It's been almost three weeks since I returned home from Milan and the culmination of the launch of Coalesse in Europe. It was an exhilarating week for many reasons, but probably the highlight for me was the excellence with which our team executed. We have super-sized aspirations for the brand. Participating in Milan has been a goal since the day we envisioned Coalesse.

Over 300,000 visitors descend on Milan for the furniture fair. Most exhibitors are at the Salone del Mobile which is on the outskirts of Milan. The city, however, is alive with the spirit of the show and events and displays are found throughout the city. If Silicon Valley is the center of the tech world, Milano is the center of design and fashion. It was in this context (at the Salone) that Coalesse participated. Our stand was fresh and expressed our California spirit. But it truly came to life on late Wednesday morning when both Jean Marie Massaud and Patricia Urquiola arrived at our stand at the same…

Being a mother of four children (all under the age of ten) and working full time as a designer can often make my mind twist. There has though never been a doubt in my mind that I could have children AND a successful career. When I was growing up in Iceland, our president was a charming, intelligent single mother who we all looked up to.  It was never an issue that she couldn´t have a successful career and be a mother.  This lifestyle will simply demand more of us to think about how we integrate life and work.

It is surely chaotic and there is never a dull moment in the household. Our house isn´t perfectly clean all the time and I daydream about having more time to go to the gym but I remind myself that we aren´t living in a soap opera. The most important thing is that I am doing something that I love and it makes my heart and spirit grow.

It would be the easy way out to give up on my design career but I know I won´t become a better mother. I need to nourish my creative…

As a 39-year-old business woman, you would think that after countless speeches, presentations, and meetings, I would be very confident in front of others.

But when I was in college,  I took a personality test that informed me I was a "reactive introvert." That came as a surprise.

At the time, it didn't sound like a strength to me! And looking forward to my upcoming business career, I felt like I had a disease :-)

So I started my career trying to hide my natural introspective tendencies – acting as an extrovert. I was very social, always happy and had a smile on my face. It wasn't until years later that I understood that being an introvert can be a strength.

Susan Cain, the author of "QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking,"  has started to reveal this taboo and give us a better picture of introversion. She said she prefers "listening to talking, reading to socializing, and cozy chats to group settings."

Recently, Coalesse researcher…

I'm delighted to share with you the fact that Coalesse will be a participant in the Milan Furniture Fair this April at the Salone Del Mobile 2013. This is the largest international home furnishing fair in the world. It will be the first time Coalesse has participated in this prestigious event.

Over 300,000 visitors attend the fair. Media from around the world attend this event reporting on new fashions and innovation that stem from the designers and manufacturers who exhibit there.  Historically, Salone participants are lifestyle oriented brands dominated by iconic European companies like B&B, Vitra, Moroso, Minotti, Cassina, Poltrona Frau, Poliform and many others. It has never had a contract orientation. The emphasis is on design, designers, lifestyle and fashion.

This makes the debut of Coalesse very exciting for a number of reasons:

Our narrative is around the merger of work and life - "For the new work day" - which is based on our insights about wherever work…

“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” Martin Luther King Jr.

There is something about certain days, like MLK, that make us pause to take stock of ourselves. For me, it’s always New Year’s Day (with its perennial list of strikingly similar annual resolutions), anniversaries of births, marriages and deaths, and major world events. September 11th was that kind of a day.

I was a Goldman Sachs partner, at a meeting in New York, when the twin towers went down.  Now I’m a social entrepreneur, selling rugs rather than bonds, focusing on a triple bottom line—people, planet and profit. Today, instead of applying my Wharton MBA to the fundamentals of market change, I apply it to the fundamentals of social change.

Opportunities often present themselves when we’re not expecting them, yet they can change our lives.  That’s what happened to me after 9/11, when I left investment banking to found a social business enterprise, ARZU, which…