Meet the 2025 ALC Scholarship Recipients

Ericka Anderson

ALC 2025 Scholarship recipient

Ericka Anderson is a fourth-year Interior Design student at Thomas Jefferson University, driven by a passion for creating spaces that support people's well-being. Her interest centers on senior living design and how thoughtful environments can enhance the quality of life for aging adults.

Personal Foundation and Early Experience

Anderson's lifelong proximity to senior living communities has shaped not only her understanding of the aging experience but also her commitment to improving it through design. Growing up, she had a very close relationship with her grandparents and spent countless afternoons with them in the senior living community they called home, which later became her first workplace. For four years, she served meals to residents as a high school and college student, forming genuine connections with them and witnessing firsthand how their environment impacted their daily comfort, independence, and joy. These experiences provided her with an intuitive understanding of the needs of older adults, which now guides her emerging career in senior living interior design.

Professional Experience and Development

Anderson has gained substantive experience through her work as a residential design intern with ZDomus Designs and currently serves as an intern at Meyer Design Inc. on their senior living team. Her internship has confirmed her career direction, showing her that senior living design can be both creative and deeply meaningful. She has witnessed how thoughtful planning and creativity can transform challenges into design opportunities and has been inspired by professionals in the field who demonstrate genuine care for residents' well-being.

Design Philosophy and Goals

Anderson's goal is to create environments that honor dignity and enhance the quality of life for residents, especially for seniors facing physical challenges. Many older adults must navigate mobility restrictions, visual impairments, or cognitive changes, and design can either soften or worsen these realities. Her approach is grounded in a deep respect for those challenges. She aims to contribute design solutions that are both beautiful and accessible—spaces that do not treat safety features as compromises, but instead as opportunities for innovation. She believes good design should be inclusive by default, and senior living environments should reflect the value of the people who call them home.

Aatika Hayat 
2025 ALC Scholarship Recipient

Aatika Hayat

Aatika Hayat is an interior design student at Parsons School of Design in New York City, returning to academia after a twenty-year career as a tax lawyer. Her interest in design developed through her work co-founding RYSE, a nonprofit mentoring refugee youth in Luxembourg, where she observed how built environments influence individuals experiencing stress, transition, or vulnerability. This awareness led her to explore trauma-informed design and complete a project focused on how community spaces can support regulation, safety, and belonging.

Having lived in New Zealand, Luxembourg, China, Switzerland, and the United States, and speaking several languages, Hayat has witnessed how different cultures understand aging, independence, and community. These experiences, combined with personal family circumstances, shaped her growing interest in senior living and adaptable environments that support wellbeing and autonomy.

Design Philosophy and Approach

Hayat's interest in senior living design began with a fundamental observation: many environments intended for older adults do not speak to the lives they have lived or the lives they still hope to live. As she has progressed through her degree at Parsons, she has become increasingly focused on how design can better support autonomy, cognitive wellbeing, and social connection for people as they age. She approaches the topic with respect for its complexity and with a commitment to understanding both the systemic and human factors that shape the experience of aging.

Personal experience has strengthened this focus. Hayat's mother-in-law resisted senior living because the available environments felt limiting and disconnected from her identity. The loneliness she experienced near the end of her life prompted deeper reflection on the role design can play in supporting older adults. Hayat also sees her own parents approaching a stage where they may need adaptable, supportive environments, yet the options available remain limited. These experiences have made senior living design feel not only relevant but urgent.