Amy McGeachy’s journey with HeroWork started when a friend talked her into volunteering for a weekend with them.
She spent it banging nails, moving furniture, and doing whatever was required. Since then she’s been a designer on the Threshold project and is a design leader with the upcoming Citizen’s Counselling Center project.
THE JOURNEY
Amy McGeachy.
Paul Latour has called her, “the hardest working person I’ve ever met,” and I suspect he may be right. Meeting with her for coffee she’s calm and relaxed, but admits to working seven days a week.
As owner and designer of McGeachy Media and Design, she does commercial and residential design projects, hosts CHEK’s Trend TV show, and writes two weekly columns, one for Real Estate Victoria and another for Boulevard Magazine. In addition, she works with Max Furniture to make custom furniture designs and handles product sourcing and in-home consultations.
Fortunately, the work she does is her passion. With no children in the picture at present, she’s free to concentrate on her career.
THE CONNECTION
She likes working with HeroWorks because, “it helps so many different people and charities. Some I wouldn’t even think about on my own.” Along the way she’s had the opportunity to, “build the most amazing relationships with the most amazing people.”
THE PROCESS
As one of seven lead designers, she’s responsible for designing the office spaces and the exterior in particular.
That means talking to every single person using the area she’ll be designing and finding out what works for them and what doesn’t.
The difference in designing for them and designing for a normal client is that most of the material is donated, so they have to work with what they have rather than just picking whatever they want.
Amy is the host of CHEK TV’s Trend, a show that guides viewers on style, design, and real estate on the island.
“Local businesses are amazing. They really step up when it comes to donating material for the build,” she says. They’ll donate flooring that’s left over from a bigger project perhaps. It’s still top quality material and Amy McGeachy knows they’re lucky to have the community support.
It also means working with all the other designers to make sure the design flows from one area to the next and works for the clients. As she says, having so many design leaders spreads the work out more and makes it easier to accomplish what needs to be done. But she’ll still have put in three months of work before the build begins.
THE FUTURE
An island girl who grew up in Port Alberni, Amy McGeachy brings a wealth of experience and enthusiasm to any project she undertakes. Passionate about giving back, she sees HeroWork as an amazing way to do that and plans on doing future builds with them, both in Victoria and further afield as HeroWork starts to expand beyond Victoria.
Amy’s amazing design services, along with the other fantastic and community-minded service providers of HeroWork can be found in the HeroWork Sponsorship Directory.
