Janine MacMurray started her flourishing Manhattan-based company, AREA Interior Design, while she was still in the AAS Interior Design program. Named by Domino magazine one of the nation’s top ten to watch in 2008, she credits Parsons with making that leap seem more like the natural next step. She had interned with mentors as stylistically diverse as Victoria Hagen and Jonathan Adler, bringing definition and unexpected influences to her own work. MacMurray and her classmates were introduced to the workings of the interior design industry through access to New York’s showrooms, factories, and experts who combine tradition and innovation to set design standards. And since every class project at Parsons becomes a finished portfolio piece, she was ready.