Currently, the perpetually curious Jennifer Kolstad is buoying her vast range of professional expertise with a fourth academic degree. As a doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary’s School of Environmental Design, located in the Canadian city she was raised in, the global design and brand director of Ford Motor Company has come full circle.
This time around, her educational mission is focused on the business of design, establishing a new communication ontology to show leaders the value of human-centric design through science and data. But “there’s a cumulative line of creative pursuits along the way that brought me to this,” she points out.
The Quilt Series art piece sits behind a walnut desk at the Ford Experience Center
Kolstad joined Ford in 2019, in a new role she helped to conceive that unifies the industrial behemoth’s workplace, retail, and hospitality realms through meaningful design that champions community, culture, and collaboration. Reimagining the spatial experiences in all of Ford’s physical environments is a “beautiful conclusion to my decades of experimentation,” she points out.
Given her conservative, suburban childhood, budding creativity wasn’t “understood and fostered like it is today,” Kolstad says. But the out-of-reach opened to her by studying art history at the University of Alberta. “I had a complete lack of clarity, and then my brain just exploded.”
Initially, Kolstad hoped to become a curator, but she relished holing up in the school’s studios, too, and knew her career needed to revolve around making. So, she headed to Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) for its interior design program, where “Yabu Pushelberg did the crit for the first restaurant I ever drew on paper,” she recalls.
Back in Calgary, at the now-shuttered practice Simpson Roberts, Kolstad cultivated a passion for architecture and decided to immerse herself in it at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. It was a revelatory period, heightened by a Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) fellowship.
Kolstad spearheaded the refurbishment of the Dearborn Inn, originally conceived by Henry Ford in 1931
At the firm, her first client was the King of Jordan; she also worked on the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai. “It was monumental. Once you scale a building like that, you never want to go back,” Kolstad explains. “I couldn’t believe people were giving me these opportunities.”
Her affinity for the large and complex next led Kolstad to the UAE-based developer Aldar, tackling the likes of Abu Dhabi’s leisure destination Yas Island. Three years later, she was looking forward to settling in Vancouver with her husband, fellow architect Craig Kolstad, and their new baby, when Gensler called, asking if she’d be interested in the hospitality director position available at the Dallas office.
“There’s something about flexibility in this business that will keep you inspired, thriving, moving, going,” she says, so she took the leap. At Gensler, projects such as Holly Hunt’s Dallas showroom and the open-air observation deck at the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles revealed to Kolstad just how tightly intertwined hospitality is with other sectors. At a non-clinical medical center in Dallas, for example, women with high-risk pregnancies constantly meet with specialists, and Gensler’s objective was to instill an atmosphere of “emotional security,” she remembers. “It’s a small space with a parametric wall that looks like billowing fabric. Today, it’s what we would call human-centered design.”
Flexible workspaces at the Ford Engineering Lab (FEL) reflect human-centric design
This thoughtful, ever-growing approach to design is one that Kolstad further delved into as global director of interior architecture at HKS, applying healthcare research to sporting venues and designing the world’s largest children’s hospital in Kuwait around hospitality- and civic-minded touchstones.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Kolstad’s time at HKS was innovating methodologies with fellow colleague Upali Nanda. Their relationship has only grown stronger over the years as they are both part of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s International Arts + Mind Lab exploring neuroaesthetics, an emerging field of study considering how architecture, the arts, and music impact the brain.
“We are formalizing definitions of what the next frontier of architecture might be. Not designing to an aesthetic outcome—although the aesthetic outcome must be excellent—but designing for performance. It’s a different way of thinking through design,” Kolstad says.
That unconventional mindset is at the forefront of Ford, a backdrop that encourages Kolstad to build off the audacious questions she posed when she was on the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) Board of Directors. (She served as chair in 2020.)
Founded in 1903, Ford’s long journey is steeped in American lore, transcending its scrappy origins to become one of the most prominent international automobile manufacturers. Still, it needs to evolve, and Kolstad is driving that change. “What is the future of retail automotive? It’s one of the most complicated questions asked of my career,” she says. “Yes, there’s a store involved; yes, there are people and processes involved, but this is a much deeper question that is about unpacking human behavior in a situational environment. How do we keep the work centered on humans as opposed to bricks and mortar and cars?”
The double-height Ford Experience Center in Dearborn, Michigan features stadium seating
The answer is in finding an architectural solution grounded in space diagnostics and quantifiable data that is not only eye-catching but also allows dealerships to become more profitable. “Our team began with reassembling the band,” Kolstad says, which features behavior psychologists, neurologists, and anthropologists. Retail pilots will begin rolling out later this year.
In 2022, when Kolstad and Ghafari Associates transformed Ford’s events hub into the Ford Experience Center, complete with artwork, natural light, and green walls, the feedback was positive, with visitors describing feeling healthy and energized. “That’s what I want people to say of our work,” she says. “I don’t want to hear it’s beautiful. I don’t think that’s the compliment anymore. I think it’s ‘I feel better.’ That’s human-centric design.”
Two years later, she applied the same philosophy to the relaunch the century-old Ford Engineering Lab (FEL), originally designed by architect Albert Kahn and reimagined by DiClemente Siegel Design, where amenities such as mother’s rooms and prayer rooms place employee wellness and inclusivity at the forefront.
Kolstad also led the revitalization of the Dearborn Inn, originally designed by Kahn in 1931 as an airport hotel of sorts. The Michigan property—a collaboration between AvroKO, Dash Design, Kraemer Design Group, and restoration architect Quinn Evans—celebrates its heritage while propelling the brand forward. “We have been dreaming about showing the world Ford’s hospitality since we began rebuilding our experiential brand in 2019,” Kolstad says. “Finally, with the Dearborn Inn, we can welcome our dealers, global team members, and the public back to our Ford family home.”
Similar commentary is bound to ensue when Snøhetta completes its revamp of Ford’s Research & Engineering Campus, also in Dearborn. The first phase, a sweeping two million-square-foot central campus building will be unveiled this month. “We are in a moment, and it’s right now, where we are preparing the brand for the next century,” she says.
FEL, originally completed by Albert Kahn in 1924, was overhauled in 2024
This article originally appeared in HD’s September 2025 issue.
