Guest: Courtney Queripel, Owner of Queripel and Company

Episode Introduction

Sometimes disruption is by design.

In this episode of The Hook, I talk with Courtney Queripel, founder of Queripel & Company (Q & Co), about faith, art, and the winding path from architecture to interiors and Manhattan to Williamsburg, Virginia.

Courtney’s story is one of courage through change, grace under pressure, and trusting that even when the plan shifts, the design still holds.

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Sarah: Welcome friends to The Hook with Sarah Larson. I’m your host, Sarah Larson, and today I’m really excited to introduce my friend Courtney Queripel. She owns an interior designing company called Queripel and Company, also known as Q and Co.

Courtney, tell us a little bit about what you do.

Courtney: Essentially, I like to summarize what I do by saying I help my clients to make their places and spaces not only more beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, but also more comfortable, functional, and practical for them. That could mean a residential client or a commercial client.

Sarah: I would love to point out that we are recording in your home. If you’re watching on video, our background is her home, and on her lap is sweet little Holly, who is also joining us today.

Courtney: She’s not left my side since she was nine weeks old. She would always come to work with me and sit basically in this position while I’m at my desk working. This is her spot. My lap is her spot.

Sarah: We’re perfectly comfortable with having her here, and she’s obviously settling in now. Well, let’s back up a little bit. Tell us where you grew up. What was family life like during that time?

Courtney: I was born in Virginia, in Richmond, and when I had just turned five years old, we moved north to Connecticut to a suburb of New York City. That was a big change, not only for me, but probably more so for my parents. Both of my parents are from the South, so there was a constant awareness of where their accents did not necessarily fit in. But I grew up there in New Canaan, Connecticut.

When I graduated from high school, I returned to Virginia to study architecture at the University of Virginia. When I had finished there, my first job was back north in New York. About two weeks into my job, I thought, “I don’t really enjoy this.” It was a job, which is definitely saying something, but I thought I wanted to return to school and study some more.

I began to look into some master’s degree programs, especially two of which were in London. I applied to both and was offered a place, so I had to choose one of those. I had remembered one of them specifically from when I had been in London a few years before. I was walking along the river Thames and I came to this obviously historic listed building, which was beautiful. It was an art gallery, and I was intrigued by the exhibition. I looked a little bit further and I found out that it actually wasn’t just an art gallery, it was a research institution. Someone could actually go and study art history.

A few years later, when I was thinking about doing some further study, that was one of the institutions I applied to. I was offered a place in about September 2001. September 11th happened. I was in my office three blocks from the World Trade Center. Oh my gosh. It shifted everyone’s world, and I think that’s when I began to do some serious thinking about what I really wanted to do in life.

The following year, I ended up moving to London. It was difficult. There was a disruption to my plan in that I had to have an emergency surgery on my foot in July. I was supposed to fly to London the first or second week of September. I had intense physical therapy, and I wasn’t really sure that I was going to be able to go. I was potentially looking at not just deferring the degree, but maybe actually having to reapply the following year. I went in the end. It was hard, but I made it through. It was a very rigorous program.

After that, I stayed in London for two years, and I was working. Then my visa expired, and it was very clear I had to come back to the States. I came back not having a clue where I was going to end up. My parents were also in transition, moving to Virginia. There was a lot of disruption there. I ended up actually working at an art museum in Washington, D.C. About two and a half years later, I moved back to London. That is kind of a longer story.

When the World Stopped Turning

Sarah: No, no. I do want to go back and revisit some of the things that you mentioned and kind of dig a little bit deeper. Let’s go back and talk about working in New York City during 9/11. That’s a disruption that everybody can sort of relate to, but not everybody was right in the thick of it. You said it was a difficult time for everybody, and things shifted. What was that experience like? What were you going through at that time?

