You have a radiant career and, in a short period of time, you have managed to establish yourself as a talented creator who constantly surprises us. Which steps do you consider the most crucial in this journey?
Well, that is a very kind thing to say! I think the most crucial step in my career has been learning to tune out the noise. We live in a culture obsessed with comparison, who’s doing what, who’s ahead, who’s “winning.” I’ve been successful because I follow my instincts and take risks. I’m not afraid of failing or not having financial stability. I just keep going.
My career didn’t unfold according to a true plan. Opportunities came because I was willing to take leaps and embrace change. I’m a career entrepreneur, so risk swims through my bloodstream. The moment you stop caring what everyone else is doing, you can finally hear your own voice.
Tell us about the two pillars of your professional life: your hospitality PR agency, and Anthologist.
AMPR Global is the foundation. Hospitality is where I learned to read spaces emotionally and to sense a hotel’s soul before anyone else could articulate it. I’ve lived in hotels, dreamed in them, loved in them, and built stories for them long before “storytelling” became a trend. For three decades, I’ve helped properties express not just what they offer, but why they matter. Hotels that understand that will be successful.
Anthologist arrived later, in the middle of the pandemic, when my PR revenue collapsed overnight. So I did what I always do: I created a new world. I love change! I turned my background and informal education in decorative arts, my obsession with handcraft, and my love for Greece into a brand that refuses to be digital-first, algorithm-shaped, or predictable. Anthologist is analog, tactile, a bit defiant. I guess a bit like me! Ha.
One pillar is strategy, while the other is soul. Together, they keep me balanced, and oftentimes, slightly off-balance in the most thrilling way.
What led you to create Anthologist and its distinctive collection of objects? What is the central axis of your selections?
I was conceptualizing and designing a Greek restaurant in Dubai (right down to the vintage Skyros wooden chair), and then the pandemic hit and that project stalled. But in the process, I realized there was a gap between what architects and interior designers do and what I naturally bring to a space. That’s why I was hired in the first place. I was conceptualizing the restaurant alongside one of the world’s largest architectural firms for one of the world’s largest hotel companies. But I was the soul creator.
Because while they handled the structure, I found myself shaping the parts of a space that people actually feel: the concept narrative, finishings, the objects, the cultural cues, the atmosphere, the emotional temperature.
Anthologist was an instinctive response to a missing layer in design. The space where my obsession over atmosphere converged with my lifelong love of objects, artisans, and the small details.
In other words: I noticed the gaps, and I did what I always do. I stepped right into them.
Given my background in travel, I’ve spent my life around makers, ateliers, workshops, and markets. My mother would drag me down back alleys in the Caribbean to find an artisan and I carried that sensibility through to my adult life. Over time, I realized I’d built a network of artisans and objects that deserved a more intentional home. Anthologist was simply the natural next step.
As for a central axis, I don’t have one, and I don’t think a designer needs one. What I respond to is material intelligence, pieces that are well made and have a solid rooting in their culture. I’m often drawn to irregularity, too. It keeps us honest about life.
The collection moves from Greek blown glass to textiles to jewelry because I don’t see disciplines as separate. In the studio world, everything is interconnected, color, weight, texture, proportion. What matters is that a piece has character and purpose.
If an object earns its place at Anthologist, it’s because it holds up under scrutiny. It has presence, and integrity, and it’s precious in a way that makes you realize you want it around you, and it doesn’t need to shout to be noticed. Most of my customers don’t shop because they actual need something, they are collectors or become collectors once they come to me.
Tradition and handcrafted creations are part of your exploration. What is new in your current searches?
Handcraft is the backbone of Anthologist, whether the makers are Greek, Sri Lankan, Dominican, Saint Lucian, Mexican, or Egyptian. We’re always searching for artisans who preserve lineage while pushing their craft forward.
When I moved to Greece in 2013, Greeks didn’t want to buy Greek. I found that fascinating because as a foreigner, everything here felt so poetic and sacred. And now, years later, those very things are being rediscovered and celebrated by Greeks themselves. Of course, what’s old is new again, but that saying isn’t new at all. I am just glad that I can contribute to its renaissance.
What’s new? Ready-to-wear. Fine jewelry. More furniture. Antiques. I always have at least 20+ products in development at any given time which drives my entire team crazy.
