with you.