Courtney: Personally, I was going through breaking things off with someone who I had been seeing at university, and he also was working in New York. We had so many mutual friends, and that was personally very hard. September 11th happened at that time in my life, and I thought, “What more can happen? What more can happen in the world, much less my life, to really jolt me and everybody into wondering what is life really about? What is most important while we are here on this earth? What is really, really important?”

It was a day I’ll never forget. I was fortunate enough to actually leave downtown Manhattan and travel uptown to the Upper East Side with a colleague. Eventually, I was able to get back home that evening off the island. It was really difficult because we were forced to work remotely at that point. That was a time when I don’t think a whole lot of people in the world knew what working remotely meant. It wasn’t a thing.

Sarah: We didn’t have Zoom back then.

Courtney: We didn’t even have FaceTime back then. That was 2001.

Sarah: But the cell phones were not working.

Courtney: No, they were not. That was scary. I couldn’t be in touch with my parents. They had no idea how I was. They knew where my office was. My brother at that time was also working in Washington, D.C.

Sarah: Yeah. So they must have been just panicked, not being able to reach either of you, really.

Courtney: It was a bad day. We knew people who worked in the Twin Towers.

Sarah: You said it kind of made you really take stock and go, “Okay, what else is there? What is important?”

Courtney: What’s important in life? What’s important in the world? What’s important to me? I thought, “This is the time.” I knew I just started this job, my first job out of university. I knew I should probably stick with it for a while, but I thought there were going to be a lot of people doing a lot of moving around after this day. Life is probably too short not to try that thing that I really would like to do. I was there for about another year before I moved to London the first time.

A Leap of Faith Across the Atlantic

Sarah: The first time. We’ll dig into that. What was your experience with arriving in London, going to school there? What was the transition like as an American in the UK?

Courtney: It was hard in the sense that I was just coming out of my physical therapy and kind of walking without crutches. Then I was on a plane, and then I was having to deal with public transport—trains, buses, underground trains in London—which I did enough in New York. It was sort of physically demanding.

There was also a personal element. I had started seeing someone, he is English, and he had moved back to the UK after having worked in the States for a few years, and I wasn’t sure about that relationship. I’d also experienced some betrayal by a very, very good friend. It was very hard. My degree was academically so rigorous. I became… I don’t know if I was clinically depressed at that time, but I was very low. I had a lot of low, not just moments, but days.

I found so much comfort and peace in knowing that God doesn’t make any mistakes and that he does love me no matter how I perform, no matter what my degree ends up being, no matter who betrays me, no matter what happens to me in life. I had my faith to carry me through since I was probably about 14 years old.

The day I arrived, a mutual friend picked me up at the airport and said, “Would you like to come to church with me tonight?” I said, “Wow. Yes, please.” I walked into that church and I was greeted by someone who’s now one of my best friends. I just felt instantly welcomed. It was a safe place. I actually ended up working for the church part-time for the two years after I finished the degree because I just felt like I had learned so much. I had gained so much. I had been so loved and looked after by that community that I wanted to give something back.

Finding the Light

Sarah: Tell me about that low period, if you don’t mind getting a little deeper into that. You said your faith got you through some things, but was there anything in particular that you found helpful to get you through that to a more positive frame of mind? Having a friend betray you is heartbreaking, especially when you’ve not experienced that before. That can be traumatic.

Courtney: Definitely trauma.

Sarah: Was there anything in particular that you found to help you get through? Or was it really just the community, having that community of the church?

Courtney: It was having the community of the church and it was having that friend who I mentioned. She and maybe one or two other individuals from the church just coming alongside me, checking in on me, saying, “Can I come over? We can pray together. We can just have a cup of tea together, whatever you want to do.”

I remember when it came time for my thesis. I had to print it. I had to bind it. It was a book. I had to take care of that. I actually do remember that day. That friend, Debbie, said, “Today’s the day. What can I do to help?” And I said, “You can meet me at the print shop, please.” It was just chaos. Debbie was there. She was just the angel that I needed at very specific moments.

