SEAN F. MELLON SCHOLARSHIP FUND

An interest in architecture has been a part of Katrina’s life ever since childhood. Having suffered from juvenile arthritis as a child, she didn’t allow her disability to impact her love for the world outside of her room. Instead, she spent her days creating a cardboard micro-universe for her toys and set out to create a more accessible environment for future generations.

At 14 years-old, Katrina enrolled in the 4-year pre-college design program at the Riga School of Design and Art, where drawing, interior design development, drafting classes, and summer field trips helped her turn ideas into real projects. For her final year project, she developed a multi-story accessible interior design project for a person in a wheelchair. This experience helped her land her first internship at an architectural firm, and find more exciting opportunities outside work, such as developing an accessible interior design project for an oyster bar “Planktons” and a New York restaurant “Featuring: The Center for Culinary Arts’’ which will train and hire chefs from various backgrounds, giving them a second chance in life.

Katrina is currently a student at the New York Institute of Technology, pursuing a Bachelor‘s of Architecture. She is very involved in campus life, serving as the president of the Campus Activities Board, a senator at the American Institute of Architecture Students NYIT Chapter, and working as a Peer Success Guide for 64 first-year architecture students. Outside campus, she interns at Enstoa, working as a BIM modeler for healthcare facilities.

After graduating, Katrina’s dream is to create a firm where architects collaborate with scientists, psychologists, ADA specialists, and construction workers to create uniform, well-planned structures, and inclusive spaces, welcoming people with different needs, financial and ethnic backgrounds, and beliefs.