HKS Architects’ Diana Araoz-Fraser Joins Children’s Inn at NIH Board of Directors

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACTS:

Sonja Luecke, communications manger, The Children’s Inn at NIH
c: 901-340-1975     [email protected]

Fern Stone, chief communications and development officer, The Children’s Inn at NIH
c: 240-988-4259    [email protected]

BETHESDA, Md. (Dec. 1, 2020) – Diana Araoz-Fraser, vice president and senior interior designer at HKS Architects, has joined the board of directors of The Children’s Inn at NIH.

“I’ve been involved with The Children’s Inn’s redesign of one of its kitchens and dining areas, and it’s been gratifying to be engaged with such a world-class organization that is on the leading edge of patient care,” Araoz-Fraser says. “By joining the board, I hope to contribute my experience in healthcare and enhance The Inn’s impact on the children and families served.”

During her more than 15-year career in interior design, Araoz-Fraser has focused on enhancing the patient experience through creative health care design solutions. Drawing on her experience of designing emergency departments, behavioral health spaces and oncology centers of varying sizes and complexities around the United States and the world, she has published a variety of articles to advocate for the use of evidence-based, holistic, biophilic and wellness-based design to create health care spaces that address patients’ physical, emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual needs.

Her vast portfolio of work includes renovating or designing such health care spaces as The Johns Hopkins Hospital, the new Virginia Commonwealth University Community Memorial Hospital building, Baltimore’s MedStar Harbor Hospital’s behavioral health unit and hospitals and medical centers in China and Abu Dhabi, among others.

Prior to joining HKS Architects, she was a senior interior designer at SmithGroup. Her international experience includes working as managing director/interior designer for VOA Associates Incorporated in Bogota, Colombia.

Araoz-Fraser also is an adjunct professor at George Washington University and has served as a mentor to graduate and undergraduate-level architecture and interior architecture students at George Washington University, Catholic University of America and Arizona State University.

She holds a master’s degree in design from Arizona State University and a bachelor’s degree in interior design from Purdue University.

She and her husband, Camilo García, live in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with their three children, Mateo, 23, Sara, 16, and Lucas, 8.

About The Children’s Inn:

The Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health is a nonprofit dedicated to providing a “place like home” free of charge to children and young adults with rare and serious diseases, and their families, while they participate in NIH clinical research studies. Located on the NIH campus across from the NIH Clinical Center—the world’s largest hospital dedicated solely to clinical research—The Children’s Inn provides free lodging, meals, recreational, educational and therapeutic services to more than 1,500 children and their families from across the United States and the world every year.

In 2020, The Children’s Inn celebrates 30 years of being “INN it” for making childhood possible and advancing medical breakthroughs for a brighter tomorrow. For more information about The Children’s Inn, visit childrensinn.org.

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