Nathan Baxter has a rich background in industrial design and has worked in a variety of design roles at AWI over the past 18 years. Today, Baxter is the Director of Design and Digital Services. His team develops meaningful solutions that add value to commercial spaces and provides a collaborative digital design service to support customers across the complete time horizon of design-construction projects. This unique service pairs technology with a human-advice element to help advance design concepts in the most efficient and sustainable way possible. Baxter continues to lead with a deep passion for design and an innate appreciation for how his teams work benefits end users’ day-to-day lives.An industrial designer by training, Baxter was drawn to the field as a more practical creative outlet than fine arts might provide, building an interest into a life-long career. Baxter has played a direct or indirect role in the design and development of much of the Armstrong's current ceiling product lineup, first as staff, senior, and principal designer, and then as a marketing manager, where he leveraged his design background to guide his team toward a better understanding of end users and markets. His focus then shifted back to design, but with a view toward digital technologies where he managed the Product Design Team, while also leading the development and launch of ProjectWorks Design and PreConstruction Service.Today, Baxter is working to take the business to the next level—not just in the strategic direction of commercial digitalization and design, but also the development of people and, ultimately, in the spaces they’re helping to create. His approach is built on the belief that confidence in communicating one’s creativity is the key component in transforming creative ideas into something real, and that self-expression and collaboration nurture meaningful design. That nets the ultimate reward: Seeing well designed and beautifully installed products impact the commercial spaces that we all experience.