Return on Emotion: Reframing Value in Healthcare Experience

Elisabeth Mejia is the Office Design Leader, Interiors at HKS in New York and President of IIDA NY. For Elisabeth, design is about shaping experiences that resonate: spaces that feel intentional and that reflect the people who use them. She has built her career on a single belief that every project has a story worth telling. She approaches every project with empathy at the center, believing that thoughtful design can reduce friction, foster connection, and give people a sense of belonging in the environments where they live, work, play, and heal. Whether she is designing for healthcare, hospitality, or workplace, the question she always returns to is the same: what does this space need to feel like for the people inside it? Elisabeth brings a holistic perspective to complex projects, weaving together visioning, strategy, and research to translate a client's goals into environments that feel both purposeful and alive. She pays close attention to the details that shape experience, from materiality and light to spatial flow and the moments of transition, because she knows that it is often the quiet decisions that determine whether a space truly works. From early concept through construction, she guides the process with intention and care, grounding each project in the client's story and the lived reality of its users. Her work is award-winning, but what she values most is that it endures. That the spaces she creates continue to serve and inspire the communities they were built for. Elisabeth's investment in design doesn't stop at the project. As President of IIDA NY, she leads with the same curiosity and care she brings to her clients, championing mentorship, equity, and access for designers at every stage of their career. She is a firm believer that social responsibility is inseparable from good design practice, and that the health of the industry depends on how well its community shows up for one another. Her talks reflect both sides of that conviction: the designer who listens before she draws, and the leader who builds before she directs. Elisabeth challenges audiences to slow down, ask better questions, and treat empathy not as a soft skill but as a design tool.