Backstage with local designer Nolan Kouri as he prepares for Sacramento Fashion Week. 

“First off, I’m not an architect,” says Marvin Maldonado, a Sacramento-based building designer. He’s really more of a dreamer with a architecture degree.

But as we all know, dreams can get tricky.

Since August 1999, Lial Jones has served as director of the Crocker Art Museum. During her tenure, she has led a capital campaign that successfully raised more than $120 million to finance the Teel Family Pavilion, a 125,000-square-foot addition that opened in October of 2010.

Sacramento has not been kind to Thomas Ramey, though he loves the city and hopes it will someday let him succeed. A Southern California transplant, he’s accustomed to clients who value his contemporary metal sculptures, modern architectural design elements and hand-fabricated furniture.

In today’s on-demand marketplace of real-time information delivered to mobile devices at lightening speeds, smart design is crucial for business success. And as the creative half of marketing firm Position Interactive, Phil Tretheway, 34, knows that without strategic and compelling design, consumers will pass his clients by.

Within three and a half years, 26-year-old Katrina Stumbos has transitioned from college graduate to business owner.

In her newly minted office on Fair Oaks Boulevard, Stumbos invites clients to brainstorm their dream spaces inside her treasure trove of fabrics, woods, wallpapers and tiles.

It’s been an extraordinary couple of years for Richard Hallmarq, the 41-year-old Sacramento native who last year made his fashion debut on national television and is now gearing up for New York Fashion Week from his design studio inside the Sacramento Art Complex on K Street.

Mikhail Chernyavsky, host of the video series “Emerge” for Comstock’s magazine, sits down with the owner of Capital Ink Tattoo, Irish Cash, to learn about what it takes to start a business as a young entrepreneur.