This is the first installment of our HCD 10 podcast series, featuring an interview with AECOM’s Christine Hester Devens, this year’s Interior Designer winner.  Check back each week for more installments.

Christine Hester Devens, an associate principal and interior project designer at AECOM (Minneapolis), says she’s known since grade school that she’d have a career in interior design.

Influenced by her mom and her enjoyment for drawing, she wrote an essay about her intended career path (it’s still in storage in her basement).  At the time, however, she thought she’d be designing “beautiful Rocky Mountain homes,” inspired by her first true love: John Denver.

Instead, Devens, the 2014 HCD 10 Interior Designer honoree, has spent 25-plus years focused almost exclusively on healthcare design.

What set her on this career path? What bothers her most in a healthcare setting (Clue: she doesn’t like waiting)? And what are the keys to designing healthcare spaces that can stand the test of time?

Listen below to find out.