She used to come over to our flat. I ended up moving into a flat with the woman who I was sharing a room with in student halls of residents. We were beyond kind of the undergraduate years. We were more mature students, so we moved into a flat. My friend Debbie would come over, and we would read the Bible with Rosario, who’s my flatmate, and just talk. We would spend two hours just talking about what we read and how it affected us, what it meant for us, and then pray through it. She’s just super. Debbie and a few other friends from the church were just so encouraging.

Sarah: It’s interesting that you said that when Debbie asked you what she could do to help on the big day, that you were able to accept that help. I think that one of the things that sometimes we struggle with as human beings in general is that feeling that we have to do it alone. I think that your story is really incredible in that you had these friends—your flatmate and your friend Debbie—both of whom were very supportive, plus your church. Obviously, you were able to ask for help, and I think that’s something that so many of us have to learn how to do.

Courtney: No man is an island. It’s true. We don’t exist individually, solitarily. God put us on this earth to help one another, to work together. That’s what I feel we’re called to do.

Sarah: I don’t know why this is sticking in my head, but I really want to know how many pages that thesis was.

Courtney: It’s in my office, actually. If you want to go and read it, you can. But it wasn’t so much pages as much as it was words. My dissertation thesis had to be 10,000 words, and it had to be pretty close to 10,000. Not 8,500 and not 12,500.

Sarah: You had to learn how to edit yourself quite a lot.

Courtney: Yeah. University, well, education really in a very general sense, is very different in countries outside of the United States. Students must specialize, as it were, from a much earlier age in school. They must choose their subjects about the time they’re 12 or 13 years old. It’s very different. By the time you get to the age of going to university, you are on one track.

Sarah: That’s really interesting. I didn’t realize that there was such a difference. What was your experience in having gone to university in the States and then a university in the UK?

Courtney: I will say, when I did come back to the States in 2005, my degree in the UK was not widely recognized by universities over here, which was frustrating. You worked so hard for this. How could it not be recognized? I think it’s because the American system is a bit more broad. For example, an undergraduate degree, a bachelor’s degree in the UK, you spend usually three years on your bachelor’s degree, whereas usually in America you spend four years, and it is more broad. You do have these required courses that you must take.

I wish that there was a more seamless meeting of the two systems, because it does throw a “spanner in the works” to use a very British phrase, when someone is trying to apply their professional certification here in the States.

I do have a friend who is effectively working on her PhD in counseling and mental health therapy in the UK right now. She asked me a few weeks ago, “What is it going to be like?” She’s from Florida. Her husband is British, and they’re thinking about making a big move like I did with my family. My husband was very straight with them. He said, “It’s a totally different world.” And it is.

I found applying my degree that I did in the UK was rigorous. It was assumed that I had written probably at least a thesis in my undergraduate degree, which I hadn’t. I feel like there were skills that were perhaps brushed over a little bit in my undergraduate degree. There were moments where I was resentful. I thought, “What have I done? I’m in the wrong country. I’m in the wrong program.” It was hard.

Sarah: I’m really glad that you had some people to help support you. I do think that that’s one of the things that helps us get through the challenging times.

Courtney: I wouldn’t have come through that without those key people.

Return to the States

Sarah: Moving forward, you moved back to the States at the end of your visa in 2005. What did you end up doing since it was challenging with the degree that you had earned, and it wasn’t recognized here? What were your plans?

Courtney: I almost didn’t have plans because I also knew that I needed to physically be here before I could begin to network and start talking to people about jobs, employment in the art world. That’s what I was looking to do. That’s what I really wanted to do because I’d worked in a few contemporary art galleries in London, so I knew the more commercial art scene, but I wanted to get back to a more academic role.

I started networking with people up in Washington, D.C. I knew I probably didn’t want to go back to New York. I was open to it, but I thought probably that was a bit too far from where my parents were now that they had moved back to Virginia. It was only supposed to be a two-year assignment for my father. Two turned into five, and then five turned into 10 and 15 and 20. They joked that they spent over 20 years just trying to get back to the South or back to Virginia.

