Sara Cooper
Sara runs toward complexity the way most people run from it. As Director of Operations and Co-Owner at BrightBuilt Home, she's the person who makes sure the trains run on time. Then she figures out how to make the trains more sustainable, better staffed, and quietly beautiful.
Her foundation is science: she studied Biology and Astronomy at UC Berkeley, which means she's equally comfortable thinking at the cellular level and the cosmic one. That range, from the microscopic to the infinite, turns out to be pretty useful when you're managing the full ecosystem of a firm. Finance, marketing, client relations, team development: Sara brings the same rigor to a budget spreadsheet that she once brought to a lab notebook. Hypothesize, test, refine, repeat.
After relocating to the East Coast, she incorporated her longtime love for graphic design and photography to her ever-expanding toolkit, because apparently one career wasn't enough of a challenge. The happy accident is that she found a role at BrightBuilt Home where process thinking and visual instinct aren't competing priorities; they're the whole job. She's deeply invested in what happens when operational excellence meets design that actually matters, and she believes the built environment should leave the natural one better than it found it.
She stays sharp through active membership in NESEA and participation in the BuildingEnergy Bottom Lines program, and she brings the same collaborative curiosity to AIGA. If there's a better way to do something, Sara has probably already started experimenting with it.