Tell us about your life in Athens and Paros
My life in Athens is quieter than people assume. Every morning starts the same way: my double espresso ordered by phone in my broken Greek from the Acropolis Coffee Dive is subsequently delivered by Costi or Panos, the unofficial keepers of my sanity. We talk about life, sometimes Panos sings. If I have time, I head up Philopappou Hill. It became a pandemic ritual and it’s like my reset button.
My days divide between Anthologist and AMPR Global, and I like the tension of that balance. I spend hours on WhatsApp with makers, starting in the time zones furthest flung and work my way backwards. When I need to shift perspective, I go to my showroom at Plateia Vathis, which helps me frame retail moments and understand how ideas behave when they finally take physical form. I am obsessed with merchandising and I love trialing things there. We have a busy schedule of visitors who have booked appointments, so I’m constantly introducing people to our world, and that’s rewarding.
Paros is still part of my orbit, thanks to our Anthologist shops at Parīlio and Cosme, but I no longer keep a house there. Once you’re running businesses on an island, the idea of a “holiday home” becomes fictional. We never had a holiday home growing up, and I like the idea of not being tied to a place. I lived at Parīlio the summer it opened, and so I’ll go back to living in hotels!
And this year, the orbit expands: we’re opening a boutique in Milos in June with Empiria Group’s new hotel there, and a major new Athens project is on the horizon.
Between the city, the islands, and the work, my life feels calibrated, grounded where it needs to be, expansive wherever it can be. I travel a lot for both companies, which I adore, but I do love coming home.
How has your openness to the international market helped you? What feedback do you receive from abroad versus Greece?
I’ve always lived globally. My clients, collectors, collaborators come from everywhere, so I don’t operate from a single lens.
International visitors find us intentionally, travelers on the gallery circuit, people who research before they arrive. They understand Anthologist instantly. They shop with purpose.
Greeks are now discovering us, and the feedback is hilarious to me, but always positive. They come into the showroom expecting one thing and find something entirely different. I love watching that moment when they come up the stairs from chaotic Plateia Vathis below. The, “Oh I didn’t expect this at all,” is on repeat with the Greeks. I love it.
What do the upcoming new collections bring that is different? What are your immediate plans?
Immediately, I’m off to Jamaica for a reset at Jakes, a hotel that is bohemian in the original sense of the word, before “boho” became an overused aesthetic. The Henzells, and Sally Henzell in particular, embody that spirit completely. I’ll be there with my closest friend, Peter Wesley Brown. We’ve crossed continents together over the years, and returning to the Caribbean with him always feels like returning to a part of myself.
New collections include our new ready-to-wear batik from a 1970s Sri Lankan producer. My mother wore batik dresses when I was a kid, and this is a love letter to my childhood.
And yes, a new space in Athens. The city is on the verge of its most exciting chapter yet, and I’m proud to be able to contribute to that story.
Which objects do you love the most?
The Anthologist Ark, our stuffed animal collection. They have their own mythology, and they’re joyful, whimsical, a little eccentric. I hope that they remind people that life doesn’t always need to be so serious.
Who helps you evolve professionally and creatively?
I grew up in a household where the women were high creatives. My mother Stella is still an interior designer at 85, and has been collecting treasures since childhood, thanks to her father who worked in the engine rooms of oil tankers during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. He brought her Satsuma porcelain, jade vases, small pieces he could carry easily, but also pieces that shaped her eye before she even had language for beauty. She passed that instinct straight to me.
When I was a kid, we had one annual vacation to the Caribbean, which was facilitated by my father’s academic work. He helped bring books to schools, and the first world maps to classrooms. He wrote curriculum for literacy programs. And Stella, my mother, would use these trips as in her own way. She’d step off a plane and immediately ask, “What should I buy here?” or “Who’s making great ceramics?” Some kids went skiing and went to the beach. I had an anthropology class. Her great-grandfather was a jeweler in Armenia in the late 1800s, and that legacy of adornment runs through us. We’ve made jewelry together for decades.
My great-aunt Mary, an early American antique dealer, trained me in the field, literally. Every Sunday we went “up the field” to her flea market stall in western Massachusetts, where I learned how to recognize quality, rarity, and the subtle intelligence of objects. By high school, I was the props manager for our theater productions, raiding Stella’s and Aunt Mary’s collections for the good pieces. That was my design school.
