Career Pivots in Interior Design: Tiffany White’s Story

Tiffany White had a steady government job and good pay. An aunt told her to keep that job and be happy with it. Then one night she sat up in bed, started Googling attorneys, and decided she needed an LLC at three o’clock in the morning.

That moment is at the heart of the first episode of But What If It Works?, the new interior design podcast from Casey Brand, an award-winning Santa Barbara interior designer. It’s a story about career pivots and taking risks, and about the kind of optimism that holds up after a few hard knocks. Casey recorded it in New Orleans, where Tiffany grew up. Both of them were in town for the NKBA’s Women to Women event, which celebrates women doing remarkable work in the kitchen and bath industry.

This post follows Tiffany White, Design Principal and Creative Director of MidCity Design Group, from Hurricane Katrina to federal auditing to a design practice that serves athletes and high-profile clients. It’s for designers and makers, creative entrepreneurs, and anyone holding onto a dream they haven’t said out loud yet.

Career Pivots After Hurricane Katrina

Losing the Job and the House at Once

After studying marketing and management at LSU, Tiffany got her first real job doing marketing and advertising for Bally’s Casino, a riverboat. She booked entertainment, came up with promotions, and loved the work. Then Katrina hit. “The boat was gone and my house was gone,” she told Casey. The water in her New Orleans East home rose to just below the ceiling.

She had left early and ended up in Virginia with an aunt. She had packed cut-off jean shorts, tank tops, and bathing suits, because she thought she was taking a short trip.

An Unexpected Door in Grad School

With no job and no house, Tiffany enrolled in a supply chain management program at Hampton. Then the department lost its accreditation. A former professor reached out and asked whether she’d be interested in the school’s newly accredited entrepreneurship program.

She was honest about the catch: “But I have no idea what I want to own.” She enrolled anyway and earned her MBA. That habit of moving forward before the full picture is clear shows up again and again in her career.

How a Federal Auditor Became an Interior Designer

A Decade of Data

Tiffany had always been a math person, so she took a federal job auditing contractors for non-discrimination compliance. She built databases for about a year and a half before running a single statistical test. She interviewed people, investigated hiring and pay records, and stayed for a little over 10 years.

It paid well. It was also less secure than her family assumed, and she described being furloughed again and again while Congress argued over budgets.

Staging on the Side

When her family began selling off properties, Tiffany staged them. A realtor asked who they had hired, and her mom said her daughter had done it. The houses drew multiple offers, and Tiffany soon took a staging course and ran a staging business for about four years in New Orleans and Houston.

Then the market moved toward neutral homes designed to appeal to everyone. “I don’t want everything to be beige and gray and blue,” she said. Staging had been her creative outlet, and once it stopped feeling creative, she sold her inventory.

The Lunch That Changed Everything

On a work trip to Dallas, she watched a table of women flip through floor plans and furniture. She was so caught up that she forgot to eat her lunch. They worked for an interior design firm and were shopping for a client. She went home and told her mom she was going to be an interior designer.

She enrolled in an online program through the New York Institute of Art and Design and earned her certifications. She has always needed to know what’s right and what’s not, so she learned the codes, the clearances, and the spacing that make a room work.

Luxury Interior Design That Fits How People Live

Real life shaped her focus. After her grandmother had a stroke and moved in with her, the wheelchair kept tearing up the walls. Tiffany had trouble finding a builder willing to make hallways wider than the ADA minimum. Her grandmother was still independent and needed room to move.

Building that house showed her where she wanted to work. “If I never buy another sofa, I don’t know that I’ll be mad,” she once told a friend. What excites her is the structure: working with architects, reworking lighting plans, and redlining drawings. MidCity now offers architectural review, which includes a client questionnaire about how people actually live. How far can they reach for a towel without dripping on the floor? Do they prefer a bath or a shower? Where can the trash can be hidden?

That’s how she defines luxury. “It’s a luxury if you can live your life the way you want to live it in your space.”

Designing for Athletes and High-Profile Clients

When a Client’s Dream Isn’t Big Enough

Many of Tiffany’s clients are the first in their families to have the money to make their dreams real. Sometimes, she said, the problem is that “their dream is not big enough.” When one client planned a single-person sauna, she suggested a sauna big enough for him and his wife. He hadn’t even considered it.

When a Dream Needs a Reality Check

Younger athletes often swing the other way. One client wanted a lazy river around his pool. Another wanted a leather-topped Fendi Casa table, and he got it, because, as Tiffany put it, you’re 20 once.

Designing for the Next Chapter

She also designs for what comes next. Athletes can go from training several times a day to full retirement in their thirties. Her answer is to build activity into the home, with home gyms and, in some cases, a walking path instead of a desk chair. Clients who have lived big for a long time often want their homes calm and minimal. “They don’t need the flashiness,” she said.

She’s also discreet. She doesn’t take photos with clients and won’t pitch their homes to magazines unless they want to share them.

Business Advice for Creative Entrepreneurs

Tiffany is direct about the business side of design. Her biggest fear when she started was not knowing her process, so she invested in learning it. Now she shares what she knows: “I’m not going to be the gatekeeper.”

Her core lessons:

• Niche down. “Don’t be afraid to niche down.” She collaborates with other designers on furnishings so she can focus on kitchens, baths, outdoor living, and the build.
• Price the project management separately. Being a client’s counselor, babysitter, and contractor directory takes time, and that time costs money.
• Track your time, including the hours your assistant spends on emails and calls.
• Get paid up front. She takes 100% before ordering anything.
• Own the cost. “You have to be comfortable telling them that it costs a lot.”

Casey added that design school rarely teaches you how to run a business, even though most designers end up as solopreneurs.

Taking Risks and Listening to the Voice Inside

When Casey asked what she’d tell a little girl who loves making beds, or a 50-year-old woman who feels the same pull, Tiffany kept it simple: “I think just follow the passions.” She added, “I think a lot of times we let other people dictate like where we end up instead of listening to that little voice that’s inside.”

She also asked: “But honestly, who really knows what they want to be before the age of 30?” She pointed to a cousin who designs couture wedding gowns and to her seven-year-old niece, who picks family vacations based on the hotels.

Casey brought her own perspective. A serious car accident after leaving New Orleans put her arm in a sling, and it sharpened her thinking about chances she might once have been too careful to take. “Life is infinitely precious, and nobody actually really cares. They’re just having an opinion.” People who doubt you, she said, usually do it out of love. “But what if it works is the conversation we need to start having.”

Listen to the Full Episode of But What If It Works?

Tiffany’s full story has more than fits here, including New Orleans’ above-ground cemeteries, a barndominium on 26 acres in Alvin, and a niece who critiques hotels. Watch or listen to the full episode and learn more about Casey Brand at cassandrabrandinteriors.com. Follow Tiffany White at midcitydesigngroup.com and @midcitydesigngroup on Instagram.

If a dream has been waking you up at night, this episode is a good reason to ask what happens if it works.