Thirty Under 30: Katelyn Woods

Meet Katelyn Woods, one of the outstanding young professionals of NKBA’s Thirty Under 30 Class of 2021, in this exclusive series.

By Donna Heiderstadt

Katelyn Woods

Kendall Ansell Interiors

British Columbia Chapter

It was hardly a surprise when Katelyn Woods decided to study Interior Design at The Art Institute of Vancouver. After all, she had spent her childhood obsessed with before-and-after photos, a pastime inspired by her parents’ passion for buying and renovating houses. “I loved the whole process of seeing something with so much potential and making it into something beautiful,” she says. Another benefit of all that familial moving and remodeling was getting to repeatedly redecorate her bedroom, which she designed using The Sims and recalls as having been “every color of the rainbow.”

I loved the whole process of seeing something with so much potential and making it into something beautiful.

Graduating with honors and winning Best in Show for her college portfolio led Katelyn to an internship with one of Vancouver’s leading architectural firms. While there, she gained valuable experience working on projects in the hospitality sector, but realized she missed the gratifying designer-client relationship of residential transformations. So in March 2018 she secured a design position at Burnaby, BC-based Kendall Ansell Interiors, where she has lent her talent to both award-winning residential projects and community initiatives.

Katelyn recently completed her first design for a non-profit in Vancouver: two distinct spaces for the WISH Society Foundation, an office for staffers and a safe space for women in the city’s street-based sex trade to stay overnight. She also supervises the firm’s interns from an NKBA Affiliated School program at a local technical school, helping them learn kitchen and bath design in a hands-on environment, and is active in NKBA’s British Columbia chapter. When she’s not working, Katelyn heads outdoors to enjoy wake surfing, ATVing, long walks with her golden retriever Tikka and visits to the public market at Granville Island. She also frequently browses Pinterest for new ideas and trends — because to Katelyn, interior design is as much a hobby as it is a job.