An Interview with Natalie Ramtahal

Meet Natalie Ramtahal, an advocate for equity in interior design, discussing her over 15-year dedication to diversity and the importance of mentorship in her career.

Design is a powerful tool for solving problems, creating more inclusive spaces and inspiring new ideas – all things the JennAir Disrupting Design Advisory Board members know well. 

Natalie Ramtahal is Manager of Administration and Equity in the School of Interior Design and a Ph.D. student in the joint Communication and Culture program at York University and Toronto Metropolitan University.

She has been dedicated to equity and community inclusion (ECI) for over 15 years and is deeply committed to ECI and has worked to advance equity and diversity through her professional and volunteer work. We asked her about her passion for inclusive experiences, her commitment to making interior design more diverse and the role mentorship plays in her life.

Tell us about your career path and interest in design.

I am not an interior designer. I have zero training in the area, but I do have a lot of EDI [equity, diversity and inclusion] experience.

Now I'm doing my Ph.D., and I am still really interested in how people of colour and new immigrants are navigating this idea around what it means to have money and develop wealth. What does intergenerational wealth mean? What does generational wealth accumulation look like? This has been something that I've been deeplyinterested in for a long time because my parents are immigrants and what I learned about money, the feelings associated with it, and how to spend or save it, started with them.Every culture has its own stories, narratives and even superstitions about it. It’s interesting to think about it and unpack how this shapes our own attitudes, beliefs and behaviours.

When I graduated from my master's program at TMU, I ended up working more in the research space, doing grant development among other things. After about a year, they asked me if I'd be interested in becoming a manager and after some contemplation, I said yes. In this role I got to continue my workaround EDI. For example, I got to think about what does diversity in research look like? What does diversity in academia look like? How can we implement EDI strategies and thinking into the various stages of academia, where we're not just hiring racially diverse people, but what if we looked at how to diversify the research that's being done and who is doing it? Or how do we support our existing diverse faculty? What tools, resources, supports do they need?

I had an opportunity to develop programming here with a deep understanding of the University and the types of people who work here. I got to do things hands-on and in real time rather than developing policy and then hoping things come to fruition through top-down processes.

EDI has always been a lens through which I think about the school. Could I make a space more accessible? Can we offer different programming? How can I support guest speakers or people coming in?

But there's another piece: How do we fundamentally change the school in its entirety? JennAir was truly a part of that.

I also now do curriculum development for another organization. A close friend of mine from undergrad has created an entire company around drag performance called the Drag Academy. What they started to do is use drag performance as a central part of EDI training. So bridging creativity and art." What does diversity look like in the sphere of disrupting design and creative endeavours?" Like performance, theatre, clothing, set design, makeup. All of those things are part of how they consider EDI. Because in reality, gender is just a performance.

EDI doesn't always have to be super heavy. We can also celebrate the successes, achievements and beauty of diversity through celebration and fun!

What made you want to contribute your EDI experience to The Creative School and interior design programs specifically?

Interior design is a really, really white profession. And you can see it even in the beginning of school. Who had access? Who thinks about interior design as a profession? It's not usually students of colour, right? My parents would have said, "You're going to decorate people's houses?!" They're not thinking about it from a place like, “this can be a really interesting and lucrative profession." This wouldn’t have even been considered an option when I was younger.

There's a story that we circulate between us all the time. We had a student who was doing something in interior design, and they were looking at different finishes. So, you could use marble or ceramic or whatever we had available at that time. And the instructors were like, "Which one connects with you?" and he was like, "None of them!"

He said, "My background is Filipino. I connect with things like coconut husks or mango or the leaves from this particular plant that is commonly used to construct roofs in the area of the Philippines where my family is from." 

When you're asking people to connect with something, we have to think outside of just European contexts. Toronto is made up of over 50% visible minorities. And, Canada is entirely immigrant populations aside from our First Nations, Indigenous, Metis and Inuit people. There is a lot of rich cultural histories, stories, practices and design thinking that have come with these groups, and it would be such a disservice not to tap into that.

We see that in fashion. We see that in design. We see it in all aspects. It's like having an encyclopedia. Years ago, they used to sell Encyclopedia Britannica door to door in Toronto. If you’re buying these books, would you want to buy one encyclopedia, or do you want the whole volume? You obviously want the whole volume. You want all of the tools and knowledge at your disposal. Having more information, knowledge and tools makes our work better regardless of our profession or discipline.

What are some of the barriers you have personally faced when building your career?

I think one of the biggest challenges – and I talk about this with my mentees now – is that sometimes you just don't know what you don't know.

So, one of those barriers was not knowing myself well enough. 

[At one time] the team that I was working with was awful. They weren't a really supportive team because they had been working in a particular way for a really long time. And you know, people get into a way of doing things and change is not something that they want to do – nor did they have the time or capacity to really mentor or train me.

So those two things happened simultaneously. It wasn't the job I had hoped it was, and I didn't have the support from the team. 

That challenge of not having a supportive environment followed me until I began working at a university. It was here that I started to realize how important the people you surround yourself with matter for your own development, well-being, and progress in your career.

Let's talk about mentorship and the role it has played in your career.

I've had informal mentors in my life. People who have carved out time from their day to speak with me and give me advice and perspective on important things I was doing. Some of them were colleagues, and some of them are friends now; it is and was definitely meaningful.

At TMU, I've mentored two students in the last couple of years. One was a master's student, and one is a PhD student. It's beneficial as a mentor to work with students. My mentees have been smart, funny, interesting and inspiring. You can see parts of yourself in them, their journey, and the things they are thinking about such as jobs, life events, etc. They're dealing with the exact the same things that I was at their age.

It's also really nice to connect with people in general. We don't really get opportunities to meet and network with people we would want to meet in real life. That usually happens through happenstance or through friends, but this is meeting people you already have mutual interests and commonalities with.

Disrupt with us

The JennAir Disrupting Design program aims to break the structural barriers for Black, Indigenous and people of colour to have better access to study and work in the design sector – because better representation of racialized Canadians in interior design will drive stronger, more diverse design work. There’s still a long way to go. Learn more about how to get involved with JennAir Disrupting Design programs.

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