When I came back, I really didn’t know what was going to happen. But again, my faith in God to provide for me just what I needed was kind of keeping me through that. My parents having come to sort of help them settle in their house, we had a lot of conversations about what doors I could knock on and what paths might be opening up for me.

I ended up getting in touch with someone at a museum in Washington, D.C. It was through a friend of a friend who worked there. It was networking, which I strongly believe in. It’s the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which is also affiliated with the Corcoran College of Art and Design. What I really liked was that there was an art college in the same institution.

Sadly, the Corcoran is no longer there. It’s only two blocks from the White House, but it is very, very sad because the permanent collection is outstanding in terms of American art. It’s a private institution that had to close its doors because it just wasn’t sustainable for a number of reasons. The competitors were all the Smithsonian museums, which are on the mall. Those seem to be just receiving a lot more funding. The Corcoran is privately funded, and it was really sad.

I learned so much. I had a great experience working there, and I miss it very much. It was a case of, I had started out in an unpaid position. I was waiting tables at night to pave my way, feeling like, “Wow, I’m back here again. This is hard.”

Sarah: Talk about an identity crisis. You’ve got this advanced degree, you’ve studied so hard for it, and then suddenly you’re having to wait tables to make money because you’re not getting paid for the job that you’re doing.

Courtney: Eventually, the museum took me on as an employee. But I had to do it. I was exhausted. But I wasn’t married. I didn’t have children. I didn’t have a dog. I didn’t have a mortgage. I was fairly footloose and fancy-free, even though I was clearly working toward a goal.

Sarah: But you didn’t have a lot of financial commitment or responsibility outside of that.

Courtney: It’s also great to work in a service industry.

Sarah: It’s a good experience. My husband swears that everybody should do it at some point.

Courtney: I do too.

Sarah: Whether it’s the restaurant industry or customer service, retail. That was my experience. The experience where you’re told, “The customer is always right,” but the customer is not always right. That’s and having, it’s a good way to learn how to bite your tongue and smile.

Courtney: Yes. I learned so much from that because even now, what I do for my clients is I’m serving my clients. They’re always right.

Sarah: You have to create a cohesion between what you do, what you’re trying to recommend, and what they want.

Courtney: That’s right. Each client is different. I do not have one style per se that I advocate. I go into each new project with fresh eyes. I have to learn about them as individuals, and I have to learn how they live, how they use their space, and what they want to get out of their space. Clients are just, everybody has a different need in their space.

Sarah: It’s interesting that you say that. I feel like that’s a very similar thing to coaching. When I do business coaching, I’m really learning who that person is, what their vision for the business is, what they want out of the business, so that we can design a process, a strategy that meets that specific client’s need. Very similar to serving and taking in what somebody else needs, not just saying, “Well, this is how it is. This is what you have to do because this is what we’re told we have to do.” I’m not an advocate of that process. I do think it’s very individualized.

The Dream Job

Sarah:Let’s go back to what took you. You again moved back to the UK after your experience at the Corcoran. How did you end up there?

Courtney: I had been reintroduced through a mutual friend to the man who’s now my husband. He was in London. I was in Washington, D.C. I was not into the idea of a long-distance relationship. We said to each other, “How are we going to find out if we even work together?” We have to pray about it.

That’s a very vivid moment in my life where I said, “I don’t have the answer. God knows, he’s got the plan, he just hasn’t revealed it to us yet.” So, we did pray.

Very shortly after that, a good friend who at the time was working for one of the oldest, if not maybe the oldest and most well-established interior design and decorating firms in Great Britain, I contacted her. I asked her whether the company might need some help, even for a short-term basis, because I knew that I couldn’t move country again if it wasn’t on my terms, and I couldn’t move illegally.

