
Farshid Tafazzoli learned markets before he learned patience. Decades later, he is applying the same appetite for speed to a stubbornly physical corner of design - one sample, one box and one midnight deadline at a time.
Ellie Cunningham is the CEO of Canoa, a Brooklyn-based design-technology company building a browser canvas that unifies mood boards, scaled floor plans, real product data and FF&E schedules for interior designers. A Pratt-trained interior designer who spent years running global design operations at WeWork, she stepped up from COO to chief executive in October 2024 and is steering Canoa toward a circular, low-carbon future for commercial furniture, where good pieces get reused instead of dumped.