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How Loree Everette Did It All
To pay for college, Phanomen Design president Loree Everette held over 30 jobs in five years. And she's about to add "panelist" to her resume as she joins us for our "What's Up Downtown"event on Oct. 15.
Seppela Photography
The daughter of a fifth-generation Indiana farmer and a Japanese mother, Loree (above, center, with her team at Phanomen) and her brother grew up in Dunkirk, where residents in the small community known for glass manufacturing had a hard time grasping the family heritage.  "People would ask us what were 'were' or if we did karate," Loree recalled. "We knew we were different." Her parents met in Okinawa, where her father was stationed at a military base in the 1970s, and Loree said it was a fateful thing that her mother left city life in Japan for rural Indiana. "The good thing about being half-Japanese is that we traveled all the time." Loree got to know extended family in Japan, especially during the traditional Buddhist celebrations held to honor relatives who had passed away. "They would make a shrine to the person in the house--the idea was that their spirit was still there, and they actually introduced me to dead relatives during the ceremony."
Loree's dad raised hogs alongside horses, chickens, and a menagerie of the usual farm animals, and she said it was a popular spot for their East-Coast "city" relatives who would assemble for holidays at the farm. At Jay County High School, she graced the courts on the varsity tennis team and played flute in the band, switching to baritone to join the drum corps--all this while she headed up several clubs at school. "I had a diverse group of friends and activities," Loree said. At age seven, she remembers dabbling in decorating and design, practicing on a miniature house, but it was Barbara Walters who inspired Loree as she headed off to college. "I idolized her--I was in speech club, and I wanted to be this hard-hitting journalist." Loree began her freshman year as a member of the IU Marching 100 and set off to major in broadcast journalism. While watching her fellow classmates studiously following the professor in her first journalism class, she realized it wasn't her path. "I was not excited about it at all, so I looked at the course offerings, and I picked interior design."
And thus began a series of stitched-together jobs as Loree (above with family in Japan) paved her own way through five years of school. Her parents paid her tuition, but she noted, "I knew my parents weren't rich, and when you come from an Asian family and a farming family, you just work hard--it's expected." She made friends (but quarter tips!) as a waitress at a Bloomington diner, walked the aisles doing the graveyard inventory gig at Target, mixed paint at Sherwin-Williams, and worked at a car wash--for one day.  "I think it's good to try lots of things, and I learned so much from all of my jobs," she said. After graduation, Loree worked for Rowland Design, moonlighting for a catering company at night. She later moved to Mitsch Design but hatched an idea for a business she could call her own.  "A friend and I wanted to start a gift-wrapping shop where you could come in, have some coffee, wrap your gifts and chat," she explained. But post-9/11, times were tough in the design industry, and she was laid off from Mitsch, sending her into survival mode once again. After scoring a one-time project with a general contractor she had championed in her former job, the referrals poured in. "I decided I needed to make it an actual business, so that's what I did."
Kara Phung Photography
As the company grew, Loree thought it prudent to remove her name from the business to foster client trust in the professionals she was adding to her team (whom she is "very proud" of), and Phanomen Design was born. Creative director Jerry Greene, who joined the firm in 2005, is Loree's fiancee and father to their four-year-old son, Dutch. While she said they love spending time as a family and doing "weekend stuff" with Dutch, she admitted that life is happily hectic. "We have started taking vacations, and we travel some, but we've been rigorously working, so we don't have a lot of free time." (We're thrilled she was able to find some to join us for out event, so make sure to register today!)
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Friday, October 2, 2015
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