She said, “It is just so interesting that you’ve reached out to me because I was just having a conversation with my boss yesterday about the fact that we really could use another person on our team.” This is a small design team within the larger company. Without having met my eventual boss, he instructed HR to start processing my work permit and my working visa so that I could enter the UK legally and work.

It is a miracle. You cannot explain that because essentially what the company had to do was to basically prove that I was the only person who could do this job in the entire European Union, because at that time people living in European countries were free to come and work. My job description was basically crafted to my resume, my experience, and my education. You just cannot explain that. It is a total miracle of God.

I did move back and started working. If I could still be working for Colefax and Fowler, I would. It’s like a magical place to work because the clients have no budget. Obviously, I’m making a generalization, but the budgets on these projects were something I haven’t seen the like of since then.

It was one of the most established, longest-established interior design firms in Great Britain. It was almost like it was the source of all knowledge about how to design an upholstered headboard, how to design curtains and window treatments. I think given my classical background in architecture, I just always carried with me the principle that proportion is everything. Now, if I see a building with columns, with a portico, and the columns are not in proportion to the facade of the building, I can’t even go into the building.

When we came to Williamsburg, my husband and I were looking at properties. There was a property we went to view, and we pulled up and I said, “I cannot live in that house. Those columns are all wrong.” And he said, “There isn’t much on the market. Please be open-minded.” We did view the house, and I think we did make an offer. It wasn’t accepted. We moved on quickly, and I was grateful.

Sarah: Thankfully, it wasn’t meant to be.

Courtney: But being classically trained at UVA in the School of Architecture and going on to really learn from these master designers and decorators… I love learning. If I could go back to and study more, I would, but I have a family now. It was an amazing experience, and it opened the door for almost every other opportunity I’ve had in the UK, but also here. It’s a name which people who work in the interior design industry, they know exactly who and what Colefax and Fowler is. It opened the door for many things.

The recession happened in 2008. I had started working for Colefax and Fowler in June of 2008, and then the recession, it landed like a ton of bricks in October 2008.

My thought was, “I was the last one in, I’m going to be the first one out.” I was not the first one out, but they had to lay off a number of people. That was really disappointing, but I understood. I had to get busy looking for other work. But the fact that I had been with Colefax and Fowler just carried so much weight. I worked for some incredibly talented designers, textile designers. It was great. There’s a lot of talent in London. A lot of talent and a lot of resources.

Ground Zero (Again)

Sarah: That begs the question, what were you doing coming back to Virginia?

Courtney: I still get asked the question, and we’ve been here for three years now. We were married in the Wren Chapel at the College of William and Mary. Even on our honeymoon, we were talking about, “Should we think about moving to the States?” And I said, “Maybe, but I’m not in a hurry.” I’m not in a hurry to go back, especially since his career—he was progressing in his career in banking in London—I thought, “We’re not doing that anytime soon.”

Both of my parents experienced some disruptive health issues. They had all the support they really needed here in Williamsburg where they live. They didn’t need us to move to be closer to them. But my husband thought, “If we don’t do it now, when our children are so young, it’s going to be harder to do it in the future.” We thought about it for probably over a year.

What it meant was leaving our comfort zone. We had people asking us, “Why are you going?” Some of our British friends said, “America? Go do it.” And we said, “Well, we don’t have jobs. We are going to have to sell our house in London, sell our car in London, take our children out of the school, which we loved. We’re going to leave our church, which we loved. Leave everything.” And also, all those resources that I had at my fingertips in the industry, I was leaving all that.

We had no idea whether we would end up in Washington, D.C., or Northern Virginia. We thought maybe Richmond. We thought probably not New York. We wanted our kids to have lots of open green spaces. We thought not the West Coast because that’s just as far from where my parents are. My brother is also in Williamsburg. We thought, “We’ll narrow it down, but we just need to get there.”

My husband was trying to do some networking from across the ocean, but it was hard. He knew we just needed to be here. We thought about this decision for probably over a year. He had strategically been working on his MBA through the College of William and Mary as on the online Executive MBA.

