Cara Vitry (’12 Transportation Design)

Take us through your career journey. How did you end up working in NYC as a Regional Bespoke Designer at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars?

I took many unexpected turns after school.

I started my full-time career at General Motors, thinking I’d be doing exterior design. That’s what I focused on for all of my internships and all my sponsored projects. Eventually, I ended up in the interior design studio. About five years later, I left GM to join a start-up EV company, Faraday Future. So that prompted my move out to Los Angeles.

Going to a start-up company from such a big, stable corporate culture was a culture shock. I felt like somebody had just pushed me into the open water to swim.

GM prepared me for the foundations as a designer to know what protocol to follow. Working at Faraday Future, you’ve got to get scrappy and work around the deadlines but also expect changes that are thrown at you. I learned a lot there because that’s when I began to speak outside of the design team to the vendors, more engineer meetings, and actually lead some projects as well. That was really fun and rewarding. After about a year, I was offered an opportunity with Autodesk.

I was the Business Development Executive for the North American car design studios and brought Autodesk solutions to the car design spaces. There, I learned to manage relationships. I was with them for about two years before COVID hit. A big part of my job with them was to travel and visit clients on-site, get to know the pain points and connect them with the product team. There was huge uncertainty and I ended up going back to design, which was a challenge.

I joined another startup EV company in LA as a contract designer when I met my husband, who was living in New York. I left my job and began to work here in the city as a freelancer. But it was very different from LA and Detroit, where we have the car design community. And everybody knows one another. In New York, I had to start all over again. Once we got the COVID vaccines, people started to roll out IDSA events and other events in the local area. It was really a change in my attitude as an introverted person. I put myself out there, and attended every event that I could go to, not just design. I ended up making friends that way. 

When you’re a freelancer, your jobs are very inconsistent, some days you’ll be busy, and some days you’re not. I needed something stable or more consistent, so I picked up photography.

In January or December, I literally stood outside of the city hall with my camera offering people free photos to use for my portfolio. I was there Monday through Friday, every single day for months. I put up my website, started this social media account, and the ball was starting to roll. Then I got a call from a headhunter explaining to me this opportunity to work with Rolls-Royce. So I said, why not? I’m up for anything.

Having had those different experiences made me stand out. People have different paths, and they’ll get to their happy place if they listen to their hearts and figure out what they truly enjoy doing. The path might not be easy, but it’ll get you there, I think.

What does it look like to work with a client at Rolls-Royce?

I’ll begin the conversation with clients. I ask them questions to draw out what I call “design guideline assets.” Then I can help them craft a story. For example, we’ve had a client celebrating the birth of their daughter. I asked about the name of their daughter, when she was born, etc. This client went with a starlight headliner on the roof with the birth chart of their daughter the night the daughter was born.

Some clients will even come in with their baby’s footprint. The sky is the limit.

As a designer, I bring in the design skills that I learned from CCS. The College really teaches you how to manage your time, and how to prioritize. Everybody’s so talented. That’s why CCS was special as an art school – because you are just surrounded by other artists, learning from one another.

How do you feel CCS prepared you for your current role at Rolls-Royce?

The way you draw things or understand the foundation or color theories – these things are given to you no matter what schools you go to, right? But at least for my major, time management was a huge thing that we took out of the program.

Then fast forward to now, coming into this role, I had to learn more outside of design, like building and managing relationships and communicating.

When I went to CCS, we had several liberal arts classes required, and there was one class taught by a gentleman by the name of Brian Baker. He was a former car designer, now retired. His class was specifically about the business side of design. He would teach you how to form your elevator pitch, how to interview and how to present yourself. He was so unafraid to draw students out in front of the room and make them introduce themselves. And, you know, half the class was very introverted and shy. He was pushing his students to get out there because that’s what it’s like in the real world.

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What would you say to someone who’s interested in going into art and design?

Really ask yourself if you want to do this, because there’s a difference between pursuing something creative as a hobby versus as a way of making your income. It’s very different. You start to develop a different relationship with creativity, too. It becomes a way of life. It’s not just a fun pastime, a hobby to de-stress. It’ll actually stress you. 

Do not be afraid of failure. It’s how you fail that matters. Two people can fail at the same thing and one person can do a little introspective thinking on it and figure out what went wrong, and actually turn that into something good and learn from it. Oftentimes, I think a lot of designers are perfectionists, right? Before we even start our work, we get so overwhelmed with the anxiety of perfection. It used to hinder my work a lot. I would spend a lot more time than needed on certain things.

Recognize your working pattern, accept it and try to bring a solution to it. Some people might be better off working at a big company versus running their own business, or as a freelancer, or holding multiple roles. It’s different for everybody.

It’s really about listening to your heart. Because if you don’t follow it, years later, you will regret it. It’ll affect your mental health, your relationships. At the end of the day, you want to live a happy life, right? And we go to art and design school to be happy.

“Don’t be afraid of failure before even starting. What you learn from it and how you overcome it will lead you to where you want to be.”