From inside LAUSD
to independent practice
I'm Darra Bishop, founder of minds@work. My career in design spans more than 20 years, across a range of work that shaped how I think about space. Learning environments became a focus of that work, and for 6.5 years I designed them inside LAUSD's own furniture and equipment design group, the only district in the country with one.
I wasn't there to apply a fixed standard. Inside the district I helped shape the Future-Ready Classroom pilot and the outdoor learning environments, brought in to evolve the design standards rather than apply them, and to do it in a way that held up to construction documents, procurement, and the educators who use the rooms every day.
In that role I worked directly with principals, teachers, architects, and construction teams on dozens of projects and hundreds of classrooms — learning exactly what works, what doesn't, and what schools actually need versus what they're typically sold.
Both sides of that background, the broader design work and the years focused on schools, feed what I do now. I launched minds@work to bring that combined experience to any school, independently. No manufacturer affiliations. No commissions. Just honest, experienced specification in service of your students and educators.
"Experiencing a school's culture first-hand and having the opportunity to speak to its educators results in successful projects."
— Darra Bishop, founder