Maureen Powers

Maureen graduated from the interior design program at Kwantlen College, Vancouver in the early '80s. She went on to co-find the Vancouver Youth Theatre and the Creek View Housing Coop — the first in housing for quadriplegics. It was also during this time that feng shui came to the West Coast. A Chinese master asked to mentor Maureen in the art. Traditionally, it is against feng shui principles to charge for training; rather, a master passes the gift to an individual who embodies the practice.

After a year mentorship, Maureen merged feng shui and interior design principles to create her first environmental design firm in Portland, Ore., in 1992. There she developed eco-buildings, guilds and eco-village programs to build public spaces, homes, restaurants, retail stores, clinics, offices and gardens.

She also taught courses in nature studies and sustainable practices at the School of Naturopathic Medicine, the US Dept of Agriculture and some colleges. In 1993, she won and Women of Vision in Architecture Award and in 1998, she received the prestigious US President Sustainability Award in Education and Youth.

Maureen returned to Vancouver in 2000 where she founded the Raw Cafe, Canada's first organic cafe, with her daughter, Bridget Savereux. After selling the cafe in 2003, she moved to the Cayman Islands, where she developed green policies for the hotel and tourism industry and ran a feng shui environmental design store and consulting practice.

When a hurricane destroyed her home, Maureen returned to Vancouver to open Balance 3 Living Design, an interior design firm that specializes in feng shui, with her daughter Bridget Savereux. Today, Maureen and her daughter work as a team to stage real estate properties on HGTV's new series The Stagers.