Design sensibility often starts early. In a 2025 CEOWORLD profile, Debby Gomulka recalled growing up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and taking family trips to Charleston, South Carolina; Williamsburg, Virginia; Hyde Park, New York; and Washington, D.C.

Those destinations share a common thread: each is known for historic architecture and preserved heritage. For a future designer, they offered early lessons in how buildings carry stories across generations.

The profile also notes that her firm is based in North Carolina, while the firm’s website lists a studio in Charleston. Either way, the East Coast heritage she first saw as a child remains central to her practice.

The influence is visible in her career. She founded Provenance Lee Interiors in 2000 and built it around historic preservation, interior design, and globally inspired textiles. Her firm today describes her as a historic preservationist with a background in art history.

Her personal philosophy echoes those childhood experiences. She believes that a home should tell its owner’s story, incorporating travel and personal history. Seeing places like Williamsburg and Washington as a child may have planted that idea, though she presents it as a conviction built over about 25 years of practice.

She has described her specialty as historic preservation, drawing on the history of buildings and culture.

Looking back on early experiences can clarify why a designer works the way she does. In her case, a childhood spent near historic sites appears to have shaped a lasting interest in how buildings, culture, and everyday life fit together. Her childhood travels remain a quiet but meaningful backdrop to a professional life devoted to preserving and interpreting the built environment.

For anyone curious about the journey from Michigan to a career in design, the full CEOWORLD article tells the story in her own words. Her personal website and LinkedIn profile provide the professional chapters that followed.