Sarah: To build a network and also have a degree that transferred to the U.S.

Courtney: There goes that transferable degree again. He had been working on that. We finally made the decision to do it. Even then, I was second-guessing it. But we booked the flights, and then we started packing our lives up. We arrived on Christmas Eve 2019. About six or eight weeks after that, we know what happened. We all know what happened. Talk about disruption.

Sarah: Let’s go back just a little bit. Before the move, you obviously had a business there. How did you end up starting that?

Courtney: I had been working for some of these, as I said, very talented designers, textile designers. I worked in a textile showroom, and I was working as a subcontractor to these various firms and individuals. There came a point where I thought, “I want to have my own clients.” I started working for myself and building up a client base for myself. I was very nervous about moving here because I was just leaving my clients, my contractors, tradesmen, and artisans.

Sarah: All of those relationships that you had built, and as you said, all of the resources that you had available to you in the industry. How long did you have your business before the move?

Courtney: 2010. So quite a while. And then we moved in 2019. I knew I was going to be starting from ground zero. When COVID happened, I was really like, I started to become resentful some days. “Why did we do this? Why are our children in a public school?” I couldn’t be angry at anyone. I was probably a little angry at God, like, “Why did you allow us to do this, to move here?” But the whole time, my faith was that he does know what’s best and he’s got the plan, but he’s just not revealed all the details yet.

Sarah: Tell me about when you started your business. Did you go through any kind of transitional period where you felt like, “I have to think differently about myself as a business owner?” Sometimes that’s a terrifying step to take, to start something new. Obviously, you had lots of contacts and resources from all of your years working already. Was that a big transition, or do you feel like moving to the States and starting new here was more of a transition for you?

Courtney: I think probably moving to the States was a harder, bigger transition. Because I had been working for so many years in interiors and in the industry in the UK, I felt like I had a big network. When my babies came along, it was less of a, “I’m going to put this work to bed indefinitely.” It was more of a, “When it’s time to take it up again, it’s right there.” Whereas, coming here, I knew no one. I had to start somewhere.

A friend of my mother put us in touch with a family here in Williamsburg who is from South Africa, my husband being South African. It was actually that friend who, that very first night I met her, we were at their house, and she said she wanted to hear about what work I had been doing in England. She said, “You are in America now. Go! Just go get your business going. What’s holding you back?”

Sarah: I love it. I can hear her voice, too.

Courtney: Yes. I think they see that pioneer spirit in this country, and they think anyone can do it.

Sarah: So, what did you do then to start working on your business?

Courtney: I started thinking, “I’m going to have to rebrand completely and recreate a website and make it very appealing to maybe an American audience.” But at the same time, I wanted everything about Q and Co to exude the fact that Q and Co started in England. That’s where it started, and it encapsulates all the experience from over there.

London is a melting pot. Every culture in the world comes to London. It’s a bit like New York or any of the biggest major cities in the world. I wanted the company to sort of exude that, and not necessarily to design and decorate homes in a way that lots of homes had been done in Williamsburg for many years.

So, for example, when it comes to color, sunlight is so much stronger in this country than in the UK. So, you’ll find that, not everyone, but many people feel more confident using brighter, more vivid colors in their homes here. In the UK, it might seem interesting that you would choose that shade of red.

Sarah: That’s interesting. I really had no idea.

Courtney: That’s just one example. When I design and when I go into a new project, I’m trying to see it with the eyes of the context. I have to take the context into consideration. Where is this house, this home, or this apartment? What’s appropriate for the context, but also what does the client really want? They might want something completely different from their neighbor, which is great, and I love taking some risks.

Not many people want to do the exact same thing that their next-door neighbor did. Some people do, and that’s the highest form of flattery. But if I can, I like to encourage my clients to just take a little bit of a risk. Sometimes a lot of clients will say, “I don’t like busy rugs.” You can look at the floor in this room and you can see what I like. I just feel like a hardwood floor, or LVP, whatever it is, a rug can really make that room feel alive, as can lots of other things—things on the walls, furniture.

