About Us!
The Dealer Design Guild was founded in 2025 by two industry veterans who saw an opportunity to enhance professional development for commercial dealer design teams.
Drawing on their experience as design leaders, trainers, and educators, the Guild provides learning that supports enhanced onboarding, career growth, and a community specifically for dealer designers.
Meet Lori!
Lori combines academic depth, industry experience, and learning development expertise shaped by 40 years in education and the commercial design industry. With a PhD in Human and Environmental Science, she grounds her work in learning science and a deep understanding of how people develop. Her roles as a dealer design leader, interior design professor, and Director of Learning and Development at Herman Miller (now MillerKnoll) enable her to create programs that are both theoretically sound and highly practical.
Meet Galen!
Galen brings 25 years of dealer leadership and training experience in the commercial design industry. As former Vice President of Design at a major dealership and a learning leader at Herman Miller (now MillerKnoll), she understands the real-world pressures facing design teams. Certified in adult learning, she has led scalable, results-driven training programs and brings deep empathy for the dealer design community, with a strong commitment to building skills, confidence, and long-term growth.
Our expertise in learning & development is built upon a foundation of 65 years of combined industry experience...
This extraordinary depth of experience, supplemented by direct dealer design department leadership, provides several unique advantages:
Three-Dimensional Understanding: Academic, manufacturer, and dealer experience converge to create programs that are research based, industry-aligned, and directly applicable to dealer design work.
Proven Scalability: Demonstrated success in developing training programs that scale across designer networks and multiple delivery formats.
Academic Foundation: PhD expertise in human-environment relationships combined with adult learning certification ensures programs are pedagogically sound and designed for how professionals actually learn.
Authentic Empathy: Firsthand experience with dealer design challenges, pressures, and growth opportunities bring deep understanding and genuine commitment to each designer's development.
Industry Credibility: Recognized voices in commercial design through academic leadership, thought leadership, and industry experience, with deep trusted relationships within dealer design networks.
