Design Leaders: Terri L. Marion of AHF Products

This article is part of an ongoing profile series spotlighting IIDA industry members.

Meet Terri L. Marion, Product Manager – Crossville at AHF Products.

What core values are most important to you as a leader, and how do you ensure they are embedded in the company culture?

The values I return to most often are curiosity, ownership, transparency, and respect. Curiosity keeps a team from settling for the familiar answer. Ownership means carrying an idea across the messy middle, from an unmet market need through design, manufacturing, launch, and the customer experience. Transparency builds trust when technical realities, commercial priorities, and creative ambitions pull in different directions. And respect means recognizing that the strongest solution rarely belongs to one discipline alone.

I try to embed those values by translating openly, helping designers understand manufacturing constraints, helping technical teams understand the human and aesthetic need, and making sure people see how their expertise shapes the outcome. I lead largely through influence, so creating shared understanding is not an accessory to leadership; it is the bulk of my daily work.

Can you share a pivotal moment for you in your career?

A pivotal realization came when I understood that I did not have to choose between being an engineer and being a creative, market facing person. I began in automotive engineering and manufacturing, later worked in medical devices, and eventually moved into architectural surfaces. Along the way, I developed experience in marketing and product management. What may have looked like an unconventional career path gave me the perspective I draw on today.

I realized that I am essentially a translator. I can translate a market need into a technical specification, help guide the idea through manufacturing, and then translate the resulting technology into a story people can understand and value. While specialists provide essential depth, my strength is connecting their expertise across functions so people can solve the larger problem together. Product management became my “sweet spot” because it brings engineering, design, manufacturing, and marketing into the same conversation.

Smiling woman with layered brown hair and hoop earrings wears a cream tweed jacket with a diagonal zipper and a patterned silk neck scarf. — **Terri L. Marion,** Product Manager – Crossville at AHF Products. Image courtesy of AHF Products

What is the legacy you hope to leave?

My engineering and project-management background taught me to look for the process behind the outcome — how complex work moves across disciplines, where communication tends to break down, and how a team can create repeatable success without becoming rigid. I naturally bring structure to ambiguity by establishing a shared starting point, clarifying how the pieces connect, and incorporating what we learn back into the process. Structure should give people enough clarity to adapt intelligently when circumstances change.

Personally, I hope I am remembered as someone who made complex topics understandable, connected people who did not always speak the same professional language, and helped good ideas survive the journey from inspiration to manufacturing. The product itself is never the entire outcome. Its purpose is to become part of a distinctive, beautiful space that supports the people who live, work, heal, and gather there.

What big goal have you set for the next 3-5 years?

My goal is to help shift the conversation from individual products to complete spaces. No one experiences a tile, wood floor, or wall surface in isolation. People experience the environment those materials create — and whether it feels distinctive, cohesive, restorative, energizing, or personal.

Designers work holistically across floors and walls, indoors and out, using color, texture, touch, and material relationships to shape that experience. Our opportunity is to combine advanced manufacturing with a deeper understanding of how surfaces work together, giving designers more freedom to create spaces that are uniquely their own.

That means advancing realism and tactile innovation while making materials easier to combine, customize, and specify. The goal is not innovation for its own sake. It is about providing better tools for creativity and products thoughtfully designed to become part of something larger and more meaningful.

What’s one big inspiration — or passion — that you think everyone should know about?

I am endlessly fascinated by color, but not simply by which colors are forecast to be popular next season. I want to understand why people are drawn to them. Color preferences are shaped by larger forces such as social change, politics, economics, technology, the environment, and our collective emotional state. Design trends reveal what people are seeking, whether that is optimism, security, individuality, connection, or calm.

I love tracing those forces into the built environment and translating them into materials, palettes, textures, and product decisions. Color is both intensely personal and profoundly cultural. Studying it is a way of understanding where we are and anticipating what people may need from their surroundings next.

Gardening is where this becomes personal for me. It is an ongoing experiment in color, texture, scale, seasonality, and occasional failure. My garden is never finished, and neither is my understanding of color.

Terri L. Marion is Product Manager – Crossville at AHF Products, where she helps guide tile portfolio strategy and new product development from market insight through manufacturing and launch. Trained as a mechanical engineer with a master’s in manufacturing systems engineering, she began her career in automotive engineering and manufacturing before moving into medical devices and, ultimately, architectural surfaces. Her experience across engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and product management allows her to connect technical performance, design vision, and market need. Today, she leads cross-functional teams, shapes product and material stories, and translates among designers, customers, manufacturing, and marketing. Her work explores how advanced surface technologies, tactile finishes, and nature-grounded aesthetics can give designers greater freedom to create distinctive, beautiful spaces — not simply specify individual products. Marion also represents Crossville through industry presentations, editorial content, and design-trend thought leadership.

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