Juli Lippire and a friend.
The Mill Valley Chamber has a longstanding Ambassador Program, whereby business owners and employers in various industries go above and beyond in a variety of ways to support the Chamber and its members. Each month, we highlight a new Ambassador. Cheers to our latest honoree:
For many of us, our place within the professional landscape evolves over time as we identify the roles that excite us and those that do the opposite. For others, an innate sense of your calling drives you toward that perfectly aligned passion and career arc.
But sometimes it’s an unexpected combination of the two. Juli Lippire, the Bay Area’s self-proclaimed “Space-ologist” who owns Modify Organizing & Design, learned about that combination much later than expected.
Lippire worked for many years in the office of a head and neck surgeon, and in the course of that work, she found herself streamlining operations, solving workflow issues and designing medical offices.
In doing so, Lippire realized she was much more passionate about organizing the office and using its space more efficiently than she was about her role in designing the practice’s surgery protocols.
But it wasn’t until an off-handed, “oh, duh” comment from her sister – “I can’t believe you haven’t started this sooner, you used to rearrange your room constantly, putting our brother’s Legos and your Barbies on different sides of the room” – that she fully grasped the fact that her calling was there all along.
With her business in full swing, the worst of Covid changed everything, as homeowners retreated from welcoming in friends and consultants.
“I thought, ‘did I just make the biggest career bomb ever’?
But in reality, that moment realized an even larger calling: Hunter Moore, CEO of The Redwoods, had lauded her work and asked her if she could help the senior care facility move residents to temporary apartments, and then back to their revitalized spaces. The facility needed to relocate a number of the Redwoods’ residents to temporary apartments.
In doing so, Lippire helped keep residents organized, moving a variety of residents with different limitations and conditions into temporary spaces as needed.
“I learned that I could spatially account for every single object down to the tee and determine whether they would fit or not,” Lippire says. Word got around about Lippire’s skills set within senior communities, and Aegis Living and Atria Senior Living reached out as well.
Over the years, Lippire has worked with a number of celebrity clients, including Rob Lowe, Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, theFrench luxury designer and creator or Hermes bags, Janis Joplin’s family and the Levi’s jeans family.
One of Lippire’s highlights is when a long-ago client reached out, as did her very first client, a venture capitalist who called her three years after a prior job: “Can you come back to my house?”
“Most of the time, people find me and we stay in contact as their life changes,” she says. “It’s a headache to reimagine your space or help family members. You don’t want to do your own taxes.”
As she continues to expand her portfolio leveraging her spatial expertise, her projects include setting up nurseries for new moms, designing lobbies for boutique and corporate businesses, creating patient care rooms for medical providers, improving home offices, decluttering storage spaces, remodeling travel RV’s, and making over celebrity closets.
In her free time, you will find Lippire hiking in Mount Shasta with her pup, under a shady tree reading a book or enjoying the sun in her garden at home creating succulent arrangements.
“Modify was created to help people re-invent, reignite, and reinspire their spaces,” she says. No project is too small or large, they all begin with the courage to take the first step.”
MORE INFO ON MODIFY ORGANIZING & DESIGN.
Kathy Bakhshandeh, the Chamber’s Office & Visitor Center Manager, coordinates the Ambassador Program. Reach out here if you’re interested in learning more about the program.