I firmly believe before you buy a sofa or an armchair, you have to sit in it. You have to know if it’s comfortable. Now that you’ve been here for a few years, is there anything new on the horizon, or are you finally getting into your stride with Q and Co?

Courtney: I feel like I’m in my stride, but I’m always having to reassess where things are. I’m still trying to grow my business. I think probably every entrepreneur would say that they’re always trying to grow their business. I have had an idea of a maybe a bricks-and-mortar space which can be somewhat of a showroom as well as a design studio. It’s got to be the right location to receive footfall and maybe even vehicular traffic. I envision it as a space where people are drawn in. They see something in the window or through the window, and they’re intrigued, like, “Oh, I’ve never seen that before.”

Sarah: Oh, I love that vision.

Courtney: Like, “Wow, look at that cushion or look at that lamp, or look at that rug. I’ve never seen that before.” That would be quite nice to have in my house or in my office or in my restaurant, and to draw people in and to get a conversation going. I love that idea. I’d love to, but I need to speak to the bank about it.

Sarah: Hey, I know somebody who works at the bank. You’ve got a little in there. That’s really exciting, Courtney. I love that idea. I can picture it perfectly, what you’re describing. Obviously, you have that vision; it’ll happen. How old are the kids?

Courtney: Nine, seven, and four, but getting close to five.

Sarah: Okay. So getting closer to the age where they’re going to be a little more self-sufficient for you, not to have to be on call quite as much. Am I making an assumption that it would be simpler to do that when they’re a little bit older?

Courtney: Yeah, I think so, because it’s a pretty big endeavor.

Sarah: Tell us where we can find you on the internet.

Courtney: My website URL is queripelandcompany.com. My Instagram and my Facebook are also the same handle: @queripelandcompany.com.

Sarah: Well, that’s easy enough. We’ll put it all in the show notes. Are you open to working with clients outside of the area?

Courtney: Yes, absolutely. I do get asked that question. In fact, at the moment, I have a client on the West Coast, and we’ve been doing everything virtually. A site visit will happen, but it’s not the right time yet. I would welcome an opportunity to serve clients who are outside of the Williamsburg and Hampton Roads area. I’m sure as we grow, maybe somebody from another area hears it and says, “She’s got something that I want to be part of.”

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: I hope so. You have amazing guests on your podcast. I don’t know how you find them.

Sarah: We talked about networking, and honestly, that is something that I enjoy, and I know that it works. You just never know what connection you’re going to make, what ripple effect might come from it. I’ve been fortunate to meet some really fantastic people and been honored to have them as guests on the podcast, and thank you for being one of them.

Courtney: Thank you for having me. I’ve enjoyed it.

Key Takeaways

• Faith is a design principle. Courtney’s story shows how trust in divine timing can turn detours into direction.
  
• Community is medicine. Healing happens faster when we let others in — whether through prayer, tea, or shared purpose.
  
• Start where you are. Every move, every reinvention, becomes part of your body of work.
  
• Context is everything. From British architecture to American sunlight, great design begins with seeing through the right lens.

About Courtney

Courtney Queripel is the founder and principal designer of Queripel & Company (Q & Co), a boutique interior design studio known for timeless, livable spaces with a British sensibility.

With degrees in architecture and art history, and over a decade of experience working with world-renowned design firms in London, Courtney now brings her global perspective to clients across the U.S. Her work blends classic proportion, personal storytelling, and an eye for harmony that turns houses into homes.

Connect with Courtney: queripelandcompany.com | Instagram

Energetic Reflection

Courtney’s story carries the energy of trust in motion. Her life reminds us that faith doesn’t prevent disruption. It transforms it. Every city, every setback, every client becomes a brushstroke in the larger design.

When you can’t see the full blueprint, take the next faithful step. The right doors will open, the right people will appear, and the design will reveal itself.

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