Our Story

The Firm Insider was founded by two former design directors who spent decades inside corporate practice. We decided to tell junior professionals the truth.

Why we Built this.

Every year, talented junior designers walk into their first firm and hit the same wall. Not because they aren’t capable, but because nobody told them how the room actually works.

We spent years on the other side of that door. We hired junior designers, mentored them, watched the best ones thrive and the talented ones struggle. Not from lack of skill, but from lack of a map.

The Firm Insider is that map. Built from real experience, designed for real careers, and now extended to the organizations responsible for developing the next generation of professionals.

“The designers who move fast aren’t always the most talented ones in the room. They’re the ones who understood the room.”
— Marilyn and Sydney
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Our Founders

Black and white portrait of a smiling professional woman wearing a suit, white shirt, necklace, and earrings, with styled dreadlocks.

Marilyn Russell Grant

Co-Founder, The Firm Insider

Marilyn has spent more than 20 years in hospitality and corporate interior design. Most recently she was Director of Workplace Strategies at Baker Barrios Architects in Orlando, where she led hospitality, mixed-use, and office projects and hired and mentored junior designers along the way. Her perspective is shaped by roots in Jamaica and Boston and design study in London. She knows what firms expect from day one, because she was the one setting those expectations. At The Firm Insider, she turns that experience into the career playbook she wishes every new designer had.

Black and white portrait of a woman with shoulder-length wavy hair, smiling, wearing a dark blazer over a top, with a pearl necklace, against a plain light gray background. 
Co-Founder, The Firm Insider

Sydney Moeller

Sydney is a former design director who spent 15 years at Baker Barrios Architects, leading Workplace Strategies, Hospitality and Mixed-Use projects and building the teams behind them. She has sat on the hiring side of the table more times than she can count, and she knows exactly where talented junior designers lose ground and how to win it back. At The Firm Insider, she brings her specialty, e.g., client communication, feedback, career strategy to every guide and coaching session.

VALUE FOR YOU

We’ve been inside the firms we’re talking about. Everything we teach comes from real experience, not theory.

We tell Junior Professionals what they actually need to hear. Warm, honest, and never softened into uselessness.

Every framework, script, and strategy is built to be used the next day, not filed away and forgotten.

Begin Your Transformation

Whether you’re a Junior Professional with a question or an organization ready to build a program, start here.