ALEXA BILEK

ABOUT ME

Bachelor of Arts Interior Design Graduate

Hi! I’m Alexa Bilek. It’s safe to say I haven’t taken much of a linear path through life.. It’s been more of shooting diagonals going off in multiple directions. But it’s 2020, and I’m pretty proud of where I am now! Let’s rewind a bit, so you get more of the back story.

I graduated high school in 2009 and went straight to the University of Colorado at Boulder to pursue my love of environmental science. I had taken Environmental AP and knew I wanted to continue studying climate research. CU had one of the best programs in the nation, so I set my sites on Colorado. I loved going to school in CO; loved it so much I planned on making my roots permit after graduating in 2013. But sometimes life doesn’t work out the way you planned it... 

My mom had been diagnosed with a serious illness. I temporarily moved back to California to help my family out. My dad encouraged me to get a “fun” job temporarily to take my mind off some of the harder things I was facing in life at that time. I took his advice and became an aquatic Jetpack and Flyboard instructor at Jetpack America in Newport Beach. Well one summer ended up turning into 3 years of teaching people how to get airborne with water jet propulsion. I made new friends, met my now-husband, and my mom regained her health, so I decided that California is where I needed to stay. But I couldn’t be a Jetpack Instructor forever...

At home, I was always rearranging furniture or buying new décor pieces to stay current. I started taking on small renovation projects like installing my own kitchen backsplash and changing out old doorknobs to new modern/sleek ones. My roommate at the time, told me I should pursue my passion of interior design. To me, interior design was just a hobby. But then I started to do my research. I quickly learned that every public space I had been walking into over the years had been carefully thought-out and purposely made to function in a certain way by a designer. Design was all around me. So I found the Interior Designers Institute, which was ranked as the #1 design school in California, and began my second journey of pursuing a passion yet again.

Throughout my time at IDI, I naturally gravitated towards commercial design. To me, I feel like there is so much more freedom with commercial design because you are ultimately designing for the public. I love how my commercial designs could potentially affect the lives of so many in a positive way. So here I am, a recent graduate, with my second Bachelor of Arts degree, and I am more than ready to start implementing my techniques from school and begin practicing real-world design development!