My grandmother Rose was a shoemaker. Her kitchen always smelled of leather, and she made me pencil cases and jewelry pouches out of scraps. She taught me that if something didn’t exist, we could simply make it ourselves, a philosophy I use every day with artisans.
And although my father’s mother, Vasiliki, died when I was young, I knew her story: arriving from Greece alone at age 15, working in a textile factory in Lowell, Massachusetts. Now, living in Greece and working with textiles, I feel in a way that I’m carrying forward something she never had the means to pursue.
My father taught me something equally important: how to read the world through objects. He was a historian and a social scientist and approached material culture as evidence, and wrote books on how clues showed how people lived, thought, migrated. That perspective shaped Anthologist more deeply than people realize.
And of course, my artisans all over the world continue that education. They’re the ones who turn my sketches (sometimes clever, sometimes very optimistic) into reality. They challenge me, refine me, and remind me daily that handcraft is a collaboration. They are the real heroes, here.
I evolve because my entire life has been one long apprenticeship, to family, to culture, and to my makers.
Which achievements do you hold closest to your heart?
The achievements that matter most are not the obvious ones — not the stores or the collections or the press. What means the most is the feeling that I am part of a continuum of people who understood objects, materials, and meaning long before I ever formed my first design thought.
My mother, my grandmother, and my great-aunt showed me worlds through what they made, collected, and valued.
Anthologist feels like an extension of everything they taught me: the importance of handwork, the power of collecting with intention, the belief that objects carry stories across generations.
From my father, I inherited the discipline of context and how he used material culture to teach social studies. Anthologist is really the same thing, just through a different medium. I hope that I help people appreciate and understand objects not just as pretty things, but really as evidence of heritage and culture. That’s very important to me.
Tell us a story you will never forget
It would have to be the story of my mother’s great-grandfather, who was beheaded during the Hamidian massacres in 1895. Our family didn’t even know this part of our history until a Boston jeweler told us in the 1980s. His daughter fled with jewels hidden in her hair, carrying nothing else. Those pieces later became the family’s lifeline; she sold most of them to survive the Great Depression. It’s a story that has shaped my understanding of inheritance, resilience, and what we choose to carry forward.
A dream project
I had a fabulous dream project in 2024: I was asked to do the renovation of East Winds resort on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. The owners were clients at Cosme and they shopped at Anthologist every day. Bloomberg ran an article about me in summer 2023. They read it and asked me for a proposal on the spot. That project gave me so much nostalgia, it was like recreating my childhood in the Caribbean. And we completed it in five and a half months, which is practically a magic trick in hospitality design. What I’m most proud of is that nearly 70% of the work stayed in the Caribbean. What a dream!
When you enter a space, what do you notice first?
Lighting, always. It’s the first thing I clock when I walk into a space. I’ve been known to unscrew lightbulbs in hotel rooms and hand them to reception with a polite, “This isn’t working for me.” Bad lighting can ruin even the best design.
Music is a close second. It’s astonishing how many places get it wrong. The quickest way to kill a space is with an endless loop of cover songs. I can’t take another whispery acoustic version of a pop hit. Atmosphere is an instrument, and most people underestimate how to play it.
Three places you love to return to
Three is impossible for me! Mexico, Egypt, and the Caribbean always pull me back. I love Sri Lanka, and Athens, of course.
But the place I return to most often isn’t geographic at all: it’s sitting with my mother, flipping through 1970s Architectural Digest issues. She has a library dating back to the 1960s. It’s our unofficial design seminar, and still the best way I know to reset my eye.
What would you wish to have this time next year?
Time
Give us your definition of beauty.
Beauty is honesty. If something or someone tries too hard, it loses its power.
What do you consider authentic nowadays?
Anyone who stops competing and starts listening to themselves. No one cares what everyone else is doing. You shouldn’t either.
If you were to design something for TheAuthentics.gr, what would it be?
A ceremonial object. Something ritualistic. If you use something every day, it will always be part of you and isn’t that what authenticity is all about?
One wish for 2026.
For people to step out of comparison culture and into their own purpose. Life is not a race.
