The Diversity Scholarship Fund’s First Corporate Donor, Holland & Sherry, Is Helping This Talented Career-Changer Achieve Her Dream

The New York School of Interior Design has awarded the first scholarship from its newly formed diversity scholarship fund, thanks to the generosity of the fund’s inaugural corporate sponsor, Holland & Sherry. The recipient is Chazzten Pettiford ’22 (MFA1), a former advertising director who is finally realizing her childhood dream of becoming an interior designer.

One of Pettiford’s strongest memories is of the bookshelf in her house filled with earmarked Veranda and Elle Decor magazines going back decades. Her mother is an Information Technology professional who moved the family from South Florida to Raleigh, North Carolina, when she took a job with IBM. Pettiford remembers, “When I was young, my mom brought me into her passion for interior design. North Carolina, especially High Point, is known for its furniture-making tradition. My mom would take me with her on weekend trips to furniture stores, fabric warehouses, and factories.”

Despite her early exposure to interior design, it took many years for Pettiford to find her way back to it. She started her undergraduate studies at Florida Atlantic University, where there was no interior design program. She transferred to Howard University, where she majored in journalism with a focus in advertising, and minored in interior design. She then worked for nine years in the field of corporate advertising, working her way from an assistant to a director at Mediacom. However, interior design was always her passion. She says, “I did some volunteering at the D&D Building and Kips Bay Decorator Show House to fulfill my need to be in a creative context, and that gave me the courage to take the leap. I felt like I had found my people in interior design.”

Says Daniel Waldron, vice president of interiors at Holland & Sherry, “An array of perspective is what will lead interior and textile design into our next era of originality. Holland & Sherry Interiors recognizes the importance of diversity and the impact it has on the design community. Our industry is predicated on creativity, and we assert that viewpoints from all walks of life are what inform unique, timeless design. . . .We are so happy to know that our hard work has gone to helping such a worthy and talented recipient.”

We sat down with Chazzten to discuss her journey and what she’s found at NYSID so far.

NYSID: Studying interior design as an undergraduate at Howard University, did you learn a lot about the African American tradition of interior design?

CP: Studying as an undergrad at a historically Black college and university (HBCU), I gained the confidence to express my own style in a room full of uniquely creative people. Style is very much the culture of Howard, especially homecoming, which has some of the elements of a fashion show. Howard and its teachers empowered me to be myself as a designer. We studied some more contemporary African American designers, like Sheila Bridges, but it was here at NYSID where I wrote my first term paper on a historical African American designer. In Warren Ashworth’s Modern Architecture and Design course, he asked us to write about a historical designer or architect who was not white.

I chose Amaza Lee Meredith, a biracial woman whose mother was African American and whose father was a white architect in Jim Crow-era Virginia. Her gender and race prevented her from entering architecture school, so she studied to be a teacher, eventually attending Columbia Teachers’ College and teaching art and design at Virginia State University. Her most notable structure was her own home, Azurest South, built in 1939, based on international design and the Bauhaus movement. It’s so different from the colonial style of Virginia and so interesting. The NYSID library led me to a great book called African American Architects, A Biographical Dictionary (1865-1945) by Dreck Spurlock Wilson, and it was an invaluable resource for my research.

NYSID: What does it mean to you to have won NYSID’s first Diversity in Design scholarship?

CP: Financially, this scholarship helped to ease the strain of expenses so I could put all of my focus into my studies. During Covid-19, we are studying primarily from home, and I really needed a desktop computer compatible with Revit and AutoCcad, as well as some specific software. The scholarship made it possible for me to afford the technology I needed to distance learn, and took some of the financial burden away so I could prioritize my education. It’s also meaningful to me that I won the Diversity in Design scholarship. There are only two other Black women in my second-year MFA1 cohort, and I’m thankful that companies like Holland & Sherry have stepped up to amplify and multiply voices of color in interior design.

NYSID: What project in the MFA1 program has been most meaningful to you so far?

CP: For our Interior Design Studio III retail project, our instructor Francisco de Leon challenged us to create a retail brand and build a retail space around it. I drew on my advertising background to build my women’s wear brand that catered to the vibrant professional. The idea was traditional workwear made bolder and brighter with neon colors. The concept of the retail space for this brand was “Taking over the old boy’s club.” I drew on the aesthetic of old New York Social clubs, including the Harvard Club and the Yale Club, to inspire the dark wood paneling, parquet floors, and gold chandeliers. I used curved sofas to align with women’s bodies. I created a masculine envelope and let the clothes be the color and the contrast in the retail environment.

NYSID: Do you have advice for other people of color who are considering becoming designers or entering artistic fields?

CP: My advice is to go for it. Do not submit to your fears or be intimidated by being a minority. The design world is open to new ideas. The more diversity we have, the more we can change how interior design is seen and practiced.

One diversity scholarship is just the beginning. Says NYSID president David Sprouls, “Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) have been drastically underrepresented in interior design, and they still are. NYSID is working to right historical wrongs from within our sphere of influence: interior design education.” NYSID’s diversity scholarship fund began with $50,000 of seed money from the Board of Trustees. The College hopes to raise $200,000 by the end of this academic year so we can help many more students from communities historically and traditionally underrepresented in interior design enter the field. If you would like to donate to the College’s diversity scholarship fund at any level, please reach out to NYSID’s director of development, Joy Cooper, or donate here.