This is my friend, Mireille, and she owns her own interior design business in Sydney. She’s also a TAFE Design Teacher in Western Sydney.
This is story #3 in an 8 part series for International Women's Day I'm writing, featuring powerful stories of women who have broken the bias.
What’s cool about Mireille, is she started her career in Architecture, and back home in Lebanon, they had very few female architects at the time. In fact at uni, there were very few females studying architecture, and even one of her own family members tried to discourage her from pursuing this career path because it was primarily for men. Despite this, she persisted.
Once she finished uni in Lebanon, she moved to Australia and got a job at an architecture firm in Sydney. She spent much of her career working in architectural firms, moving around between Australia, Dubai and back to Lebanon.
While living in Dubai, she worked at American University as the Campus Architect and there she faced discrimination. There was an older architect, who was the client and because Mireille looked so young, he suggested “If you want to stop in my office, we can teach you some things.” She responded with, “Excuse me I AM the Campus Architect.” He looked very embarrassed at that moment, but she continued to prove her competence.
A few years later, Mireille started her own architecture business where she regularly attended construction sites. For each job, when she started visiting the tradies to discuss the work progress, they didn’t believe she knew the technical details and kept challenging her while she kept proving her technical knowledge and capabilities. This was a process that was repeated for each job. One of the workers who was a site foreman, once asked Mireille, “Did you prepare breakfast and cook lunch this morning, and then come to the site?” He thought he was being cheeky so she informed him of all the other job sites she was managing.
Mireille has been able to successfully run a business in 3 different countries. She’s expanded into Interior Design, and she recently completed a beach resort’s design in Dubai, a heritage boutique hotel in Kiama, NSW as well as other local projects.
And the best part of Mireille’s story is that her daughter is studying Architecture at UTS. (Oh and by the way her son is studying to be a chiropractor at Macquarie University.) Her husband, Fadi, is a great support and appreciates her success along the way.
Thank you Mireille for helping women Break The Bias, forging the way ahead for women in the construction industry.
